Lightfoot responds to Catanzara's plans to run for Chicago mayor
CHICAGO - Mayor Lori Lightfoot has issued a simple response to John Catanzara's plans to run for mayor of Chicago.
Earlier this week, Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara retired from the Chicago Police Department amid a termination hearing with the police board regarding alleged department violations.
Afterwards, he said he intends to run for mayor, telling Lightfoot, "don't ruin my office, I'm coming for the keys."
On Wednesday, Lightfoot responded to Catanzara's announcement.
"It will be a gift," she said. "Let him run. I will have a lot of fun with that."
Just weeks after Lightfoot declared she’s running for re-election, a new survey found most Chicago voters say she doesn’t deserve four more years.
Asked to look ahead 15 months to the mayoral election in early 2023, about three-fifths of likely Chicago voters say "No" to another term for the attorney and former police board leader.
Rejecting a second term for Lightfoot: 68.4% of likely Hispanic voters, 61.5% of likely white voters and 49.4% of likely Black voters.
Favoring a second term: 33.7% of likely Black voters, 15.8% of likely Hispanic voters and 15.4% of likely white voters.
That base of support could enable Lightfoot to surpass the 17.5% she won in February, 2019, in a mayoral contest with 14 names on the ballot. But it’s far short of the 50%-plus-one-vote she’ll need to win a runoff election in April, 2023.
While it’s uncertain how many mayoral candidates will run in 2023, insiders expect a smaller field than in 2019, which followed Rahm Emanuel’s surprise decision not to seek a third term.
Immediately after announcing his retirement from the Chicago Police Department, police union president John Catanzara set his sights on Mayor Lightfoot's job.
"My intention is to run for mayor," Catanzara announced in a YouTube video.
But new polling reported exclusively on FOX 32 Chicago shows that if Catanzara actually does run in 2023, he'll likely be a severe underdog.
That's despite how unhappy voters are with the incumbent.
Since publicly declaring her intention to seek re-election, Mayor Lightfoot's made dozens of campaign style appearances. Just last weekend, she hit Hyde Park, Edgewater and Auburn Gresham.
But in a survey of likely voters completed on Saturday, only one in five support her.
Pollster Matt Podgorski oversaw the survey.
"I think the headline on the polling we did in Chicago on likely voters versus Lori Lightfoot is that she's definitely vulnerable," Podgorski said.
But while the mayor trails behind several of the seven candidates tested in hypothetical head-to-head contests, Catanzara is the only one she leads by a large margin.
Asked whom they'd be more likely to support, 45.7% of likely voters said Lightfoot; 30.3% were undecided and 24% favored Catanzara.
The outspoken fop leader did appear last fall at a rally for then-President Donald Trump, images likely to be used against him in a city where Trump got just 15.8% of the vote.
"Those images would be damning for sure in a runoff race in Chicago. Images are hard to get out of your mind. So I absolutely see those being used in campaign commercials," Podgorski said.
Pollster Ogden & Fry surveyed 457 likely Chicago voters. The results are accurate to within plus/minus 4.5 percentage points.