Though it featured two of the most acrimonious City Council races, the Thursday forum presenting the 6th and 7th ward candidates dropped nary a barb during the hour and a half in the underbelly of a northwest Evanston church.
Instead, the candidates mulled over what the process for finding a lasting home for city operations should look like. They meditated over what maintaining Central Street’s “character” might mean.
But within the minutiae, they also alluded to broader disagreements over what Evanston should look like — and how much change residents should gird themselves for.
“Do you want the city of Evanston to do more things or do fewer things better?” asked incumbent Ald. Tom Suffredin (6th). “I think that if we focus on core things and executing them well, the residents are better served than if we take an expansive view and go off in all sorts of different directions.”
Moderated by Jeff Smith, who leads the Central Street Neighbors Association, the forum’s approximately 100 people in attendance let out the occasional guffaw as the candidates went deep on both the issues and the applause lines.
In a discussion about the future of Evanston’s finances, the candidates pointed to the potential belt-tightening ahead as pandemic-era federal monies dry up. The question about structural solutions to the city’s quagmire elicited an analogy that touched on its foundational approach to issues.
“City Council is a golden retriever at a tennis court, and there’s a bunch of tennis balls,” 7th Ward candidate Parielle Davis said. “And they’re just going at whatever fancy headline they see in the national news and trying to adopt it to our city, regardless of whether or not it makes sense for our city or works.”
Soon, Suffredin, seated next to Davis, cited her parable in spinning his own: The council’s nine members go out to dinner and order as they wish. They don’t ask what market price means, he said, and then the bill comes. “And everyone’s like, ‘Whoa!’”
On the other end of the table sat 6th Ward challenger Candance Chow and 7th Ward candidate Kerry Mundy, who often nodded as Chow spoke. Indeed, the forum revealed the nuanced differences between the two candidates on each end.
Near the end of the forum, when Smith had the candidates grapple with what the word “character” might mean for north Evanston neighborhoods, they largely agreed that it served a positive and important role. Still, some differences arose.
“Character is a holistic term that represents architecture, represents community,” said Mundy, who defined it as Evanston’s “welcoming” nature. “It represents green space. Character is what you feel when you walk into our community.”
His opponent, Davis, focused on how she bought her home expecting that the area would remain the same: “What you signed up for stays about roughly the same, and it doesn’t deviate so much that you want to move.”
Davis emerged as a leading organizer against NU’s bid to commercialize a rebuilt Ryan Field. The tensions over the stadium project underscored questions about how the largely residential 7th Ward could preserve its “character.”
As the candidates talked character, they spoke in detail about the Central Street business district, which they largely lauded as a success in preservation. Occasional qualms about the city’s Envision Evanston 2045 policy overhaul arose, especially about development.
The conversation on development did not produce a neat consensus.
“We have to think about housing stock from the perspective of size of family, stage of family, income level,” Chow said. “And that’s the way we should be targeting if we need housing growth in specific areas.”
The civil discourse belied the battles that have often defined both campaigns.
The 6th Ward war of words began in earnest Feb. 6, when Chow launched a barrage of accusations against Suffredin. Her allegations called Suffredin a “walking conflict of interest” for his Springfield lobbying work while serving on Evanston’s City Council. Chow expanded her claims in a Monday missive tying him to the state’s “pay-to-play politics.”
In successive remarks to The Daily, Suffredin has emphatically denied Chow’s claims and portrayals, saying that he remains the only candidate in the race not to have received an ethics complaint.
Chow faced an investigation during her time on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board. It focused on how her ultimately unsuccessful campaign for state representative sent messages to district employees’ emails, in violation of policy. The investigation ultimately recommended no discipline.
Meanwhile, the 7th Ward race has seen its share of acrimony. At a Feb. 9 candidate forum, Davis asked Mundy a pointed question over his apparent support for Ryan Field’s commercialization: “How often do you adopt others’ opinions instead of forming your own?”
Later, during that same forum, Suffredin looked out at the audience and said, “There you are, Candance,” while he strenuously defended himself against her claims.
No mention of Chow’s accusations arose during Thursday’s relatively congenial forum.
Email: shungraves2027@u.northwestern.edu
Related Stories:
— Ald. Tom Suffredin denounces latest accusations from challenger Candance Chow
— 6th Ward challenger Candance Chow responds to D65 accountability demand
— Bitter broadsides, personal digs animate debates among Evanston candidates
