'Empire' Actor Doesn't Fib As Well As Chicago's Clout Candidates

The “Empire” star charged with faking his own hate crime and lying to cops doesn’t deserve any more of our attention — or even the mention of his name.

In Chicago, we’ve got a more important bunch of fibbers and secret keepers to think about as we inch closer to Election Day.

And, by all accounts, there’s a gaggle of mayoral candidates on Tuesday’s ballot who are much better at concealing the truth than the C-list actor who allegedly mailed himself a death threat.

Over the weekend, you’re going to be bombarded with texts, emails and advertisements on TV and radio from the most well-funded candidates — Bill Daley, Toni Preckwinkle, Gery Chico and Susana Mendoza, among them. Expect a wave of campaign propaganda, like texts from a manipulative ex-lover who wants to get you back in the sack. They’ll remind you of their good qualities, cool stuff you had in common, and promise that if you trust them they won’t let you down.

It’s times like these when you need a good buddy who will remind you that old-school clout candidates like them have made big promises before to get your precious vote — and once you give it up they always break your heart.

A true friend knows it’s risky to talk crap about somebody you might stay with, but they tell it to you straight anyway.

So here it goes, friend.

Preckwinkle isn’t who she claims to be.

She keeps telling you that she’s an independent woman who stands up to the “Good Ol’ Boys Club” even though there’s plenty of evidence the Cook County Democratic Party boss has been bought-and-paid for by powerful unions funding her campaign.

Over her political career, Preckwinkle took campaign contributions from plenty of the “Good Ol’ Boys” in Chicago politics — the Burkes, the Daleys, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, former Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, the king of patronage hiring, and Rahm Emanuel’s fundraiser-in-chief Michael Sacks, to name a few.

She lied about calling for the public release of police video showing the murder of Laquan McDonald.

Preckwinkle didn’t report using her county vehicle on the campaign trail. And the 70-something grandma known for her “Murphy Brown” shoulder-pad blazers even lied in a TV ad by claiming to be “very hip.”

After those truths were exposed Preckwinkle, who challenged the petitions of every minority woman on the ballot, threw herself a pity party to try to win you back. A bunch of union workers who funded her campaign waived “Be Fair To Toni” signs at an event billed as a “women’s rally.”

It was such a stunt that two ballot foes — Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza — joined forces to remind you about a pretty shady part of Preckwinkle’s past. They cited a Tribune report when calling out Preckwinkle for delaying taking action on sexual harassment allegations made against her chief of staff for six months. Preckwinkle didn’t fire him until she decided to run for mayor.

Preckwinkle’s greatest success during this campaign has been convincing people with brains that everything she says needs to be fact checked.

She’s not the only one.

Mendoza continues to promise voters she’s a reformer when it’s obvious that she’s the political product of clout-heavy powerbrokers.

She hates it when people bring up that she got elected state representative with the help of the Hispanic Democratic Organization — a notoriously corrupt patronage machine founded with the help of ballot rival Bill Daley and Ald. Danny Solis, a federal mole who wore a wire to record Burke, who Mendoza calls her “true champion.”

Mendoza got married at Burke’s house, and even said the powerful ward boss is the "primary reason" she ran for City Clerk.

She also calls Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the state’s most powerful politician, her mentor.

Mendoza took more than $141,000 in campaign cash from Solis, the FBI mole, and a company owned by his sister that made millions loaning money to state contractors left unpaid due to the state's budget stalemate and gave $67,000 to Mendoza's campaign fund.

In the campaign’s waning days, Mendoza’s campaign has resorted to dishing dirt about her rivals in social media attacks that unwittingly soil herself, too.

She claims that she’s not one of them anymore. But you know better.

Daley and Chico sure talk pretty. They just don't say a lot.

They don’t dispute the obvious connections to power that helped make them rich. They just try to avoid that topic as much as possible, hoping that you’ll succumb to their charm.

But don’t forget that Chico got an early education in Machine politics working for Burke. He earned a reputation for being a legal rainmaker for his former firm, Altheimer & Gray, after serving as former mayor Richard M. Daley’s chief of staff and later president of the Chicago Public Schools board.

Chico’s got ads running that tout his success balancing the CPS budget and repairing and building new schools in the '90s. But what he doesn’t say is that his former law firm made about $600 million from CPS contracts and he recused himself from voting on measures that involved clients about 400 times.

The Sun-Times reported that Chico got hired by the law firm on the recommendation of a Daley pal, the late Oscar D’Angelo — a former partner in the firm who was “disbarred for giving judges free rental cars from a client, Avis.”

When Chico ran for U.S. Senate in 2002, he bragged about his former law firm’s success.

Now, not so much.

In 2003, Altheimer & Gray abruptly closed its doors under Chico’s management. He was the firm’s chairman. And many of his partners blamed Chico for the 88-year-old firm's demise. A Sun-Times story written by Abdon Pallasch includes fascinating details from firm insiders.

One former partner said Chico was part of a “self-serving club of leadership at the top” that brought down the firm due to “a combination of mismanagement, malfeasance, a lack of leadership and team effort,” according to the Sun-Times report.

Another former “high-ranking” Altheimer & Gray partner told Pallasch Chico didn’t deserve all the blame for the firm’s collapse saying: “Was [Chico] greedy? Yes. Was he a bad leader? Yes. But he had so much help from these other guys.”

Obviously, that’s not the kind of news clip you’ll find Chico using to woo you on his campaign website. But it’s part of his history, too.

As your pal, I’ve gotta ask: Is that a risk you’re willing to take?

As for Bill Daley, he has skillfully dodged confrontational scenarios — including the Fox 32 prime-time debate – where he could be publicly embarrassed with questions about his connection to City Hall scandals, the decades old controversy over how he got his insurance license dug up by the Tribune, or the reason he suddenly stopped talking trash about Mayor Rahm Emanuel and eventually got $2 million from Rahm’s biggest benefactor, billionaire Ken Griffin, to name a few.

Bill Daley started his campaign with a whisper tour of the neighborhoods and he’s kept part of his tax returns secret. Why? Who knows. He hasn’t lied about his finances — but he isn’t talking about them either.

What we do know is that Daley’s clout helped increase his net worth and influence.

In Chicago, one of the guys Bill Daley helped elevate is federal mole Ald. Solis. In the '90s, he “urged the Fannie Mae foundation to provide grants … to United Neighborhood Organization,” which was lead by Solis.

Bill Daley also recommended Solis for a seat on Fannie Mae’s national advisory board, the Tribune reported a few months after Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Solis to replace indicted Ald. Ambrosio Medrano.

In 2005, Solis told me that Bill Daley helped create HDO, the shadowy organization caught up in City Hall hiring scandals that also helped launch Mendoza’s political career.

I know that his rich friends at the Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business vouch for him.

But they’ve got their own priorities for the future that have nothing to do with what’s best for you.

Remember, Daley’s family ran Chicago like an Empire.

See Also:

• Is Chicago Crazy Enough To Elect Bill Daley, The Rahm Candidate?
• Don't Believe CTU Hype: Undecideds Could Shock Mayoral Status Quo
• Mendoza Rapid-Fire Tweets Sling Mud On Clout Candidates, Herself
• Chicago Mayoral Race Is Absurd And Nightmare If You Don't Wake Up
• Did Rahm's Failure, Solis' FBI Wire Make Chicago GOP Relevant?
• Mayoral Candidate Susana Mendoza Can't Be Taken Seriously Anymore
• Facts About Pay-To-Play Preckwinkle Help To Voters To Form Opinion
• Chicago Needs To Elect Bunch Of Snitches To Kill Code Of Silence
• Rahm's Podcast Isn't Practice For TV Gig; He Stinks On TV (VIDEO)
• Are You For 'Cockroaches' Or Reformers In Chicago Mayoral Race?
• Cash Connects 'Independent' Preckwinkle To 'Good Ol' Boys Club'
• Hmm, Mayor Candidate Bill Daley Doesn't Want To Dis Rahm Anymore

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the Chicagoland series on CNN.