Far-left Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot released a two-page letter Wednesday outlining her rationale for refusing to grant interviews to reporters who are not minorities. She claimed there is an “overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press corps, and yes, the City Hall press corps specifically” which means she will take up the mantle in teaching white people on “implicit bias” by stonewalling them.
Chicago Republican Party Chairman Steve Boulton told The Federalist “it’s disturbing that Lightfoot would choose racial issues as a means of distraction from her failing policies, given the recent violence the city has been suffering.”
Chicago has recently experienced a significant surge in crime. More than 760 Chicagoans were killed in 2020, marking one of the worst years of violence in the past two decades. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, Chicago had the most murders since 2017, with 131 slayings, according to the Chicago Tribune. The homicide increase was 55 percent more in 2020 than in 2019. As cited by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, black victims comprised 78 percent of gun victims.
Last summer, Lightfoot insisted it was unnecessary, even sexist, for then-President Donald Trump to summon federal agents amid Black Lives Matter rioting and looting. Agents eventually came to Illinois after Lightfoot accepted Trump’s offer. She made headlines after controversially instructing 140 police officers to protect her home while BLM terrorized the city.
“The president has been on a campaign now for some time against Democratic mayors across the country,” Lightfoot said. “Whether it’s me, whether it’s Keisha Lance Bottoms in Atlanta, whether it’s Muriel Bowser in Washington, D.C., whether it’s Jenny Durkan in Seattle – do you see a common theme here?”
The GOP chairman said Lightfoot “did nothing to try and stop riots.”
“She could have called out the National Guard, she didn’t do it,” Boulton said. “She kept them housed, she wouldn’t put them on the street. She handcuffed the police in dealing with the rioters and the [Chicago Loop] was essentially looted twice. It was a sack and she just let it go because she didn’t want to stop BLM from marching.”
Boulton described Lightfoot’s new policy toward the press as “curing racism with racism.”
“She is hiding behind the race issue because she feels that it will go to her base. She’ll be supported by her base at a time when she’s under a lot of pressure from a lot of quarters,” he said. “Due to the economics and ongoing violence in Chicago, we are on another pace of horrific totals of murders and violence. It’s not stopping and she’s the mayor. So, she’s got to deflect.”
Lightfoot is up for reelection in 2023 after assuming office in 2019. Chicago has no term limits and no other candidates have declared so far. The chairman of the Republican Party said Chicagoans have attended its events and expressed discontent with the increasingly far-left nature of the Democrats. There has not been a Republican mayor in the city since 1931, when William H. Thompson was ousted by Anton Cermak.
“We’re playing our cards close to our vest,” Boulton said in regard to if there are any candidates the GOP is eying to run against the Democrat mayor. “We’re going to start a conversation about substantially changing the entire power structure of Chicago.”
