South and southwest suburbs choose mayors/village presidents
There were more than two dozen mayor and village president races to be decided Tuesday night in the south and southwest suburbs. Unofficial results from Cook and Will counties show some incumbents heading toward defeat.
In Burnham, Mayor Robert Polk had 52.5% of the vote over challenger Antwon Russell.
Dixmoor Mayor Fitzgerald Roberts led with 73% of the vote over Cynthia Mossuto with two of three precincts in.
In Dolton, Democratic nominee Jason House had more than 95% of the vote over Independent candidate Casundra Hopson-Jordan with 14 of 17 precincts counted, with his Clean House slate for trustee easily outpacing the sole Rebuliding Dolton candidate. House will replace incumbent Mayor Tiffany Henyard.
In Evergreen Park, Village President President Kelly Burke had nearly 85% of the vote over challenger William Lorenz with 11 of the 12 precincts counted.
Flossmoor Mayor Michelle Nelson faced a challenge from Joni Bradley-Scott. With six of seven precincts counted, Nelson had 54% of the vote and Bradley-Scott 46%.
In Ford Heights with all precincts in, official results had interim Mayor Freddie Wilson leading with 29% of the vote. He was appointed after Charles Griffin was forced to step down from his post in September after a conviction for fraud.
Former Trustee Scottie Hatten followed with 22.7% of the vote, followed by former Trustee LaDell Jones with 18%, former Mayor Annie Coulter with 15.4% and Trustee Antonia McMichaels with 14.9%.
Frankfort Mayor Keith Olge led with 57.8% of the vote over businessman Justin Ozinga with two-third of the precincts counted.
In the Glenwood Toleda Hart of the Glenwood Strong Party was leading incumbent Village President Ronald Gardiner of the Glenwood Progress Party with 53% of the vote and all precincts reporting.
In Hazel Crest four candidates faced off for village president. With 9 fo 11 precincts counted, Sandra Alexander of the Rebuild Renew Revive slate led with 31.9% of the vote, followed by Marlon Rias from the Hazel Crest Progressive ticket with 28.5%, Democrat Isaac Wiseman with 27.3% and and Independent Java M. Rogers with 12.5%.
In Hometown, with both precincts counted, Mayor Frank Finnegan had 68.6% of the vote over challenger John Forney with 31.4%.
In Homewood, incumbent Mayor Richard Hofeld led the Greater Homewood Party slate and had 74.9% of the vote with all but one precinct counted over Independent Bradley Chalmers.
In Lockport, Mayor Steven Streit had 79.4% of the vote over challenger Darren Deskin, but only a bit more than a quarter of the precincts had reported.
Manhattan Village President Mike Adrieansen had 81% of the vote over David Beemsterboer with just a fifth of the precincts reporting.
Matteson Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Curris with the Matteson Moving Forward ticket had 84% of the vote with all precincts in, over Independent Muhaymin Muhammad.
With fewer than half the precincts in, George Metanias on the Friends of Mokena ticket had 55% of the vote over Mayor Frank Fleischer who led the Mokena's Future slate.
In Monee, Mayor Theresa Bogs had 91% of the vote over challenger Doneshia Codjoe, who was charged with wire fraud during the campaign.
Three candidates sought the mayor's office in Oak Forest, with James Hortsman with 45.25% of the vote in the three-way race against Kenneth Wallace Keller with 35.1% and Donald Guisinger at 19.6%. Only one precinct remained out.
In Olympia Fields, Mayor Sterling Burke had 56.5% of the vote over Cassandra Matz with all precincts in.
In Palos Heights, Mayor Robert Straz led with 72% of the vote over Jeffrey Key with all but two precincts reporting.
Palos Hills Mayor Gerald Bennett led with 66.4% of the vote over challenger A.J. Pasek with all precincts in.
Phoenix President Terry Wells had more than 90% of the vote over challenger Trustee Benny Williams.
In Sauk Village, Marva Campbell-Pruitt led with 46.7% of the vote in her challenge to Mayor Derrick Burgess, who had 38.6% and Arnold Coleman with 14.7%.
Steger had three candidates lead slates. William Joyce with ACTIVE led with 80% of the vote with all Cook County precincts in and half the precints in Will County. He was followed by Ernesto Lopez with Better Together for Steger with 36% and Alliance led by Gerald Stewart with just 11%.
In Thornton, Trustee Maxine Reynolds had 60% of the vote over incumbent Robert Enright for village president.
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Axios
35 minutes ago
- Axios
Trump has not called Walz following shooting of Minnesota lawmakers
President Trump has not called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz more than 24 hours after a prominent Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were killed in what officials have described as a "politically motivated assassination." The big picture: Saturday's fatal shooting of Minnesota House Democratic Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman has exacerbated bipartisan security concerns among elected officials amid a volatile political landscape. Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman were injured in a separate shooting at their home on Saturday. What we're hearing: Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann confirmed to Axios that the governor had not heard from the president directly as of early Sunday afternoon. Walz spoke to both Vice President Vance and former President Biden on Saturday, Tschann said. The White House did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment. What he's saying: When asked by ABC News Sunday morning whether he planned to reach out to the Democratic governor, the president criticized Walz but left the door open to a conversation. "Well, it's a terrible thing. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too," he told ABC's Rachel Scott. On Saturday, Trump condemned the shooting as "horrific," saying such violence "will not be tolerated in the United States of America." Context: Law enforcement say 57-year-old Vance Boelter posed as a police officer when he killed Hortman and her husband in their suburban Twin Cities home early Saturday. Boelter is also wanted in connection with a separate shooting that wounded Hoffman and his wife. He remained on the run as of midday Sunday. Investigators recovered a manifesto featuring a target list that included the names of Democratic lawmakers and prominent individuals who support abortion rights in Minnesota. Zoom out: While Trump has not reached out personally, the state is receiving assistance and support from the administration. The FBI, which is on the ground in Minnesota, has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Boelter's capture and conviction. Attorney General Pam Bondi condemned the "horrific violence" in a post on X Saturday, pledging to prosecute "to the fullest extent of the law."
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Political violence is threaded through recent U.S. history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the last two months alone: the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.; the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages; and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. Here is a sampling of other attacks before that — the assassination of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City late last year; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign last year; the 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories; and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) by a gunman at a congressional softball game practice. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews was trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, including presidential assassinations dating to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynchings and other violence aimed at Black people in the South, and the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the last few years, however, have reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when political leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has closed units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. One of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.' Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump 'No Kings' parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boelter had apparently once been reappointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures falsely theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' No prominent Republican ever denounced the Pelosi assault, and GOP leaders including Trump joked about the attack at public events in its aftermath. On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. After mocking the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, Trump on Saturday joined in the bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric toward his political opponents, whom he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the last week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,' he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.' Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.
an hour ago
Trump says he 'may' call Walz after Minnesota shootings, calls him 'grossly incompetent'
President Donald Trump told ABC News on Sunday that he "may" call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after a political assassination sent shockwaves through the state. The president, who condemned the violence, called the Democratic governor a "terrible governor" and "grossly incompetent" in an interview with ABC News' Rachel Scott. "Well, it's a terrible thing. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too," the president told Scott. Minnesota is reeling from two back-to-back shootings. Authorities say a masked gunman disguised as a police officer shot and killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the state House, and her husband Mark, and wounded a state senator and his wife early Saturday. The suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter, fled on foot and remains on the run. Walz called the shootings an "act of targeted political violence." The president condemned the violence shortly after the attack. "Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place," he said. A source close the Walz told ABC News that Walz and Vice President JD Vance spoke regarding the shootings. 'The Governor expressed appreciation for the ongoing coordination between federal law enforcement and Minnesota public safety officials," the person said. Another source familiar with the Minnesota governor told ABC News early Sunday afternoon that Trump has not called Walz. The source said that former President Joe Biden called Walz "right away." The White House said in a statement that the FBI and the attorney general's office will investigate the shootings and "will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law." Police say the suspected gunman allegedly had dozens of Minnesota Democrats on a target list, which was retrieved from the his vehicle. The assassination comes amid growing concerns about political violence in the U.S. following the recent killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, the arson attack at the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the attempted assassination of Trump last summer.
