Vallas, DeSantis, union PACs and dues.

Mayoral challenger Paul Vallas feels the need to assert in his tv ads that he is a Democrat.

That’s not surprising for two reasons.

The first reason is that Chicago is a deep blue city. The only time in recent memory that a Republican came close to being elected Chicago Mayor was when Bernie Epton ran against Harold Washington, our city’s first African American mayor.

Epton ran against Harold with the slogan, “Before it’s too late!”.

Nobody was confused about what he meant.

The other reason it’s not surprising is that Vallas really sounds like a Republican.

In fact he sounds a lot like Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

And there is the thisclose relationship that he has with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and it’s MAGA president, John Catanzara.

Yesterday The Tribe posted this Vallas quote from 2021.

“When you introduce a curriculum that is not only divisive, but a curriculum that further undermines the relationship of children with their parents, with their families, that’s a dangerous thing. And for white parents, I mean, how are you going to discipline your child when your child comes home and your child has basically been told, you know, that their generation, their race, their parents, their grandparents they have discriminated against others and they have somehow victimized another person’s race.” Listen to the whole Wirepoints interview here.

Wirepoints is a right-wing MAGA blog.

That might as well be a DeSantis talking point in his “war on wokism”.

DeSantis/Vallas. Separated at birth.

The other day DeSantis held a campaign rally in suburban Elmhurst sponsored by the same Fraternal Order of Police that Vallas worked as a consultant for. He said he consulted for free.

Also yesterday Rich Miller’s Capitolfax covered the story of the questionable practices of the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union in co-mingling dues and political action money.

As someone with years of experience with union political endorsements and the careful handling of dues and political action money, I find the CTU practices disturbing.

The basic story is that the CTU moved money from their dues bucket into their political action bucket to support County Commissioner and CTU employee Brandon Johnson who is also challenging Lori Lightfoot for Chicago Mayor.

As a former president of an NEA/IEA teacher union local I was always instructed never to co-mingle PAC money and dues money and our local’s funds were audited to ensure it.

On the level of fairness to members we would never violate the separation of dues and PAC money.

Members always had a choice of contributing to the union political action fund or not.

I would consider it a violation of trust to use their dues for political purposes without consent.

Plus, it gives the enemies of unions proof that members dues are being misused.