Former Drew Peterson Lawyer Brodsky Takes Aim At Alderman's Seat, Lightfoot

CHICAGO — Joel Brodsky likes to joke that he’s running for alderman for the bribes, but he said if elected, he plans to make Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s life political life as miserable as humanly possible.

Brodsky, the former attorney who once famously defended convicted killer and former Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson, doesn’t know what his chances are of being elected in the 44th Ward, where Tom Tunney announced he will not seek re-election. If Brodsky can get the signatures he needs to be placed on the ballot, he hopes people will recognize his name — which, in turn, could lead to him finding his way back onto a political landscape he hasn’t been part of for decades.

But in the meantime, Brodsky has plenty of ideas and isn't afraid to make them public.

Brodsky said in an interview with Patch that Chicago’s gang and gun violence problems have taken their toll on a once-great city. But while the city's issues are no secret, Brodsky blames Lightfoot and others for driving the city into the gutter and said that if Chicago isn’t careful, it could disintegrate into becoming Detroit of the 1990s.

“Something’s got to be done,” Brodsky told Patch on Thursday. “You’ve got to try to save (Chicago). It’s a beautiful city …it was a really great city, but it’s getting run into the ground, so you have to at least try to save it. You have to try – you don’t succeed at everything you try, but you at least have to try.”

“It’s worth fighting for. It doesn’t mean you’re going to win the fight, but it’s worth fighting for.”

Brodsky said his experience of defending both cops and criminals during his decades-long legal career gives him a unique perspective as a prospective alderman. He says that gangs and gun violence are the biggest issues facing Chicago and blames Lightfoot and other city leaders for not getting a handle on violent crimes, which includes a rash of carjackings around the city and other serious issues, including, most recently, on Chicago’s North Side.

Brodsky holds to a theory of government that elected officials should help to protect their constituents, but should not overstep their bounds. He said elected officials should help those who can’t help themselves and should carry out other needed duties to make communities and neighborhoods safe and a better place to live.

He said the government should stay out of people’s lives and has “no business regulating anything and everything.”

Under Lightfoot’s “disgraceful” leadership, said Brodsky, whose law license is currently suspended, the city has fallen on hard times and needs a new approach to leadership. He said that enough aldermen have not stood up to the mayor and said that as a proclaimed “loudmouth”, he may be the right person to do that.

Brodsky said that city leaders need to take “an intelligent approach” to tackling issues like violence and have to better understand how criminal organizations and gangs work as well as what motivates criminals in the first place. He said drug abuse is also an issue in Chicago, and said that his work in the legal profession can again make him a strong contributor to helping solve the city’s problems if he is elected.

He said that legalizing harder drugs isn’t going to solve any problems, but instead, will compound issues facing the city’s law enforcement community. But if elected, Brodsky said he would only be one of 50 aldermen who he said must work to stand up to Lightfoot should she be re-elected to a second term in 2023.

“I have a lot of things I can bring to the table that others don’t,” Brodsky told Patch.

Brodsky holds to the idea that city government has to be reformed and says there has to be a shift where “corruption is just not tolerated, but actively prosecuted by the state.” While Brodsky didn’t go as far as to call Chicago’s Mayor corrupt, he points to what he says is a 90-person security detail and said that valuable city resources are being wasted by a mayor who Brodsky says has failed miserably at her job.

“She’s a total, incompetent failure,” he said Thursday.

He said that Chicago has a “strong council, weak mayor” system of government and yet, he says Lightfoot is running the city like a “little dictator” and says that all it takes is 26 aldermen to make Lightfoot powerless. It is Brodsky’s hope that Lightfoot isn’t re-elected next year and hopes to be part of a City Council that could work together with a good mayor to improve life in Chicago for its residents.

But whether he will get that chance remains unknown. Brodsky faces an upcoming deadline to submit signatures that must then be verified before he will be put on the ballot as a candidate for Alderman. If that happens, he said he doesn’t know what his chances of being elected are and hope that people recognize his name on the ballot should it appear there.

He figures most people will connect him with Peterson or with former Chicago cop Robert Rialmo, who was involved in a high-profile police shooting. But he also thinks some voters may consider him to be a “trouble-making, outspoken, loudmouth” — a characterization with which Brodsky doesn’t necessarily consider a bad thing.

“Maybe that’s the best thing to put in the city council,” Brodsky told Patch. “If, God forbid, Lightfoot gets re-elected, I’ll make her political life as miserable as possible because she is a disaster — an absolute disaster and if she can’t see that, it’s like wanting to be an artist, and you’re painting pictures like a 6-year-old, and you’re wondering why the paintings aren’t selling.”

He added: “The city is running into the sewer, and maybe she’s wondering whose fault that is. She’s the freaking mayor. It’s her fault. If she can’t figure that out, she has a problem.”