(NAN News Chicago Election report, by Mark Su, March 22, 2023)
Chicago 11th ward alderman election runoff rival turn to critical phase with early voting started this Monday . The candidate Nicole Lee, and Anthony Ciarvino, both showed on several election events since last week.
The two candidates Nicole Lee and Anthony Ciarvino both eager to win April 4 runoff poll, voters, especially from Bridgeport district , and Chinese communities are even more expect this runoff results of the election of the 11th District .
On March 18, the Chicago Coalition for Better Chinese American Community sponsor 11 ward alderman candidate forum in Chicago Chinatown. Both candidates attended the forum and showed their opinions on public. The forum organizer raised seven questions regarding 11th ward alderman election, each candidate has 90 seconds to answer each question.
The seven question include how to solve district safety issue, how to help residents for housing and renting due to tax increase, how to coordinate with Chicago mayor candidate Paul Vallas since both of them support Vallas as Chicago mayor. During the forum, Anthony aggressively comments on Nicole’s speech, and Nicole Lee defense herself during question answering.
In March 21 evening , a group Bridgeport people organized another 11 ward alderman runoff debate, which maybe the last public election event for April 4 runoff. The debate was held at famous Zhou Brothers Building on 35th Street in the Bridgeport District. Over 100 people attend debate, which most of them are Bridgeport citizen , majority of them are white, only small mount of Chinese attended debate, with over 50 percent citizens are Chinese in Bridgeport district, how many Chinese voters will participate in poll in April 4 is hard to foreseen and how many Chinese voters will vote for Chinese candidate Nicole Lee also is hard to predicate.
Election ads on Bridgeport district
The Tuesday evening’s debate, moderator asked two candidates near 10 questions, and each candidate has 90 seconds to answer each question. Both candidate gave clear answer for each question, and audience looks like very satisfy with candidate’s answer to each question, this make it hard to show significant difference between two candidates, and maybe make voter hard to make decision to vote which candidate.