By Bob Seidenberg
All but one member of the Evanston City Council will now face opposition in the April 1 municipal election, with candidates stepping up to wage write-in campaigns in the city clerk and Fourth Ward races.
Vanessa Johnson-McCoy, in the city clerk’s race, and Margaret “Meg” Welch, vying for the Fourth Ward council seat, submitted papers before the Dec. 26 cutoff date declaring their intent to wage write-in campaigns.
Johnson-McCoy will challenge incumbent Stephanie Mendoza for city clerk, where the vote is citywide, while Welch will face Jonathan Nieuwsma, who is seeking re-election to his council seat in the Fourth Ward.
Their names will not appear on the official election ballot, which lists only candidates who submitted the requisite number of petition signatures to run before the Oct. 28 deadline. Rather, as write-in candidates they will depend on supporters printing their names on the write-in line next to the office they’re seeking.
With the candidates’ declarations, Ninth Ward Council Member Juan Geracaris now stands as the lone member of the council to run unopposed in the city’s once-in-four-year election.
Welch: Adding to the conversation
Welch, a program leader and program expert with the Disability Quality Branch of the Social Security Administration, said she had considered filing during the petition period that ended Oct. 28 but held off to ensure she would not be in conflict with the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees’ partisan political activity.
Welch said she ran her concern past the administration’s legal department and was initially advised that as long as it wasn’t a partisan election it should be OK to run. “But then they said, ‘If a political party makes endorsements in the election, then it’s a partisan election,” causing Welch to delve further.
She said she approached the local Democratic Party of Evanston, which had made local endorsements in recent years, about whether the party planned to make endorsements and the party was noncommittal, she said. In early December, though, the DPOE announced they would not endorse in the local election.
The timing “prevented me from getting on the ballot in the typical way,” Welch said in a phone interview Monday. “But I just thought, “Well, I’m going to throw my hat in the ring as a write-in candidate and that will add to the conversation.” She officially filed on Dec. 20, according to records at the clerk’s office.
Welch said she first came to Evanston, after living in the Chicago’s Edgewater and Rogers Park neighborhoods, so her daughter could attend Evanston Township High School. She has a doctorate in philosophy and ethics from Loyola University Chicago.
Johnson-McCoy: ‘I’ve got to do more’
Johnson-McCoy, owner of VAJM Consulting and a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker, said that after her service ended with Open Communities, which fights housing discrimination, she tried to determine which among the boards, committees and commissions at the city she wanted to serve on.
She said she started considering a different course while attending the Nov. 1 memorial service for Delores Holmes, cofounder of the parent support group Family Focus and Fifth Ward council member from 2005 to 2017.
Hearing all that Holmes had accomplished, “It was like, I’ve got to do more, I can’t just get on one committee,” she said in an interview.
Johnson-McCoy said she had discovered that many groups had vacancies. Further, she had read on the city’s website that the clerk’s office’s role includes managing board, commission and committee appointments. (The mayor makes the appointments.)
“And so, I was like, I can help communicate and educate and find people that are capable and willing to serve on these,” she said. “I just want people to be educated on how important it is to sit on these or even let your voice be heard.”
A self-described “servant-leader” since third grade when she served on student council, she listed extensive experience in leadership, real estate and community service. She cited roles in affordable housing, equitable zoning and fair housing as qualifications for the position.
Johnson-McCoy is a member of Coldwell’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee as well as serving on the North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors diversity and inclusion committee. She served as the first Black president of the Women’s Council of Realtors North Shore in 2022 and 2023 and is a founding president of the North Shore Realtist Association, a local chapter of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers. (More information can be found on her campaign website.
Johnson-McCoy officially filed to run as a write-in candidates on Nov on Nov. 13, according to the clerk’s office records. The Evanston city clerk, the city’s only full-time elected position, is set to earn $81,000 a year, under a pay boost approved last year by the current council.
“So we’re just going to be hitting the pavement very soon to educate people,” she said. “I’m super excited. It’s just going to be educating folks [about] who I am.”
Her first job out of college, though, was with Hyatt Hotels, and training in the group’s management training program which placed a high standard for customer service and exceeding the customer’s expectations, she said.
She noted in her own case, the first two times she called the Clerk’s office to inquire about running in the April election, she was directed to send an email with her questions because the office hadn’t been briefed as yet on the 2025 election.
“That shouldn’t be the immediate first answer — to send an email without letting the caller state the questions to see if they do know the answers,” she maintained.
She called a third time, she said, requesting of the person who answered, “may I tell you my questions because they’re general and you may know the answer.’”
“He let me state my questions, put me on hold and came back with acceptable answers,” she said.
Accessibility to obtain information is one of the three areas she is emphasizing on her platform for the office, she said, and “having to call three times is not so easy,” she said for people requesting services of the office.
She also suggested her commitment to customer service would include addressing issues such as the long lines which formed outside the Civic Centers of voters looking to cast early ballots on the eve of the presidential election. “People are standing there in the cold, the line is wrapped around the field,” she said. “And I realized, because I did early voting, it’s the same door coming in and out…like a little bottleneck right there going in and out.”
“And so I’ve always been very focused on details and getting it done and getting it right, and where we can improve,” she said in support of her candidacy.
(Regarding Johnson-McCoy’s concerns, current Clerk Stephanie Mendoza noted in an email and followup phone interview that the Clerk’s Office “provided in-person training sessions via the Public Service Challenge, made comprehensive information available on the office’s website — more than many surrounding municipalities — and assisted multiple candidates who reached out, via email.
“We maintain clear and accessible information online,” Mendoza stressed, “and our office hours are publicly listed on our website, Google Maps and Google Business. On the day she arrived (to file her declaration to run as a write-in) our office remained open beyond closing time to accommodate her, which is noted on her receipt.”
“Beyond providing training and answering questions in person, online and over the phone,” she further noted, “our office is not permitted to offer legal advice. That said, we went above and beyond, even assisting with signature requirements and general filing guidance.”
As for the long lines on election eve, the choice of venue location comes through the Cook County Clerk’s Office, Mendoza said. On the last day of early voting, the civic center’s other large capacity rooms — including the fourth floor Parasol Room (the Secretary of State’s motor vehicle services) and second floor Council chambers (a regular Council meeting) — were being used.
“I hate to have people wait out in the rain or snow,” Mendoza said. However, in this case, there was no other solution besides a change of venue, she said.)
Johnson acknowledged that a write-in campaign is an uphill fight. She has already talked to Lionel Jean-Baptiste, now a Cook County Circuit judge, who waged a successful one in 2005 to win another term as Second Ward alderman after his name was removed from the ballot in a technicality.
“So we’re just going to be hitting the pavement very soon to educate people,” she said.
“I’m super excited,” she said. “It’s just going to be educating folks who I am.”
Welch: An advocate of ‘thoughtful progressivism’
In 2020, she ran in the Congressional 9th District as a delegate in the Democratic Party for Bernie Sanders, receiving the second most votes.
She formerly was a member of Evanstonians for Responsible Planning, a group fighting for responsible city planning and against the then-mega development of Sherman Avenue.
She was also among local activists, which included current Council member Clare Kelly, and Finance & Budget Committee member Leslie McMillan, raising concern about the long-term debt the city would incur in the construction of the Robert Crown Community Center project which came in $20 million above what was projected, according to one estimate..
She brings contrasting stands to Nieuwsma on a number of issues.
“I feel like some votes are getting us into financial boondoggles that are going to hamstring the city. Housing is supposedly one of the mayor’s top priorities, right? We can’t be doing things on a whim — buying properties and making them into a community center that no one asked for.”
• On concerts at a rebuilt Ryan Field, which Nieuwsma was in support.
“They (Northwestern) definitely need a new stadium,” she said. “I’m opposed to the concerts and not super happy with the process. I feel like it’s going to have some deleterious impacts on Evanston in terms of livability and traffic congestion.”
Welch was living in California in 2023 when the Council approved a special permit for Connections for the Homeless to operate a permanent homeless shelter at the Margarita Inn at 1566 Oak Ave., in the Fourth Ward. The issue stirred strong opposition from some residents who raised concerns about the shelter’s impact on the community and lack of safeguards in the operating agreement.
Nieuwsma played a leading role, moving the proposal to ultimate Council approval.
Welch noted that “I supported establishing a homeless shelter in Evanston for a lot of years. I was not convinced that the Margarita Inn was the solution, or that the Connections for the Homeless model and how they were doing it was going to protect the residents or the neighbors.”
Welch was living in California at the time of the issue, but actually participated remote, commenting during public comment at one of the council meetings on the issue.
“And it was difficult,” she said, “because it’s like how can you be against (approval), you’re an Evanston progressive. How can you be against homeless people?
“The overriding theme of my campaign is going to be thoughtful, genuine progressivism over faux progressivism — like all that glitters is not gold,” she explained. “Thoughtful, thoughtful progressivism.”
On an issue such as affordable housing, “everyone jumps on the bandwagon without taking the time to peel back the layers and do the analysis.
“People slap labels on things and there’s some shaming, virtue shaming, some virtue signaling if you don’t jump on the bandwagon,” she said. “And my campaign is very centered on, ‘no, we’ve got to be thoughtful. We have to think long term. We have to look at the facts. We have to do analysis.”
