Opinion ID: 751096
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Horn

Text: 41 The district court found two motives for Horn's vote that it believed to be legitimate. The first was that Horn, also a Democrat, voted against Coogan because his first choice for the job was Doane, another Democrat. Coogan argues that this motive is not sustainable because Horn's preference was based on Doane's political inactivity when compared to Coogan. We agree. 42 Horn testified that he preferred Doane to Coogan from the outset because he had worked with Doane previously and was impressed by him. However, Horn's testimony makes clear that he voted for Doane and opposed Coogan because he preferred someone being not politically active in the City Clerk's position. To the extent that Horn's stated preference for Doane was based upon the relative level of political activity between the candidates--and we believe a fair reading of the record so indicates 2 --it cannot provide a legitimate reason for voting against Coogan. 43 But the district court also found that Horn voted against Coogan because of Coogan's handling of the firefighter incident. There was evidence to support this conclusion as well as evidence (that did not result in a finding) that Horn, a member of the Knights of Columbus, was upset about the Knights incident. The two motives specifically attributed to Horn by the district court are separate; hence the error of the district court's first finding does not taint the second, see Glatt v. Chicago Park Dist., 87 F.3d 190, 193 (7th Cir.1996), and the district court's conclusion that Horn had a permissible motive for voting against Coogan was not clearly erroneous.