John Dudlak: It was difficult to continue manufacturing in the facility we were at and we were approached by WISPARK, which is south of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Boguslaw Duczek: It was terrible. I talked to my wife. I talked to kids. I say, oh, boy. Oh, boy. If they move, what are we going to do?
Dudlak: I get a call from Rahm and he is just irate. He says, ‘I can’t believe that this is going on. How in the world could a 100 year old Chicago company move to WISPARK? You know’
And he said, “I’m going to look into this thing. It’s just not right.”
What he did was he made the city and the state and the developer see the logic of keeping employees in Chicago.
Delfin Perez: It surprise me you know because we’re not talking about 200 and 500 people, just about 30, 30 something people.
And he did a great job, so that we’d be able to stay in Chicago.
Dudlak: It’s just that he wants to do what’s right…
And he will just latch on to it and he’ll pursue it and pursue it and get it done. I wish more people had that kind of tenacity.
* Roundup…
* Poll shows Rahm Emanuel as front-runner: The Chicago Retail Merchants Association poll of 2,255 voters taken Monday — the last day candidates could file to run for mayor —finds Emanuel leading a crowded field with support from 39 percent of respondents. Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun came in a distant second with support from 12 percent of those polled. Former Chicago schools chief Gery Chico had 9 percent; Congressman Danny Davis, 7 percent; City Clerk Miguel Del Valle and Rev. James Meeks, 5 percent each; and outgoing U.S. Sen. Roland Burris, 2 percent.
* Petitions for Mayor Offer First Clues of Campaign: The Chicago News Cooperative’s review of all of the nearly 5,300 petitions for the Emanuel campaign found that a man from Mundelein, which is almost 40 miles from City Hall, circulated more signature pages than any other supporter. The analysis found that 4 of Mr. Emanuel’s top 6 circulators and 7 of his 20 busiest operatives wrote in home addresses for themselves outside Chicago at the bottom of the sworn affidavits that they had asked Chicago voters to sign. Almost 25 percent of the petition pages for Mr. Emanuel were circulated by campaign workers who do not live in Chicago, the analysis found.
* Emanuel renter’s last landlord filed suit to evict him: Halpin is also fighting in court here with a Pittsburgh construction company that accused him of fraud in connection with alleged efforts to avoid paying an Allegheny County judgment involving one of Halpin’s developments. Halpin, who builds those sprawling warehouses you see alongside interstate highways, denies the accusation.
