There are nine Democrats in Chicago vying for the dubious distinction of calling themselves “mayor” of that wretched city. The current mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is locked in a fairly close race with Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) and former schools superintendent Paul Vallas.
But, in truth, there’s not a dime’s worth of spit that separates any of them. So the race will hinge on who can lie and exaggerate the best in order to destroy the candidacy of their rivals.
Enter the superhero. Ron DeSantis the Destroyer will visit the Windy City on Monday to address the city’s largest — and very powerful — police union. The Destroyer will come to blow up the mayor’s race. And he’s already succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
Garcia nearly got a bad case of apoplexy when he heard that DeSantis would visit and speak to the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police — the very same group that endorsed Vallas for mayor. Garcia called on Vallas to “publicly reject” DeSantis’ visit and said DeSantis presented a “danger” to Illinois.
Like I said — a superhero with “superpowers.”
Then our formerly fat but still robust Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) went a step further. He “called on “every candidate hoping to hold public office in the land of Lincoln” to denounce DeSantis’s speech.
Why someone from Mattoon or Peoria should denounce a visit by DeSantis to the Chicago suburbs is a little fuzzy, J.B.
As for Vallas, whose only crime appears to be that the police like him, issued a statement repudiating DeSantis as a “right-wing extremist” for not embracing the LGBTQ community.
But Lightfoot, who is trailing both Garcia and Vallas, sat down for an interview and topped them all.
On Friday, incumbent Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is competing against Vallas in the Feb. 28 election, went further in an interview with NBC News.
“Ron DeSantis has perfected being a bigoted, racist demagogue. But Paul Vallas is fast on his heels,” Lightfoot charged.
Lightfoot blasted Vallas for embracing the Chicago FOP, whose conservative leader, John Catanzara, has danced in and out of controversies for years. She also criticized Vallas for appearing before the conservative group Awake Illinois last year, something for which Vallas later apologized.
Is Awake Illinois a neo-Nazi group, and Vallas attended anyway? Not hardly.
At Awake Illinois’s June fundraiser, Vallas sat on a panel alongside former Indiana school administrator Tony Kinnett and Waukegan teacher Frank McCormick, vocal critics of curriculum that includes critical race theory. Other panelists included Nicole Neily, the president of a campus free speech organization, and Pastor Randy Blan, who challenged the state’s mask mandate as headmaster of a private Christian school in northern Illinois. Corey DeAngelis, a national leader for school choice, gave the keynote speech.
In case you missed it, in a city run by the teachers’ unions, being in favor of school choice is a heresy punishable by being burned at the stake — or something close.
It’s amazing to see the effect of a visit by a national Republican leader to this radical left city. DeSantis should be enormously pleased with himself. Only Trump could have gotten a more hysterical reaction. His speech Monday will be sympathetic to cops who have to work in that crazy town.
What’s truly notable isn’t DeSantis’s visit. It’s the terrified reaction to it. It’s almost as if a serial killer was coming to town. DeSantis should carefully note the hysteria by Democrats. It should serve him well when his campaign for president begins in earnest.
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