Pro-Emanuel Super PAC Distorts Facts About Garcia In Attack Ad
By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 20, 2015 5:30PM
Photo credit: © 2014, Brooke Collins/City of Chicago
Chicago Forward, the pro-Rahm Emanuel Super PAC run by longtime Democratic attack dog Becky Carroll, has not minced words about how it plans to strengthen the mayor’s rubber stamp City Council majority and has put deeds behind those words.
When Chicago Forward hasn’t been shoveling money to the campaigns of pro-Emanuel incumbent aldermen and candidates, it’s been spending money running ads attacking Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who has consistently placed second in polls heading into Tuesday’s election and is hoping to force an April runoff with Emanuel.
Chicago Forward has spent $450,000 to run an ad that distorts Garcia’s vote for a property tax hike when he was an alderman during the 1980s “Council Wars” era and criticizing Garcia for receiving a homeowner’s exemption on two houses he owns, which is not allowed in Cook County.
By now most of us have seen that ad claiming Garcia’s vote to hike property taxes by $80 million was the “biggest property tax increase in city history.” In fact, it was the second largest to an $83.4 million hike pushed through City Council by former Mayor Richard M. Daley after his 2007 re-election.
As for the dual homeowners exemptions, Garcia said he didn’t request one and had no idea why it was still applied to his parents’ Southwest Side home, which he inherited after his mother died. The Chicago Forward ad claims Garcia claimed the dual homeowner’s exemptions to “to avoid paying over $8,000 in taxes.”
Carroll defended her claims to the Sun-Times with the usual bullshit semantics about how Garcia’s property tax vote is the largest in Chicago’s history if adjusted for inflation and questions whether the vote truly did stave off the layoffs Garcia said would happen if a property tax hike didn’t occur.
“I’m not sure saying he voted for the second-largest property tax increase in Chicago history is going to make homeowners feel much better.”
Chicago Forward is forbidden under law from working directly with Emanuel on the ads but you can bet the mayor won’t go out of his way to condemn Carroll and maintain the “high road” as he hopes to avoid a runoff.