With the unanimous approval of the City Council, Mayor Dave Schmidt’s appointee to fill the 6th Ward aldermanic vacancy, Marc Mazzuca, was sworn in at last Monday night’s Council meeting.

RE-DISCLOSURE: The editor of this blog was a member of the four-person selection committee who interviewed the four applicants for the position and recommended Mazzuca.

Mazzuca took his seat at The Horseshoe some seven years and change after he lost the race to succeed retiring 6th Ward veteran Frank DePaul, to Mary Wynn Ryan by a mere 5 votes in April, 2005.  The Council he joins in June 2012, however, is far different from, and only half the size of, the one he would have joined but for the want of 6 votes.

Back then, Mazzuca chose not to seek a recount despite reportedly strong encouragement from supporters of newly-elected mayor Howard Frimark, who viewed Mazzuca as a Frimark ally while viewing Ryan as a guaranteed vote with an alleged “bloc” of old and new aldermen – Don Crampton (1st), Jeannie Markech (2nd), Kim Jones (3rd), Jim Radermacher (4th), Mark Anderson (5th), Rex Parker (6th), Jeff Cox (7th) and Frank Wsol (7th) – whose purported goal was to harass and hinder Frimark.

The G-9’s first official act was to re-claim the Council’s right to organize its own committees, which for years had been ceded by previous Homeowners Party aldermen to previous Homeowners Party mayors.  That was a long-overdue and sound public policy move. 

But it became a rallying point for the purple-beribboned Frimark supporters (including then-private citizen, now mayor, Dave Schmidt), who responded to his plaintive cries of “They’re stealing my powers” – think Emperor Palpatine crying “Help me, Anakin, I’m too weak” just before electrocuting Mace Windu in “Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith” – with scathing condemnations of the G-9 that left many G-9ers hiding in plain sight for the remainder of their terms. 

Nevertheless, they scored a couple more notable successes, including passing a first-ever ethics ordinance for aldermen and posting a multi-million dollar budget surplus for FY 2006-07 – even if almost all of that surplus came from the City’s sale of its former “Reservoir Block” to the private redeveloper of Uptown, PRC Partners, for what may have been a couple-three million dollars less than it was worth because the City never even obtained an appraisal of the property. 

But the G-9 was already beginning to crumble from petty political infighting when an annoyed but emboldened Frimark put a referendum on the November 2006 ballot seeking to cut the Council from 14 aldermen to a more “manageable” 7, claiming that it would save $8,600/year in $100/mo. aldermanic stipends. 

Although the Council cut was opposed by the entire G-9 and a number of former aldermen, it effectively became a mid-term referendum on the G-9; and Frimark prevailed, 7,688 to 6,354.

A dispirited G-9 – save for Parker and Wsol – chose not even to seek re-election when all their terms expired in May 2007.  Parker lost to Frimark ally Tom Carey by 1,043 to 654, while Wsol defeated Frimark ally Bob Kristie, 973 to 566.

And Mazzuca’s opponent?  Ryan found a soft-landing in an uncontested election for the Park Ridge Park District Board, where she continues to serve to this day.

Mazzuca now fills the seat of Tom Bernick, who barely used it during the single year he held it after running unopposed in April 2011.  But that didn’t stop Bernick from ripping the Council on his way out the door.

“I didn’t like the politics; I didn’t like the hypocrites; I didn’t like the game-playing. I wasn’t for that,” Bernick was quoted in an article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate last month, in which he also complained about “street fighting,” “mud-slinging” and the slow pace of decision-making.

That from a guy whose views on a number of City issues raised by the Herald-Advocate in a candidate’s questionnaire back in April 2011 could be, and were, summarized by the phrase: “Candidate did not submit an answer.”

We trust that won’t be Mr. Mazzuca’s problem.  And he’s got 10 months to show the people of the Sixth Ward what a real representative can do.

So welcome, Marc.  And good luck.

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