MCCARTHY LAUNCHES MAYORAL BID
Former top cop formally enters mayor’s race
Former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has formally entered the 2019 race against the mayor who fired him, with a promise to reverse an exodus from Chicago triggered by violent crime.
“Unfortunately, Chicago city government has lost our trust, because of failed policies and the endless politics of bluster and bullying,” Mc- Carthy says in a three- minute campaign video released Wednesday night. “I’m running for mayor to change that.”
McCarthy spent 4.5 years arguing that Chicago didn’t need more police officers before being fired for becoming what Mayor Rahm Emanuel called a “distraction” in the unrelenting furor that followed the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.
“We’ve abandoned the blueprint that’s being used everywhere in the country. And we’re playing politics and expecting to get results,” McCarthy told the Chicago Sun- Times. “It’s about run- ning the police department like a business — not a political organization.
“The fallout from Laquan McDonald ended up with a purge in the Police Department starting with me. When I got thrown under the bus, the whole department got thrown under the bus,” McCarthy said.
Emanuel, who survived Chicago’s first mayoral runoff in 2015, is certain to try to paint McCarthy as incapable of solving Chicago’s $ 36 billion pension crisis, as he has never held an elected office.
But McCarthy argued Wednesday that the key to solving the city’s financial problems has more to do with stopping the vicious cycle of declining population, school closings and gun violence than it does the $ 1.4 billion avalanche of tax increases under Emanuel.
“If you want to fix the tax problem in Chicago, stop people from leaving. We’re the only urban center in the country that’s lost population in the last 10 years,” said McCarthy, who withheld specifics but said he had “very unique” ways to raise city revenue.