Mayor Brandon Johnson reiterated his support Wednesday for a candidate for Chicago Board of Education president accused of sexually harassing a minor in 2017, saying Hilario Dominguez’s progressive values are “separate” from a reopened misconduct investigation into the allegations.
Speaking at a City Hall news conference, Johnson made clear he still backs the former deputy political director for the Chicago Teachers Union. Dominguez has denied any misconduct.
“Look, I do support Hilario Dominguez,” the mayor said. “The stakes are incredibly high. I think it’s important that we have people in office who understand that our values have to be front and center, particularly our values as it relates to how we invest in our public education.”
Asked multiple times whether he knew about these allegations before news broke of the Chicago Public Schools Office of the Inspector General reopening the investigation into the case, Johnson said “the information that’s available has always been available.”
More Top Picks Best 36 Inch Gas Ranges
And pressed on whether the red line he and Dominguez share against school closures is more important than the story of the woman who said Dominguez sexually harassed her when she was 17, Johnson responded, “First of all, let’s just separate the two.”
“Those are two separate matters, and I want to be emphatically clear that the OIG’s responsibility in this moment, to answer questions with expediency, is an imperative.” Johnson said. “And on a separate note, having a school district that invests in working people, it’s important to me, and that’s important to Chicagoans across this city.”
His remarks came the morning after Dominguez’s first public appearance since the Tribune reported last week on the watchdog reopening the probe. Dominguez held a news conference Tuesday during which he sought to discredit his accuser and blame a former political foe for his predicament less than a month out from Chicago’s first-ever school board president election.
The woman, whom the Tribune is not naming because she was a minor at the time of her interactions with Dominguez, said he asked what men she was into and picked her up to twirl her around when they were alone during a summer program at Pilsen non-profit The Resurrection Project.
Asked Wednesday to respond to Johnson’s and Dominguez’s remarks, the woman declined to address them directly, but said she hopes young people following her story continue to “trust that your body is telling you the truth and that something is wrong” during uncomfortable interactions.
“To the educators, to organizers, to social justice practitioners, we have to remind ourselves why we are in this work,” she said over the phone. “We are dedicating and committing our time and purpose into protecting Black and brown youth and vulnerable communities. When we have any victim speaking up on that and you are deliberately silencing them, that is promoting the misogyny and rape culture plaguing our movements right now.”
Meanwhile, Dominguez on Tuesday told reporters outside a City Club of Chicago candidates forum that he was “ready to be accountable.” Then he brought up a text exchange with the woman years after that summer in an attempt to push back on her testimony. And he pointed the finger at a past political opponent who’s a relative of the accuser, arguing the allegations were politically motivated.
Dominguez said the woman had sought to meet with him one-on-one years after that summer, to which he had responded “I do not feel safe meeting with you alone.”
But that woman has told the Tribune she remembers it was Dominguez who requested the in-person conversation, which never happened, via an intermediary whose name is referenced twice in text message screenshots Dominguez shared with WGN-Channel 9.
In the November 2022 exchange, Dominguez said he wanted to bring his significant other, to which the woman responded that she wanted to bring her mom and had only sought a meeting alone because the intermediary, a local political strategist, “informed me that you felt this (was) very personal.”
Dominguez has not responded to questions from the Tribune about the interaction.
Dominguez’s wife, an assistant principal at Whitney Young High School, was present during his Tuesday appearance and was the significant other he sought to bring to the proposed meeting with the woman. She is also the daughter of a past director at The Resurrection Project who Dominguez claimed had told the Tribune “that I was never reprimanded, disciplined, or talked to about my behavior while I was working” there.
Dominguez’s father-in-law, Salvador Cerna had written in an email statement last month: “Hilario was a terrific organizer for The Resurrection Project and we were sad to see him leave. Any statement that I had to discipline Hilario or had to discuss as a result of his interactions with youth is false.” But the statement did not address if others had spoken with Dominguez about his behavior.
Cerna, who did not respond to follow-up inquiries Tuesday, was named in the 2018 internal statement from Paloma Rodriguez, a housing counselor with the nonprofit. She wrote in her report that Cerna said he had spoken with Dominguez about his conduct.
“He wanted me to know that he ‘took care of it,’” Rodriguez wrote. “He even stated this wasn’t the first time he had to have a talk with Hilario about his behavior around young women.”
In addition to Rodriguez, the Tribune spoke to two other former staffers who recalled discussing the allegations in 2017. None of those staffers or Dominguez’s accuser said they were interviewed or approached about an investigation by The Resurrection Project.