Chicago City Wire

David Krupa says he won't be surprised if his brewing dispute with powerful House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) and 13th Ward Chicago Ald. Marty Quinn winds up in the federal court system.

“The amount of fraud and perjury they used to trick my neighbors into doing things is unbelievable and very, very disgusting,” Krupa, the 19-year-old DePaul University freshmen challenging Quinn, said in a recent appearance on the radio show Chicago's Morning Answer. “It could lead to a federal lawsuit. You've got a lot of felonies here.”

\The intrigue traces back to this spring, when Krupa announced plans to run, eventually submitting almost four times the 473 petition signatures required to get on the ballot.

David Krupa

After initially filing a challenge to his candidacy, the Quinn team dropped its protest as questions about it turning in the signatures of almost 2,800 people who purportedly signed legal declarations demanding that their signatures for Krupa be withdrawn have taken center stage.

Krupa and his attorney contend of the 2,787 affidavits submitted in opposition to his eligibility, fewer than 10 percent of them actually signed his nominating petition.

“Every great democracy should have options, and our local democracy has not had an option on its ballot for 30 years,” Krupa added. “It’s because every year, every election, people get taken off the ballot by something much bigger than themselves, something much bigger than their opponent. They get taken off by an organization, and it’s really an organization that’s corrupting democracy.

“I just want to stay on the ballot for the fundamental reason that we should have an option. And I think the people deserve it and they certainly want to vote for another option,” he said.

For all Madigan’s power and political muscle, Krupa said things don’t always run as smoothly in the 13th Ward as some might think.

“We got a lot of issues,” he told Morning Answer. “We got security issues, property taxes are an issue and of course our infrastructure. One of the things I want to do if I get in is make sure that we receive more police presence and more police patrolling at night to make sure we don’t get our cars broken into, make sure that nothing gets stolen. As for infrastructure, all of our streets are pretty much getting torn up and repaired every year … they’re putting in new sewers, new electrical, but they don’t do it all at one time. It’s very poor city planning.

“I think Speaker Madigan and Marty Quinn have way too much on their minds to be focusing on our ward, and its causing them to save all this stuff to the last possible minute,” he said.

Krupa said nothing about standing up to the machine-style politics that have essentially taken over his neighborhood has come easy.

“I’ve certainly gotten a lot of hate on social media,” he said, adding that he even felt compelled to file a police report after feeling as if he was directly threatened by one area precinct captain.

“Right way, I went and filed a police report,” he said. “I take that stuff seriously.”