Most people who signed Joe Laiacona’s petition to run for state representative of the 40th District probably had no idea they were supporting a historic campaign. That’s because Laiacona didn’t tell them. One evening in August I followed the 62-year-old as he hoofed it down Sacramento between Irving Park and Addison. Wearing a short-sleeve plaid shirt tucked into jeans, he said almost exactly the same thing to anyone who’d open the door: “Hi, I’m Joe Laiacona. I’m running for state rep of the 40th District, and I’m wondering if you’d like to sign my petition. It doesn’t mean you’ll vote for me. It just means you’ll have a choice.”
Laiacona transferred back to Saint Michael’s and graduated with a BA in philosophy in 1969. He got a teaching certificate at the University of Albany shortly thereafter, got a job teaching high school, and in 1971 married his girlfriend. In 1977 they moved to Indiana, where Laiacona took a marketing gig at the Catholic publishing company Our Sunday Visitor, and raised their two daughters, both of whom are now in their 30s. In 1982, Laiacona earned a master’s in business administration from Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne.
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Laiacona says he used a pseudonym to protect his oldest daughter, who was applying to colleges in Chicago. He published his own name in the column for the first time in 1997, in a piece on the difficulty of writing gay history with so many sources who were afraid to be named.
Last winter, after the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich—Deb Mell’s brother-in-law—Laiacona hosted a union meeting at his house in Albany Park. In his small, cozy living room, which is dominated by two big black leather couches, Laiacona discussed the scandal with fellow Columbia instructor Dan Sutherland.
In June, says Laiacona’s partner, Patrick Herlihy, whom he frequently refers to as his slave in his columns, a friend of a friend hinted that they should look up Mell’s address. Laiacona checked out her voter registration, which listed her as living on Clybourn. Herlihy, who rides his bicycle past that address on his way to work, reported back that he saw a man’s name on the mailbox.
Political observers have been hooting over the daughter of Richard Mell making such a rookie mistake. “She signed these petitions, so she must have seen them,” says Dick Simpson, the former Chicago alderman who teaches political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Maybe she’s distracted by the Blagojevich scandal.”
