After a heavy courtship by both mayoral candidates, Willie Wilson endorsed Lori Lightfoot on Friday, a move with potential to be a difference-maker on April 2.
“She’s the right person,” Wilson said, appearing with Lightfoot at the Chicago Baptist International Institute, 5120 S. King Drive.
Addressing the people of Chicago, Wilson added: “I’m going to ask you now to endorse her. She represents those changes that we so much need.”
Wilson said he met with Lori three times before deciding, because “I wanted to get to know her for myself.”
News of the endorsement actually was revealed earlier in the day, as Lightfoot appeared at a City Club of Chicago breakfast event.
During a question-and-answer session with Lightfoot, City Club board member Edward Mazur said he had some “breaking news,” then disclosed Wilson’s decision.
“Obviously, Dr. Wilson likes to march to his own drum, but I’m deeply grateful,” Lightfoot said. “Dr. Wilson is really an incredible man. He has an unbelievable life story. His generosity to people all over the city, particularly to the black communities that are struggling, I think warrants our support and our applause and our thanks.”
Pressed on what difference she believes Wilson’s endorsement will make, she added: “Dr. Wilson is someone who is deeply respected all over the city. He’s deeply respected in black communities across the city. He has spent a significant amount of his time, his personal resources and wealth, to do everything he can to address some of the most urgent needs in those communities.”
Preckwinkle accused Wilson of making his endorsement “contingent upon him receiving guaranteed clout appointments for various city commissions and departments.” She also accused him of demanding that Preckwinkle help retire the debt that remains from his self-funded mayoral campaign.
Those are promises that, Preckwinkle said, she was unwilling to make while her opponent was.
“Yet again, it seems Lightfoot is succumbing to a textbook example of pay-to-play politics, rather than looking out for Chicago’s best interests,” the Preckwinkle campaign said in a statement.
“I didn’t ask her,” Wilson insisted at his news conference later Friday. “Why do I need anybody to retire my debt?”
Preckwinkle’s deputy campaign manager, Jason Lee, was quoted as saying: “If Mr. Wilson’s endorsement can be bought, that is certainly not an endorsement that reflects the values of integrity of Toni’s campaign. And frankly, not one our campaign is interested in.”
Wilson responded to that allegation, as well.
“I have not asked Dr. Lightfoot for anything for myself personally,” Wilson said. “When you got your own money, you don’t have to pay nothing.”
And, he noted: “I got several calls asking for me to endorse [Preckwinkle], the latest yesterday. So that doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Another factor in his decision, he said, is that “the problem with Chicago — one of many many problems — is corruption. The other one is, how can you expect things to change when she [Preckwinkle] is the machine?”
He also talked about an incident from his 2015 campaign for mayor.
“I called her last time I was running for mayor and asked if she would consider voting for me. She cursed me out and hung the phone up,” Wilson said. “She’s not the right person for Chicago.”
Four years ago, Wilson got 10 percent of the vote in the mayoral election, then endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia over Rahm Emanuel in what was Chicago’s first mayoral runoff.
It barely moved the needle.
In the six-week period between Feb. 24 and the April 7 runoff, Emanuel’s support increased by 14.5 percentage points among African-American voters, who had been alienated by his decision to close a record 50 elementary schools.
A former City Council ally of Mayor Harold Washington, Garcia had high hopes of resurrecting the black-Hispanic coalition that culminated in Washington’s 1983 election as Chicago’s first African-American mayor.
But it was Emanuel who came closer to bringing the old rainbow band back together. He ended up winning 64 percent of the white vote, 57.3 percent of the black vote and 39 percent among Hispanics.
Wilson’s endorsement of Lightfoot packs greater potential to help the former Police Board president expand her base.
On Feb. 26, he won 13 South and West Side wards. Preckwinkle won five black wards near her longtime political base in Hyde Park along with the 26th Ward. Lightfoot captured 11 wards, nearly all of them along the North Side and north lakefront.
If Wilson can persuade even a fraction of the 50,000 Chicago voters who supported him to back Lightfoot and actually show up to vote on April 2, she will take a giant step toward the mayor’s office.
Like Dorothy Brown, Wilson has deep religious roots and an older, church-based constituency.
Last week, Wilson openly acknowledged that the fact that Lightfoot is a lesbian would not play well with those voters.
“That’s a pretty hard sell . . . But I’m talking about contracts and jobs and schools and things of that nature,” Wilson said then.
“People have got religion. They believe in their religion, and so do I. But I have gays and lesbians in my workplace. And I go to church. It depends on how one looks at it.”
Wilson urged his 50,000 supporters to go to his Facebook page and vote on which candidate they wanted him to support. Lightfoot was apparently their choice.
During a televised debate on Thursday night that turned bitter fast, both candidates had telegraphed Wilson’s choice.
Preckwinkle noted she was better positioned to win the 13 wards that Wilson captured — no matter what he says — because she finished second in all of them.
Lightfoot went out of her way to praise Wilson, with whom she has met repeatedly over the past week.
“We’ve got to give hats off the Dr. Wilson. He’s been a candidate many times. He’s built an enormous infrastructure. And he speaks to, I think, an urgency in the black community in particular about the unequal distribution of resources in the city. And frankly, I share that view,” she said.
“We’ve got to make sure, frankly, [we] are looking to neighborhoods south of Roosevelt Road and west of Ashland in a way that we haven’t in the last seven years.”
To soften the blow of Wilson’s endorsement, Preckwinkle engaged in a bit of counter-programming. She scheduled an endorsement press conference with faith leaders on the South Side before Wilson’s press conference to endorse Lightfoot.
A Preckwinkle strategist downplayed the value of Wilson’s endorsement and questioned Wilson’s ability to transfer his personal popularity — built on years of charitable giving — to another candidate, let alone a political unknown.
“He endorsed Chuy, and Chuy wound up losing every African-American ward in the city,” the Preckwinkle strategist said.
Still, there is no denying the political momentum Lightfoot appears to be building.
The Wilson endorsement caps a triumphant week that started with the Chicago Federation of Labor choosing to remain neutral, denying Preckwinkle a chance to consolidate labor support. That was followed by the Latino Leadership Council, the Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 and two Northwest Side aldermen, who are former firefighters, endorsing Lightfoot.
The Local 2 endorsement alone could help Lightfoot in the 19th and 41st Wards won by Jerry Joyce.
In between all of that came two polls, one by the Lightfoot campaign, showing her winning in a landslide. Garcia, whose former campaign manager is doing the same for Lightfoot, plans to meet with Lightfoot this weekend in a potential prelude to an endorsement.
