FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 19, 2023
CHICAGO GOP DEMANDS WIDE-RANGING INVESTIGATION INTO LIGHTFOOT’S RECRUITMENT OF STUDENT VOLUNTEERS
The Chair of the Chicago Republican Party today called for a wide-ranging investigation into the email sent by the Deputy Campaign Manager of the Lightfoot campaign to thousands of Chicago teachers at their work addresses to solicit student volunteers for the campaign.
“We reject the Mayor’s attempt to blame a ‘single staffer’ because the email itself indicates that more persons were involved.” stated Chairman Steve Boulton. “This was sent by a Deputy Campaign Manager, not some backroom volunteer.”
Boulton stated that the email raises stark questions that the Mayor has not answered, such as the following:
- Who in the campaign authorized sending the email?
- Who provided the Lightfoot campaign with thousands of email addresses for Chicago employees?
- Perhaps most troubling, the email states that students ‘are eligible to earn class credit’ by acting as volunteers for the Lightfoot campaign. We do not believe that a Deputy Campaign Manager could authorize such a reward. Who did?”
Boulton emphasized that the email can be viewed as breaching any number of legal prohibitions, such as City of Chicago ethics rules, the First Amendment rights of the teachers to be free of coercion, and even bribery statutes since work for the private gain of the Mayor’s campaign and no other was requested in return for the public benefit of extra credit in school.
“Beyond any legal lines crossed, this act was not only offensive but monumentally dumb,” Boulton stated. “It appears to us to be born of desperation.”
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