Are You Getting Catfished By Jonathan Jackson's Campaign For Congress?

CHICAGO — What do a cryptocurrency billionaire, the Chicago Teachers Union and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders have in common?

They all have endorsed the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson for Congress.

Not Jesse Jackson Jr., who was a U.S. representative until he became a felon.

This time we're talking about the civil rights leader's son Jonathan Jackson, an alleged progressive, who strangely has the backing of both a crypto capitalist and the leaders of socialist-leaning political organizations including the CTU.

It sure sounds to me like somebody is getting catfished — which happens when someone uses a fictional persona to lure a sucker into a scam relationship that benefits only the fraudster.

And let's face it, Jonathan Jackson's campaign has handled controversies by making aw-shucks public statements that you might expect from a funny-looking internet scammer posing as your dream lover who says they'll meet you for drinks — after you send a $100 Amazon gift card.

When word got out, for instance, that candidate Jackson didn't submit economic disclosure statements federal candidates are required to file or face civil fines, he told political columnist Lynn Sweet it was just an honest mistake.

On June 2, Jonathan Jackson — the brother of a former congressman and son of a U.S.
president candidate, mind you — said he was "not informed" of the requirement by his campaign advisers. He said he "absolutely" would file the disclosure documents.

If you believed that three weeks ago, you got suckered.

As of Tuesday — a week away from the Democratic primary — Jonathan Jackson still hasn't filed documents that tell voters how he makes money and to whom he's indebted, as required by federal law.

What we do know is that a political action committee funded by 30-year-old cryptocurrency billionaire Samuel Bankman-Fried, who is lobbying Congress to pass favorable crypto legislation, bankrolled more than $500,000 in TV ads for Jackson's campaign, according to published reports.

Ironically, the TV ad buy rolled in shortly after Sanders offered his endorsement of Jackson, claiming that billionaires and corporate interest groups don't want him on Capitol Hill.

Candidate Jackson's response: His campaign "did not seek" and "cannot control" the "independent expenditure" made by the crypto-billionaire-funded Protect Our Future PAC, according to Crain's.

Jackson's campaign didn't respond to my interview request.

A spokeswoman also did not reply to written questions, including: "How can voters be assured they aren't being catfished by Mr. Jackson ...?"

State Sen. Jacqui Collins, who also is seeking the Democratic nomination to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, says Jackson shouldn't leave voters hanging before election day. Is he a friend of billionaires or Bernie?

"He can't have it both ways. It really brings up the question, 'What is a progressive?' How can you be a progressive and take [half-a-billion in TV ads] from a billionaire? To me, that nullifies what I would consider being progressive, where you fight for those vulnerable and for the good of society as a whole," said Collins, who got her political start under the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.

"If we don't know where [Jackson] stands now, how will we know who he stands for in Congress?"

If history tells us anything about Jonathan Jackson, it's that he has had an affinity for billionaires when it benefits him.

Take California billionaire Ron Burkle, for instance.

You might remember the grocery chain scion, investor and friend of the Rev. Jesse Jackson whom Vanity Fair called the "bachelor buddy, fund-raiser, and business partner" of former President Bill Clinton and owner of a Boeing 757 his "circle of young aides privately refer to as “Air F--- One.”

Burkle was the guy in the late '90s who urged August Busch IV to sell a majority stake in a lucrative Chicago Budweiser distributorship to Jonathan Jackson and his brother, Yusef Jackson, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

And now that Jackson needs money for a final campaign push, he's being bankrolled by the disheveled millennium billionaire pushing a crypto agenda on Capitol Hill while touting the endorsements of socialists and claiming to be running on a message that centers on "gas, guns and groceries."

This late in the campaign, I don't think 1st District voters shouldn't expect much more of a clarification from Jackson, or a peek at his finances, before they go to the polls June 28.

That's not how catfishing works.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.

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