Revuluri Campaign Calls Petition Challenge Legally Frivolous, Files Motion to Dismiss

This race should be about our students' success — because that's what voters are demanding. A challenge this weak only pulls us away from that conversation.

CHICAGO, June 15 – The campaign of Sendhil Revuluri, candidate for President of the Chicago Board of Education, filed a motion to dismiss a petition challenge to his candidacy, calling it legally frivolous and urging the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners to throw it out.

Revuluri and his campaign filed nearly 7,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, almost three times the 2,500 required for the office. The challenge does not dispute that cushion. Instead, it rests on a reading of Illinois election law that an Illinois appellate court has already rejected, calling it “absurd.” Read the full motion to dismiss here.

This November, Chicagoans will elect their school board for the first time in the city's history. Revuluri's campaign says that is what makes the challenge so cynical: an attempt to end the race in a hearing room before voters ever get the chance to exercise the power the city fought for years to win.

“Let's be honest about what this is: an attempt to win on paperwork what you can't win at the ballot box,” said Hugo Jacobo, an advisor to the campaign. “The objector won't even say who's behind it, and that tells you everything. Sendhil turned in nearly three times the required signatures, and the law here isn't close.”

“Chicago waited a long time for the right to elect a board that represents them in governing our schools. I’m not going to let voters be robbed of that right through an old-school political maneuver,” said Sendhil Revuluri. “We expect this challenge to be thrown out—and then we can get back to working to ensure the success of Chicago's kids.”