Mayoral Candidate Willie Wilson Responds to Mayoral Emanuel’s Petition Challenge

Deborah Bayliss | As of Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Chicago Mayoral candidate, millionaire businessman, Dr. Willie Wilson and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are creating quite an election campaign ruckus, over the validity of nominating petitions Wilson submitted to the Chicago Board of Election.

Chicago Mayoral candidates need 12,500 valid signatures to qualify for a spot on the election ballot. Mayor Emanuel is challenging 38,000 of the 47,000 collected signatures on Wilson's nominating petitions according to Wilson’s press secretary, Denise Spencer.

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"I'm looking forward to being mayor, now let's get started." - Chicago Mayoral candidate, Dr. Willie Wilson.

Wilson held a press conference Tuesday morning on the second floor of City Hall to reveal that as of Tuesday morning, more than 13,000 of the contested signatures have now been cleared.

Calling the mayor's challenges trivial, a waste of tax payers' money, and a "fishing expedition" with racial overtones, Wilson said on Tuesday, “(My) valid signatures now total more than 13,000, which meets the required 12,500 signatures for inclusion in the mayor's race.”

Wilson added that he is now looking to the city's election board to "do the right thing" and place him on the ballot for the February 2015 election.

Wilson, who challenged African American mayoral candidate, Amara Enyia’s petitions causing her to drop out of the race, is calling Emanuel’s challenge to his petitions, racist, saying in a Dec. 16 Chicago Sun-Times news report, “This is a racist and discriminatory campaign. It’s a racist and discriminatory objection. And the process… violates the Constitution.”

Mayor Emanuel in a Chicago Sun-Times article last Thursday denied that he’s trying to disenfranchise African-American voters by seeking to knock Wilson off the ballot.

“All of us… have to meet a threshold — not just for signatures. We also have to meet a threshold with ideas. We have to meet a threshold with the commitment to see those ideas through. We have to meet the threshold to also have the passion to see those ideas through and the fortitude to make the tough decisions necessary,” the Mayor said.

Wilson last week revealed copies of an examined petition showing that Mayor Emanuel's objectors challenged the validity of Wilson's own signature.

Wilson, accompanied by his attorneys Frank Avila and former Ill. State Sen. Rickey Hendon, held a press conference at the Chicago Board of Elections last week with copies of the petition in hand.

In a released statement, Wilson who grew up poor in the south only to become a self-made millionaire, television show producer and “generous” humanitarian, said “This is a sad day. I’m only two generations away from slavery, and I can remember when we couldn't vote. The mayor should be encouraging people to vote, rather than trying to take away their rights. He should also be busy trying to take care of crime and re-opening the 50 schools that he closed."

Avila said the next step is to take their findings to the state's attorney's office.

Wilson is being touted as the only candidate in the race who, “dollar-for-dollar, can match Emanuel on campaign spending.

A product of the Louisiana, cotton and sugar cane fields, Wilson’s fortunes have turned a full 360 degrees and he now personally donates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to small churches and community programs across the United States.

He went on to become owner of five McDonald’s restaurants and is founder of Willie Wilson Productions, producer of the first nationally syndicated African American gospel entertainment program, SINGSATION, airing on commercial television, now in its 20th year. He is also founder and CEO of Omar Medical Supplies Inc., one of America’s fastest growing international medical supply companies.

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