Politics & Government

Stolen Signs, Homophobic Slurs Caught On Video In 6th Ward Race

"You a homosexual," 6th Ward Ald. Roderick Sawyer campaign worker says as video catches him stealing Deborah Foster Bonner campaign signs.

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CHICAGO, IL — Rubbing alcohol. That’s what you needed to keep from getting caught making stolen campaign signs disappear back in the day. Throw the signs in a barrel, douse ‘em with rubbing alcohol and toss in a couple matches. Poof. They gone.

Why rubbing alcohol? That’s so you don’t stink of gasoline. A Hegewisch precinct captain who did whatever he had to do to get John Pope elected 10th Ward alderman in 1999 told me that.

That tidbit on how to most effectively accomplish the lowest form of corruption on behalf of a political patron was the beginning of my education in the Chicago Way.

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[ COMMENTARY ]

Twenty years later, garbage barrels, the ones perfect for burning stolen campaign signs, have gone extinct. And street-level campaign guys don’t carry around rubbing alcohol anymore.

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But some things never change. Marlon Watson wanted to teach that to his nephew.

After overhearing aldermanic challenger Deborah Foster Bonner volunteers complaining that their campaign signs were vanishing hours after they went up on 79th Street, Watson volunteered to stake out 6th Ward sign thieves with his family.

He couldn’t have picked a better race. On Sunday, 12-year-old Jaiden Watson took a ride to the 6th Ward with his uncle and great aunt to witness ward politics practiced the Chicago Way, with an expected level of corruption, with his own eyes.

“I wanted to give Jaiden a lesson in Chicago politics,” Marlon Watson said.

The experience made quite an impression on the 7th grader.

“Man, people will do anything to win, including cheat, taking signs. They don’t care,”Jaiden said. “I don’t know a lot about what goes on in campaigns, but Chicago politics is crooked.”

Jaiden Watson, 12, is learning that politics is a dirty business in Chicago. He recorded a video of an alderman's lackey stealing Deborah Foster-Bonner's campaign signs.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer — the 6th Ward boss who voted in lockstep with Mayor Rahm Emanuel 100 percent of the time — got forced into a run-off election against Deborah Foster Bonner, an accountant and political activist drafted by neighbors who call her "The Fixer."

Sawyer — who publicly announced he would not accept a $20,000 campaign donation from Emanuel because people in his ward don’t like the mayor — told the Sun-Times he was so over-confident in a general election win that his campaign didn’t bother putting out campaign signs.

Sawyer also told a reporter that he’s philosophically opposed to putting up signs, which he said is technically illegal on public property.

Last week, Sawyer, fighting for his political life, must have started to freak out about the prospect of losing his job to a political newcomer. He accepted a maximum campaign donation from Emanuel’s chief backer Michael Sacks, broke out the campaign signs and apparently ordered up dirty tricks straight out of 1999.

“We’re walking seven days a week, phone banking, amping up election activities all the way around,” Sawyer told the Sun-Times.

On Sunday, the Watsons staked out Chatham to catch Sawyer’s campaign street team completing amped-up election activities ordered up by their boss.

Marlon Watson’s mother, Lenora Watson, took the wheel while her son and his nephew, cell phone cameras at the ready, kept a look out for campaign sign thieves in action.

They spotted a guy ripping up Foster Bonner signs at 79th and Michigan, followed him a block and caught on him in action on video.

“I think he spotted me recording and we lost him,” Marlon Watson said.

The Watson’s didn’t give up. They cruised the ward waiting for the sign thief to strike again. They spotted him at the Marathon gas station, but didn’t catch him on camera. When Jaiden noticed the man’s car parked on 79th Street, his uncle tried a different tactic.

Marlon Watson with his nephew Jaiden and mom Lenora.

“I got out of the car and hung around the area. I waited for an hour figuring he had to come back to his car,” Marlon Watson said.

When the sign thief returned, the Watsons trailed him. Jaiden narrated while catching the sign thief taking signs and getting in a dark mini-van.

“There he is. I got clear video of him taking a sign. And it’s in his hand. He’s looking around,” Jaiden said. “It’s clear evidence.”

Later, the Watsons spotted the sign thief exiting a van in a parking lot in the alley behind Ald. Sawyer’s campaign headquarters.

Marlon Watson heckled the sign thief.

“Oh, snap. I caught this dude parking in the back of Ald. Sawyer's office,” Marlon Watson said. “Caught you. You on camera, brother.”

The alleged sign thief scoffed. “That s--- don’t mean nothing,” he said. “This our ward homie. You can do what you want to do all that you want to do. You ain’t got a chance. … Make your commercial do all that.”

Marlon Watson laughed while capturing his argument with the sign thief, and another Sawyer political operative, on his cell phone.

The Sawyer operative defended the sign thief, asking Marlon Watson to show him the stolen signs, an argument from the rubbing-alcohol era that doesn’t fly anymore thanks to cell-phone cameras.

The sign thief eventually copped to stealing Foster Bonner signs, and quoted Sawyer’s philosophy on the legality putting up campaign signs on the public way before he wound up in a run-off.

“So what you got me on video. I’m not going to go to jail. It’s not illegal. It’s illegal to put signs down, so it’s not illegal to take ‘em up,” the sign thief said.

“I don’t think voters will like that,” Marlon Watson jabbed.

The sign thief walked away, promising that Sawyer would win the run-off even if the video-captured sign thievery got posted on social media. Before disappearing inside the 6th Ward committeeman’s office, he threw in an unrelated slur: “You a homosexual.”

On the video, you can hear Marlon Watson laughing.

But the confrontation wasn’t funny.

The brazen campaign sign thief was just more evidence that Sawyer — the son of ward boss and former mayor the late Eugene Sawyer — remains linked to Chicago’s corrupt political status quo on trial Election Day.

The recent trail of campaign cash confirms what everybody already knew about Sawyer: He’s Mayor Emanuel’s guy.

The two-term incumbent confessed to being a staunch supporter of a City Council no-snitch code of silence when he denounced FBI mole, Ald. Danny Solis, for wearing a wire in hopes of catching fellow alderman engaged in corruption.

Getting wired up to snare colleagues is "not the way I was brought up,” Sawyer said. "If I was caught doing something wrong, I'd just take my punishment, deal with the consequences . . . and keep my mouth shut.”

Jaiden said he wants 6th Ward voters to watch Sawyer’s sign thief in action before they go to the polls.

The videos “show you the alderman’s character. You shouldn’t want someone who hires people like that, and pays them to go out and do those kind of things, in office," Jaiden said.

"If they’ve got people doing shady things in the campaign, they probably have people with the guts to do shady things in office, too.”

More Mark Konkol Commentary:

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, and a consulting producer on the forthcoming Showtime documentary "Blue Wall" about the murder of Laquan McDonald, who Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 16 times until the black teenager was dead.

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