Firefighter bucks odds in 36th Ward

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

For Chicago firefighter Nicholas Sposato, the biggest hurdle in trying to replace 36th Ward Ald. John Rice is simply convincing voters in his Northwest Side ward that it can be done.

That’s because Rice is backed by the same 36th Ward Regular Democratic Organization that has controlled this turf for decades, and for many residents, that’s still a line you do not cross.

“Some of the toughest people I know, they’ll go into a burning building, they’ll take on four or five guys in a fight, but when it comes to putting up a sign or signing their names to a petition, they can’t do it,” Sposato said.

Some are concerned about protecting their city jobs, Sposato said. For others, it’s the old business about worrying that their garbage won’t be picked up. They might promise him confidentially that they’ll vote for him, he said, but they don’t want to risk backing him publicly.

For that reason, let nothing I write dissuade you from the notion that Sposato could win his April 5 runoff with Rice, best known as the driver for former Ald. William J.P. Banks before Banks resigned in 2009 and arranged for Rice to be appointed as his replacement.

To be sure, it will be difficult for Sposato. He finished a distant second to Rice in last month’s election with 24 percent of the vote to Rice’s 48 percent in a six-way race.

But as Sposato likes to point out — and as every challenger who forced a runoff will be emphasizing over the next month — that means a majority of the voters rejected Rice the first time out. All Sposato has to do is persuade the rest of that dissenting majority to join his side.

Obviously, it’s tougher to add another 26 percent than it is to add two, but it has been known to happen.

Voters in the 47th and 45th wards already rose up this year to achieve independence from similarly entrenched old guard Democratic organizations that clumsily tried to hand off power to lousy candidates — which could serve as an example to other Northwest Siders of the possibilities.

It was this very possibility that brought me Tuesday afternoon to Franksville at Harlem and Addison to meet Sposato, who reminded me we first crossed paths many years ago when he called to give me grief for a column I wrote about firefighters filling a swimming pool while on duty. I recall he was good-natured about it.

We talked again four years ago when Sposato first ran for aldermen against Banks, but I was never convinced he had a serious chance, and indeed he fell short of a runoff.

Sposato, 52, concedes to having been “pretty green” back then about what it would take to win, thinking he could do it on his own.

This time he’s got a paid campaign manager, the endorsement of the firefighters and police unions and a sense that the outcome is “a coin toss.”

Sposato is a neighborhood guy, and while you might have heard that line used to death in the mayoral race, the description fits him completely. A resident of Galewood, he has spent his whole life in the ward, working 15 years at UPS before catching on with the Fire Department 18 years ago.

Instead of taking a side job, Sposato used his firefighter’s off days to volunteer in the community — coaching, organizing, fund-raising, serving on the Local School Council. He cites as his main achievement convincing the Chicago Public Schools to restore Sayre Language Academy as a community school instead of a magnet school, opening it up to neighborhood kids who had been shut out.

Sposato is not the type to wow newspaper editorial boards with his vision for city government, though one paper saw enough in him to endorse him just the same.

Sposato has an interesting campaign slogan: “One man who owes no favors; One man who makes no deals.”

He admits he takes some ribbing about that at the firehouse from co-workers who intone “One Man” when they run into him, but he says he’s serious about the message.

“I’m not beholden to anyone. I’m running on my own. I don’t owe anybody,” he said. “I don’t owe the old mayor. I don’t owe the new mayor.”

When we finished talking, Sposato headed back out to knock on more doors — just 26 percent more to go.