Chicago mayoral favorite Paul Vallas is criticized for liking derogatory tweets

With just days to go before Chicagoans go to the polls to elect their next mayor, the man widely seen as the frontrunner is facing a new scandal for liking a series of derogatory tweets.

A review of Paul Vallas’s Twitter page by the Chicago Tribune found that the Democrat liked tweets that used racist language, supported controversial police tactics like “stop and frisk” or insulted Mayor Lori Lightfoot in personal terms.

Some of the tweets referred to Lightfoot, a lesbian and the city’s first openly LGBTQ mayor, ‘Larry’, calling her a gnome and even making fun of her hair loss.

Several of the tweets were made before Vallas, 69, announced last summer that he would run for mayor again, after losing his bid in 2019.

He told the Tribune that many people in his campaign have had access to his Twitter account, and that he was working to identify who had liked the controversial tweets. But Vallas said later CBS News he believed his account had been hacked.

According to the Tribune, many of the tweets his account liked portrayed Chicago as a crime-ridden disaster zone.

In December 2021, Vallas reportedly liked a tweet that said: ‘The Mag Mile will soon be Dystopian Way, similar to a path from a Mad Max movie. Devastated by Wake Ald’s complete indifference. Reilly and Representative Quigley and the gnome on the fifth floor.

Several also criticized Democratic politicians, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, for their handling of crime and the pandemic, state attorney Kim Foxx’s prosecution decisions, and tweets critical of the Cook County board chairman, Toni Preckwinkle.

At least of the tweets refer to Lightfoot as ‘Larry’.

“I bet Larry Lightfoot is with his family today,” read a tweet last June, in response to Vallas giving a shout out to police officers and other first responders on Father’s Day.

Others mocked Lightfoot for his physical appearance, with a November 2021 tweet saying, “Confidence has eroded, just like his hair!” in response to a post by Vallas about how Lightfoot presented crime statistics.

Around the same time, Vallas also liked a tweet stating that Lightfoot is “beyond human!”

“The hate he has for the police is so disgusting,” wrote one Twitter user. How do her bodyguards support her?

And the following month, the Vallas account also liked a tweet calling Lightfoot “the gnome from the fifth floor.”

Other tweets liked by the Vallas account over the years are also said to have criticized Lightfoot and other Democrats in the city for playing identity politics, even going so far as to call Lightfoot a “racist,” while supporting the controversial “stop and frisk” police tactic. .’

In a June 2022 tweet liked by Vallas’s account, one user told him: ‘Just don’t push that Democratic agenda the citizens of Chicago are tired of hearing. You know, shell out this, redo that, color this, woman that. We just want someone to do the work.

Vallas also liked an April 2022 tweet that hinted that Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown would hire people for diversity and called the mayor a racist.

He was hired for a reason, and one reason only. He was black,” the tweet read. ‘Other candidates were more qualified, but they were not black.

“Lightfoot is big racist news.”

Then, after Chicago Police Chief Brendan Deenihan announced he was leaving the department, the Vallas account liked a recent tweet saying Deenihan “sees the writing on the wall, as a white male, his promotion in CPD is limited.”

‘Identity over competition.’

And multiple tweets praised ‘stop and frisk’, a police tactic that allows for forced searches based on ‘reasonable suspicion’.

The practice has become wildly unpopular across the country amid charges of racial profiling and complaints Chicago police filed from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and in lawsuits.

“New York became the safest city in the US thanks to Stop, Question and Frisk and Broken Windows,” one user wrote, referring to a heavy-handed approach to crime.

“Bring on Bill Bratton who changed New York City in six months,” the user wrote, referring to a former New York City police chief who promoted the practices. ‘Learn from history’.

Vallas never responded to another user who asked him in June if he supported stop-and-frisk, but the Tribune reports that his account liked the tweet.

In a statement to the Tribune, Vallas said he does not “personally manage” the account and that he was “shocked when this came to my attention because this kind of abhorrent and vile rhetoric does not represent me or my views.

“While I had nothing to do with liking these posts, our campaign takes responsibility and apologizes, and we want to be clear that we have already taken immediate action to restrict account access to prevent something like this from happening again. “, said. saying.

We are working to identify who is responsible for these tweets being liked, as many volunteers have had access to the account in recent years, including some who are no longer with the campaign, and will take immediate action to remove them from our campaign if they are still involved.

But he later told CBS News: “It’s obvious we got hacked, and actually even though we turned off our system, changed our password, they’re still trying to hack us.”

In response, Lightfoot tweeted a meme showing a man pointing at his reflection in a mirror, captioned: “Paul Vallas finding out who hacked his Twitter account.”

Since then, all tweets have been removed from his profile, which now reads “@PaulVallas did not like any tweets.”

This is just the latest scandal to befall the Democratic frontrunner who is running on a platform of law and order in the crime-ridden country. Windy City and has won broad support from conservatives, despite saying he is a ‘lifelong Democrat’.

Vallas previously faced criticism from Lightfoot and others who accused him of using a racist dog whistle in saying his campaign is about “taking back our city,” but his campaign has denied the message has anything to do with race.

He also came under fire last summer for attending an event by Awake Illinois, a suburban group that has called Gov. Pritzker a “prepper.”

Vallas later said his attendance was a mistake, but the organization recently posted a clip of his March 2021 rally saying its president, Shannon Adcock, should perhaps run for governor.

More recently, Vallas has had to deal with backing from the Fraternal Order of Police, which is run in Chicago by a vocal Trump supporter.

At first, the Tribune reports, Vallas evaded questions about the union’s conservative leanings.

But he has become more forceful in recent weeks, saying the FOP “let him down” by agreeing to attend a speech by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Vallas described as a “right-wing extremist.”

Now he has to hold his lead until Tuesday’s election as some Chicagoans choose to vote by mail.

TO recent survey by M3 Strategies shows Vallas leading the race with 32 percent, followed by forward-thinking Brandeon Johnson with 18 percent and Lightfoot in third with 13.6 percent.

But the elections are likely to be headed for a second round, nbc chicago Reports don’t expect either candidate to get more than 50 percent of the vote.

And ‘as long as both the African American and Latino communities can unite around another candidate, they will get enough white votes that Vallas doesn’t have a path to victory,’ Dick Simpson, former councilman and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago he told CBS News.

The professor has publicly endorsed Lightfoot for re-election.