Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ridiculed local Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara’s threat to run against her in the 2023 election, saying the bombastic union leader’s candidacy would “be a gift.”
Lightfoot played coy about her own reelection prospects at her traditional post-City Council news conference, saying it’s too early to talk about a possible second term campaign.
But when asked about Catanzara, Lightfoot said, “It would be a gift.”
“Let him run,” Lightfoot said. “I’d have a lot of fun with that.”
Catanzara officially retired from the Chicago Police Department on Tuesday, one day after the embattled head of the city’s largest police union dramatically revealed his plans to leave the department in the midst of a disciplinary case and said he would be running for mayor.
Local FOP President John Catanzara appeared with Mayor Lori Lightfoot at a ceremony for Gold Star Families in September. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)
Within 24 hours, the FOP Lodge 7 president went from the brink of an unceremonious firing to announcing he would likely seek the top political office in Chicago, a move that, if it happens, means Catanzara’s opinions on policing and sometimes controversial views on city affairs will likely grow even louder.
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Catanzara, however, faces potential headwinds as a challenger to Lightfoot. The FOP president is a Donald Trump supporter who stands out from other serious mayoral contenders in urban America, where the Republican incumbent resoundingly lost in 2020.
Before he retired, Catanzara amassed dozens of CPD rule violations connected to 18 allegations of inflammatory statements and the filing of false police reports. Investigators concluded those allegations had rendered him unable to be impartial in policing and also impeded the mission of the department, leading to the hearing on his firing this week.
The comments in question ranged from posting “Its (sic) seriously time to kill these (expletives)” after the shooting of a Wayne State University police officer, to writing “Savages they all deserve a bullet,” in reference to a video of a woman being stoned overseas, drawing the ire of Muslim and civil rights organizations across the U.S.
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Most recently, the FOP under Catanzara’s leadership garnered national attention for being one of several police unions in major cities to defy vaccination mandates. That led to dueling lawsuits between Lightfoot and Catanzara, which are pending, as well as a temporary restraining order curtailing the union president from publicly encouraging members to defy her directive to get the shot or face discipline including dismissal.
Catanzara previously compared the vaccine mandate with the Holocaust, leading Lightfoot to dismiss him as “a horrible guy” and “a goof.”
Catanzara would be the first major police figure to seek the Chicago mayor’s office since former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy’s unsuccessful bid to succeed former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the seat Lightfoot won.
gpratt@chicagotribune.com
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