The 41st Ward, represented by the sole Republican in the City Council, isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of political activism. But if reform is your central issue and you want nothing more than to elect someone willing to take on the machine, you’re in luck if you live on the city’s far northwest side. That’s where Frank Coconate, fired city worker and political gadfly, is waging an uphill campaign for Democratic ward committeeman.
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The city says it fired Coconate from his job as a sewer safety worker in 2006 because he falsified work reports, claiming to be at one work site when he was really at another. Coconate says the city trumped up the charges to punish him for blowing the whistle on the city’s dysfunctional $75 million drainage system, feeding reporters leads about the city’s hiring and hired trucks scandals, and urging Congressman Jesse Jackson to take on Daley in last year’s mayoral election.
For 33 years Capparelli was the state rep from the 19th District, where his best friend in the statehouse was Roger McAuliffe, a Republican. In 1996, when McAuliffe died in a boating accident, he was replaced by his son, Michael, who is also the 41st Ward Republican committeeman. After the 2002 redistricting, the younger McAuliffe and Capparelli were thrown into the same house district, and in 2004 McAuliffe ousted Capparelli from office. Now 82, Capparelli says he might have retired but for two reasons. “Number one, the [Cook County Democratic Party] chairman—Joe Berrios himself—asked me to run,” says Capparelli. “He said, ‘Ralph, I need you.’”
In the November 2000 general election, Republicans and Democrats didn’t agree on much except one thing: no one wanted Coconate. Local Democrats like 36th Ward alderman William Banks, state senator James DeLeo, and Capparelli himself teamed up with Republicans like Doherty and Donald Stephens, the late mayor of Rosemont, to back McAuliffe. Mayor Daley even sent in some of his top precinct captains—including the legendary Dominick Longo—to work against the upstart. “They were passing palm cards that said gore, lieberman, mcauliffe,” Coconate says. “I still have one.”
