Name changing on the ballot

Candidates sometimes embellished their names when filing nominating petitions to better catch voter’s attention and, hopefully, get more votes.

Jerry Butler, when he ran for Cook County Commissioner in 1986, added the moniker “Iceman” as his middle name to let people know he was the renown entertainer whose singing career had begun in the 1950s.

Perennial candidate Lar Daly added “America First,” hoping to appear more patriotic than his opponents.

Elias Zenkich called himself “Non-incumbent” in a 1992 quest to unseat Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski, who had first been elected in 1958.

Other candidates used nicknames to lengthen their names, so they’d extend farther on the ballot page than their opponents’ names and be more visible when viewed by voters.

In 1986, Nancy Drew Sheehan benefited from the name “Nancy Drew,” a fictional detective created in the 1930s to compete with the popular Hardy Boys series. Her name stood out at the top of a list of barely known Sanitary District candidates and she won.

It was not unusual for candidates to try to increase their appeal by including maiden names on ballots, so their ethnic identities would be obvious: Marilou McCarthy Hedlund (1971), Marion Kennedy Volini (1978, 1979, 1983), Susan Sadlowski Garza (2015, 2019).

Others modified their names each time they ran, searching for the just the right one: Yaakov Fox, Y. Michael Fox, Michael Y. Fox, Michael J. Fox. He never found the right one. (Note: “J” is the initial for “Jacob,” the English translation of “Yaakov”).