Chicago Cop Frederick Collins Wins Top Spot On Chicago Mayoral Ballot

(CBS) -- The lottery to determine the order of the candidates for Chicago's mayoral election in February was held Wednesday at the Chicago Board of Elections.

CBS 2's Mike Parker reports the top spot is considered the big prize, which went to little known candidate Frederick Collins, a Chicago Police officer.

"Today is a great date," Collins said. "Mayor Washington was the last African-American to get number one on the ballot on today's date."

Upstairs, citizens were filing challenges to the thousands of signatures on the various candidates' nominating petitions. In all, 185 challenges were filed and some were against Frederick Collins.

"We're very confident in our petitions," Collins said. "We had 260 volunteers that worked hard. We were out there every single day, going door to door."

The Emanuel campaign blasted the legitimacy of Collins' petitions and released a copy saying, the "signatures fly in the face of any acceptable standard. His pages feature the same handwriting, page after page."

If the challenge is successful and Collins is bumped from the ballot, the mayor will take over the number one slot.

"Other citizens can say, 'you know what, you didn't follow the rules and you're not going to be on the ballot because of that,'" said election attorney James Nally.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's name will appear second. The two candidates thought to pose the greatest opposition to Emanuel, Chuy Garcia and Alderman Robert Fioretti, will appear near the bottom of the ballot, with Garcia ninth and Fioretti fifth.