By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Democratic voters in Chicago’s 3rd Ward rejected a nasty, late-campaign attempt that portrayed Ald. Pat Dowell as a lesbian, giving her a landslide win in the race for ward committeeman there.

Dowell, who unseated longtime Ald. Dorothy Tillman in the South Side ward last year, faced Ill. state Rep. Ken Dunkin in the campaign for ward committeeman. With almost 80 percent of the votes counted late Feb. 5, Dowell led by a 69-31 percent margin.

The race was marred in the final days by an attack falsely implying that Dowell lost custody of her child because she’s a lesbian. Nothing about that allegation, which was made on a website touted in a mailing that went out under Dunkin’s bulk mail permit, is true.

“She’s doing much better than him, and it’s a last-ditch attempt to attack her,” Dowell’s spokesman, Kevin Lampe, said the day before the election.

The mailing was attributed to a bogus group with a bogus address, but, as first reported by Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax blog, it was sent out using Dunkin’s bulk mail permit. Dunkin did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

The mailing also attacked Dowell in racist terms, stating, “Keep raising taxes as high as you can and finish kicking the rest of us negros out of the ward so Massa Daley and his crooked developer friends can get all the land.”

Dowell is African American.

Dunkin has been a reliable vote on GLBT issues in the Illinois Legislature, voting for the law that banned anti-GLBT discrimination statewide and sponsoring a resolution welcoming the Gay Games to Chicago. But he’s also regarded as something of a loose cannon, even by his political allies.