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Girl, I Guess:

A Progressive Voter Guide to the 2022 General Election in Cook County and Beyond

Para una versión en Español presione aquí: COMING IN OCTOBER!!

Pour une version en Français cliquez ici : COMING IN OCTOBER!!

Table of Contents/TL;DR

* Our Towns are Union Towns! Illinois Constitutional Amendment — Vote YES

* It’s All About The Memes: Governor and Lt. Governor — Pritzker and Stratton

* Sue-per Trooper: Illinois Attorney General — Kwame Raoul

* Y’all Fell For The Himbo Smile: Illinois Secretary of State — Alexi Giannoulias

* Vote the House Down: US House of Representatives

* Illinois 3rd Congressional District — Delia Ramirez

* Illinois 5th Congressional District — Mike Quigley

* Illinois 6th Congressional District — Sean Casten

* The Blue, The Proud, The Illinois State Senate

* IL Senate District 7 — Mike Simmons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* IL Senate District 20 — Cristina Pacione-Zayas

* IL Senate District 25 — Karina Villa ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Hold the Line: Illinois House of Representatives

* IL House District 4 — Lilian Jiménez

* IL House District 13 — Hoan Huynh

* IL House District 21 — Abdelnasser Rashid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* IL House District 39 — Will Guzzardi

* Down for MWRD? Yeah, You Know Me: Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

* Full Term — Mariyana Spyropolous, Yumeka Brown, Mark Buettner

* Unexpired Term — Daniel “Pogo” Pogorzelski

* Toni vs The Hair: Cook County Board President — Toni Preckwinkle

* Elect! These! Gays! (And Accompanying Heterosexuals): Cook County Board of Commissioners

* Cook County Commissioner, 9th District — Maggie Trevor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Cook County Commissioner, 11th District — John P. Daley

* Cook County Commissioner, 13th District — Josina Morita

* Cook County Commissioner, 15th District — Kevin Morrison ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Cook County Commissioner, 17th District — Daniel Calandriello

* I Am the Lorax, I Vote For the Trees: Cook County Referenda — Vote YES

* Oh Shit Oh Fuck Oh Shit Oh Fuck: Illinois Supreme Court

* Second District — Elizabeth M. Rochford

* Third District — Mary Kay O’Brien

* Who Judges The Judgemen: Judicial Retention

* Anna Loftus — Vote NO

* Alison C. Conlon — Vote NO

* Daniel James Pierce — Vote NO

* Ann Finley Collins — Vote YES

* Rossana Patricia Fernandez — Vote NO

* Carrie E. Hamilton — Vote NO

* William H. Hooks — Vote YES, but it’s complicated

* All Judicial Retention Races, No Commentary Because There are 61 Goddamn Judges

Theis — YES

Smith — YES

Lavin — YES

Connors — YES

Delort — YES

Howse, Jr. –- YES

Reyes — YES

Hall — YES

Evans — NO

Burns — SUPER NO

Kirby — YES

Martin, Jr. — NO

Balanoff — YES

Burke — YES

Kelley — NO

McWilliams — YES

Mikva — YES

Murphy — NO

Ryan — SUPER NO

Wilson — NO

Pierce — NO

Hooks — YES

Lyons — YES

Malone — YES

Kull — NO

Bernstein — NO

Coleman — NO

Collins — YES

D. Gallagher — NO

Jones — YES

S. Sullivan — YES

MacCarthy — YES

Ramos — NO

Duffy — SUPER NO

Loftus — NO

Gillespie — NO

Reilly — YES

Lyle — YES

Esrig — YES

Conlon — NO

Fernandez — NO

W. Sullivan — YES

Lyke, Jr. — YES

Hamilton — NO

Spratt — NO

Allegretti — SUPER NO

De La Rosa — YES

C. Gallagher — YES

Hannon — NO

Jackson — YES

Jones — YES

Kozicki — NO

Link — SUSPICIOUS NO

McHugh — YES

Murray — NO

O'Brien — NO

O'Donnell — YES

Ortiz — NO

Outlaw — YES

Powers — YES

Quinn — YES

Schneider — YES

* Ballot Measures

* Establishing West Town & Humboldt Park Mental Health Area — Vote YES

* Funding West Town & Humboldt Park Mental Health Area — Vote YES

* Establishing Southeast Mental Health Area — Vote YES

* Funding Southeast Mental Health Area — Vote YES

* Mental Health Response Program W20 — Vote YES

* Reopening Mental Health Centers W33 — Vote YES

* Reopening Mental Health Centers W06 P13,15, 17, 18, & 25 — Vote YES

* Lakeview Dog Park — Vote YES

* Preserving Trees in Parks — Vote YES

* Prohibiting Sale of Liquor W39 P19 — Vote YES

* Evanston Ranked Choice Voting — Vote YES

* Skokie Nonpartisan Elections — Vote YES

* Skokie Staggered Terms — Vote YES

* Skokie Hybrid Elections — Vote YES

* Suburbs: Mental Health Facilities — VOTE YES

Who Is Girl, I Guess?

Like a Jewish woman who’s the subject of a conspiracy theory saying that she’s in cahoots with a cabal of Socialist Aldermen and it’s making her Ancestral Pogrom Hackles raise… Girl, I Guess is BACK!! We’re in the middle of a slapdash Election-A-Thon with four different elections in Chicago in a ten-month period soooo… on to number two! Basic human rights are on the ballot! Our Governor might be running for President and is a massive internet meme!! We’re flipping the suburbs Blue, y’all!! Girl, I Guess may have been initially written in Edgewater coffeeshops, but civic engagement and the Ambient Homosexuality of Rogers Park are all the caffeine I need this time around. Written once again during the Jewish New Year, the ninth distinct edition of Girl, I Guess is as semitic, sassy, and methodologically sound as ever, although I’m not loving the global political parallels between 5783 and 1983. Less of that, please. Dear readers, nearly four years ago, y’all helped elect some of Chicago’s favorite Alderpeople. Just months ago, we got progressive candidates across the County over the finish line, including a Golden Shrug win that was hailed as a huge upset. We are a force in Cook County politics, and we should all be proud of ourselves as we go for Round Nine!

Stephanie Skora is a grouchy Jewish trans dyke, and an anarchist with a political science degree. She is one half of the podcast TacoBagel, the COO at Brave Space Alliance, President of the Board of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, and a founding organizer of the Trans Liberation Collective.

Girl, I Guess is Jewish, queer, trans, nerdy and dedicated to helping members of our community navigate a confusing ballot and identify the most progressive candidates. I also recommend you consult with progressive / radical organizers in your community, especially queer, trans, Black, and Brown folks because this guide is currently an individual effort, and I might be a Virgo smartypants know-it-all with a lot of opinions, but I’m far from infallible!

Putting together this voter guide is an act of love, but it is a lot of work! If you’d like to support Girl, I Guess, my PayPal link can be found here! If you don’t have PayPal, but still want to donate, you can support by donating through my Venmo account, @StephanieSkora, or my CashApp, $StephanieSkora.

This election, trans lives, dignity, and our ability to access basic healthcare are on the ballot. Marginalized people all over the country are under brutal attack by fascists, but few more so than trans young people. I happen to sit on the Board of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, an organization that, among other things, puts on the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender and Asexual College Conference, which represents the nation’s largest annual gathering of trans youth. This is the conference’s 30th year, and the Institute urgently needs funds to make sure the attendees will be safe onsite in Columbus, Ohio. I’ll be donating 33% of the proceeds of this Guide to the SGD Institute to help make that happen!

*This guide does not represent the political views of my organizations or employer!! Brave Space Alliance and The Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity are both 501c3 organizations, and do not contribute to, or have anything to do with, the writing of this document, or any endorsements, opinions, or content herein!

Why Bother?

Dear reader, when I said in the last General Election Guide in 2020 that whoever is re-writing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” could stop after RBG died… I really meant it. England’s got a new King, COVID is still here, Gorbachev kicked the bucket, socialism is ascendant in Chicago,”Watergate” is now a low-water mark for political scandal, and Henry Kissinger still isn’t dead. But alas, the fated writer of our new song seems to have not listened, and now here we are, back again to do our annual Hebraic duty of performing electoral tashlikh and toss even more Democrats into the flowing waters of Illinois state politics. However, unlike last cycle, when we were rewarded in the Jewish New Year with the apples and honey of a year off of politics… now we have the Chicago Municipal Election barreling down on us all. 40 years in the desert indeed. But I digress.

Once again, I’ve returned as your friendly neighborhood semitic muckraker to convince you to do your civic duty and wait in line (or, if you’re smart and read the end of this section properly, fill out a piece of paper on your couch and stuff it into an envelope) to vote. At the end of the day, this election just like all others, there are myriad reasons why you absolutely must vote in the November election. The sexiest, perhaps, is the Guide’s old favorite: Judicial Retention. Horrible judges run amok in our carceral society, and here in Illinois, we have the opportunity to give the boot to judges who use their positions to be bad actors, and this year we have the opportunity to weigh in on the Chief Justice of the Cook County Circuit Court! Judicial stuff your speed, but not a fan of retention? Well, dear reader, if you live in the Collar Counties, you’ll have an opportunity to vote in a partisan election for a member of the Illinois Supreme Court, and this year, the partisan balance of the Court, and therefore the very fate of basic human rights in Illinois, hangs in the balance. In local politics, we have the chance to triple the number of LGBTQ people on the Cook County Board, flip some General Assembly seats in the suburbs, and weigh in on provi