The contentious Democratic primary election campaign between Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley and his challenger, Ald. Sam Cunningham, 1st, produced more drama Monday, just a day before the final ballots will be cast.
Motley, who is running for a second term, said three men were cited by police Monday for distributing the same fliers over which the mayor initiated a defamation lawsuit last week. The flier, which reads “WANTED” and includes photos of Motley and a city employee manipulated to look like mug shots, circulated over the weekend of Feb. 18 and 19 and accuses the two officials of possible corruption, including bribery, prostitution, payoff activities for liquor licenses or building permits, protection of drug cartels and sexual harassments, among other offenses.
The other city employee is Jorge Torres, a Waukegan city collector, special projects manager and friend of Motley’s who also works as an independent contractor for the City of Park City. Torres works for Motley’s re-election campaign, as well.
Motley and Torres sued Waukegan activist Margaret Carrasco, a frequent critic of the mayor and a candidate for school board in Waukegan School District 60, for defamation, accusing her of preparing and distributing the flier and publishing defamatory posts on Facebook. Motley and Torres denied all the allegations on the flier.
Robert O’Donnell, the attorney representing Motley and Torres, said last week that the court entered an order preventing Carrasco from “any further distribution of her flier.”
But Carrasco denied any connection to the flier in court and again in phone interviews on Friday and Monday. She said Monday she has “absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“The only thing I’m doing is taking people to the polls,” Carrasco said.
Motley said he received “numerous complaints” Monday morning about the fliers being posted throughout the city. Motley said he observed that the fliers had been placed on cars in the Jewel-Osco and Target parking lots on North Lewis Avenue and at other businesses in the area. He continued driving to the business district near another Jewel-Osco at North Green Bay Road and Grand Avenue, where he saw three men posting the fliers, he said.
Motley said he “confronted” the three individuals, and they told him they were being paid to post the fliers. They told him they were directed by somebody else to do so, Motley said, but Motley wouldn’t say in an interview whose name they gave.
“So we…charged them accordingly,” Motley said.
Waukegan police Cmdr. Joe Florip confirmed that the police patrol division issued notices to appear to three men in the 700 block of North Green Bay Road for “placing handbills on vehicles.” They were in violation of a city ordinance stating that no person “shall deposit or throw any commercial or noncommercial handbill in or upon any vehicle,” Florip said.
The three men were Charles Smith, 50, of the 1800 block of Grand Avenue in Waukegan; Craig Price, 51, whose last known address was the 1000 block of Cummings Avenue in Waukegan; and Anthony Brown, 52, of the 1700 block of Seymour Avenue in North Chicago, according to Florip. They are scheduled to appear in court on April 24, Florip said.
“I understand free speech, I understand all these things,” Motley said. “I don’t disagree with that, and that’s why they weren’t charged with anything but littering.”
Cunningham said he has told his campaign team, “Don’t even bring it (the flier) into our office.”
“My team is staying as far away from that as humanly possible. I don’t operate like that, never have,” Cunningham said. “Don’t believe in it. And to me, this has been pretty much a campaign on the issues, whether people like what we’re doing or don’t like what we’re doing, and then we go from there. But we’re certainly not going to stoop down to that level, having people put that together and things like that.”
Motley wasn’t convinced.
More Top Picks Inboard M1
“Cunningham is behind the whole thing,” Motley said. “Period.”
Twitter @lucashammill