Mendoza Rapid-Fire Tweets Sling Mud On Clout Candidates, Herself

God bless, Susana Mendoza. She’s campaigning for reformers. Not herself, of course, because she isn’t one. But Illinois Comptroller who wants to be Chicago mayor has launched a rapid-fire social media campaign splash mud on ballot rivals connected to Democratic Machine corruption – just like she is. It's a public service to send voters so many reminders why not to elect any of them.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe Mendoza’s campaign geniuses noticed Chicagoans stopped buying her cult-of-personality TV ads. Or they realized regular folks couldn’t find much substance in her “Future Now” campaign platform. Maybe her poll numbers started fall.

Whatever the reason, Mendoza is in attack mode. She's emailing and tweeting jabs at Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Democratic Party boss who the crowd literally laughed at when she calls herself “progressive.”

“Toni Preckwinkle can’t keep her lies straight about the $116,000 raised for her by Ed Burke that is now subject of an FBI criminal complaint,” Mendoza wrote in a Tweet about cash rounded up by the same ward boss she called her “true champion." The powerbroker who hosted her wedding reception.

Mendoza also tweets about Gery Chico, the former Chicago Public School board president who got his political start under Burke, went on to become a trusted City Hall insider and made a fortune as a lawyer and lobbyist.

“REMINDER: There’s only one candidate who is Ald. Ed Burke’s endorsed candidate and lobbied him in city hall and that’s @GeryChico.” Mendoza posted on Twitter.

Mendoza also took aim at Bill Daley, the son Chicago’s most famous Boss, the "phantom brain" of his older brother, former Mayor Richard M. Daley and President Obama’s former chief of staff. You know, Daley, the millionaire banker.

“’FACT: @DaleyForMayor helped create the Hispanic Democratic Organization and Danny Solis,” Mendoza wrote in a tweet that stoped short of mentioning that HDO, the corrupt political organization that helped launch her political career and get elected state representative.

She even quoted a 2005 story in the Sun-Times that includes my byline: “Ald. Danny Solis (25th), the City Council's president pro tem and Daley's closest Hispanic supporter, said the group was born during strategy sessions in 1991 that included Degnan and the mayor's brother Bill Daley.’”

Here’s line from that story from Frank Avila, a lawyer and one of HDO’s harshest critics: "I view HDO as a criminal organization. The organization is set up as a wholesale violation of [patronage hiring bans].”

Preckwinkle, Daley and Chico, at one time or another, have fired back at Mendoza, continuing a bizarre debate over which one of them — the “Burke Four” — has the dirtiest political past.

There’s only one winner in that argument — voters. They're heading to the polls after being repeatedly reminded that Mendoza, Preckwinkle, Daley and Chico have all soiled themselves playing politics the Chicago way. You won't get change voting for any of them.

Thanks for the Tweets, Susana.

See Also:

• 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.