Almost three weeks have passed since the Fifth Ward aldermanic election, but activists in and around Hyde Park are still fuming over that campaign.

Yet from the outset the campaign was marred by bad feelings. Oliver-Hill was backed by Alan and Lois Dobry, Holt by Sam Ackerman–bitter rivals whose conflicts are too lengthy to enumerate and too complicated to explain. Oliver-Hill challenged the signatures on Holt’s nominating petitions in an effort to have her thrown off the ballot. Each campaign accused the other of spreading lies and distortions.

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“I knew Sidney from Joe Gardner’s campaign,” says Kohrman, Gardner’s issues director. “I called Sidney and said, “Can you work for me?’ He said, “No, I’m working with Janet Oliver-Hill.’ I said, “Sid, let’s talk about compensation.’ I meant we were ready to pay him for his services. He said no, and I said, “Well, Sidney, I’ll see you on the campaign trail, loser buys the beers.”‘

Before Holt could respond, Kelley jumped in to say, “There’s not a thing wrong with hiring campaign workers.”

After the show, Holt and her strategists–Ackerman, Kohrman, Richard Barnett, and Richard Means–gathered to assess the radio show. And the more they talked about Ringgold’s remarks, the angrier they became. “Oliver-Hill and Cliff Kelley were working to discredit me,” says Holt. “There was unfair screening of phone calls. Sidney was just one of her supporters that was allowed to come on and beat me up.”

Kelley’s show doesn’t have a large following among white Hyde Parkers. But if word of Ringgold’s remarks were to spread, Hyde Park voters would be incensed. Of course, Holt’s backers couldn’t be blatant. No one wanted to make the same stupid mistake that their rival, Alan Dobry, had made a few years back in another campaign. Dobry discovered anti-Semitic fliers allegedly issued by his candidate’s opponents and began posting them around the ward in order, he said, that “people could see what kind of poison was being spread.” He brought so much embarrassment to his candidate that she dismissed him from the campaign.

And then on April 1 Holt’s campaign circulated a flier that identified Ringgold as “Oliver-Hill’s Field Coordinator, a paid campaign staffer.” The flier was signed by Despres, Bloom, Means, Ackerman, Barnett, Marty Oberman, Timuel Black, and other well-known independents.