Latest news with #LamontRobinson
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Editorial: A timely courtroom rebuke for dirty campaigning
Unflattering attacks are common in politics — but a court just ruled that one campaign went too far. Cook County Commissioner Toni Preckwinkle's 4th Ward Democratic Organization and Lamont Robinson's aldermanic campaign have been ordered to pay $1.475 million in punitive damages over a series of attack ads sent during Robinson's 2023 race against Ebony Lucas for the City Council. (In a statement, the 4th Ward Democratic Organization and the Lamont Robinson for Alderman Corp called the verdict an 'unprecedented misapplication of the law' and said they are confident it will be reversed on appeal.) Among other smears, the mailers labeled Lucas a 'bad landlord' who 'can't manage her own business' — a collection of accusations a jury deemed defamatory. The mailers also claimed Lucas 'doesn't care about doing the right thing,' a particularly broad and insulting claim. Preckwinkle previously defended the mailers, saying, 'They were carefully footnoted, so lots of luck to her.' In campaign mailers, the bold print does the damage — not the fine print. Any political operative knows that. Voters see the headlines, not the citations. We empathize with Lucas and all candidates who face baseless, harmful personal attacks as a consequence of running for office. As Lucas told the Tribune, she is a wife and mom of three. Her kids saw these mailers. Their friends and neighbors and teachers saw these mailers. Perhaps this can be a turning point, because our political culture certainly needs one. Political ads that spread hateful, demeaning rhetoric attack people's humanity and do nothing but fuel people's worst impulses when it comes to how they view anyone with whom they disagree. You can have a different point of view from someone on public policy and still treat them with respect. It's unfortunate we even need to point that out. Partisanship has become so toxic that people are cutting off family members, shunning neighbors, and labeling political opponents as either stupid or evil. We've seen that ugliness on the national level — and it's infecting local elections, too. We all felt it leading up to November 2024's presidential election. During that cycle, mailers for the Chicago school board races went negative, with candidates not backed by the Chicago Teachers Union hit with ads calling them 'right wing' and 'MAGA,' inaccurately tying many candidates to political beliefs and causes they in no way espouse. Board member Ellen Rosenfeld was one of the candidates who dealt with those ads. She's a Democrat and her husband is the 47th Ward Democratic committeeman. But this animosity and culture of distrust and disrespect lingered into 2025. We wrote about this phenomenon during endorsement season for local elections, as exemplified in a bitter mayoral race in Orland Park between two former neighbors. Because of the personal nature of local politics, it usually breeds a healthy dose of decorum and respect. Not so in this race, during which former Mayor Keith Pekau was attacked with ads calling him and his wife racist. 'Dirty politics makes bad policy,' Lucas wrote in a Facebook post after the ruling. 'When voters are inundated with false information about candidates, we lose out on electing the best and most qualified.' We agree. In addition to spreading falsehoods and increasing vitriol, hateful campaigning is one of the reasons people check out of politics altogether, a problem that weakens our political system. We hope the Lucas decision has a chilling effect on the kind of nasty, ad hominem attack ads that all too often end up in our mailboxes and on our TVs, finding their way into our kids' hands and ruining our enthusiasm for our representative democracy. Voters deserve campaigns that respect truth and dignity, not ones that poison the well of public trust. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
Chicago Tribune
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: A timely courtroom rebuke for dirty campaigning
Unflattering attacks are common in politics — but a court just ruled that one campaign went too far. Cook County Commissioner Toni Preckwinkle's 4th Ward Democratic Organization and Lamont Robinson's aldermanic campaign have been ordered to pay $1.475 million in punitive damages over a series of attack ads sent during Robinson's 2023 race against Ebony Lucas for the City Council. (In a statement, the 4th Ward Democratic Organization and the Lamont Robinson for Alderman Corp called the verdict an 'unprecedented misapplication of the law' and said they are confident it will be reversed on appeal.) Among other smears, the mailers labeled Lucas a 'bad landlord' who 'can't manage her own business' — a collection of accusations a jury deemed defamatory. The mailers also claimed Lucas 'doesn't care about doing the right thing,' a particularly broad and insulting claim. Preckwinkle previously defended the mailers, saying, 'They were carefully footnoted, so lots of luck to her.' In campaign mailers, the bold print does the damage — not the fine print. Any political operative knows that. Voters see the headlines, not the citations. We empathize with Lucas and all candidates who face baseless, harmful personal attacks as a consequence of running for office. As Lucas told the Tribune, she is a wife and mom of three. Her kids saw these mailers. Their friends and neighbors and teachers saw these mailers. Perhaps this can be a turning point, because our political culture certainly needs one. Political ads that spread hateful, demeaning rhetoric attack people's humanity and do nothing but fuel people's worst impulses when it comes to how they view anyone with whom they disagree. You can have a different point of view from someone on public policy and still treat them with respect. It's unfortunate we even need to point that out. Partisanship has become so toxic that people are cutting off family members, shunning neighbors, and labeling political opponents as either stupid or evil. We've seen that ugliness on the national level — and it's infecting local elections, too. We all felt it leading up to November 2024's presidential election. During that cycle, mailers for the Chicago school board races went negative, with candidates not backed by the Chicago Teachers Union hit with ads calling them 'right wing' and 'MAGA,' inaccurately tying many candidates to political beliefs and causes they in no way espouse. Board member Ellen Rosenfeld was one of the candidates who dealt with those ads. She's a Democrat and her husband is the 47th Ward Democratic committeeman. But this animosity and culture of distrust and disrespect lingered into 2025. We wrote about this phenomenon during endorsement season for local elections, as exemplified in a bitter mayoral race in Orland Park between two former neighbors. Because of the personal nature of local politics, it usually breeds a healthy dose of decorum and respect. Not so in this race, during which former Mayor Keith Pekau was attacked with ads calling him and his wife racist. 'Dirty politics makes bad policy,' Lucas wrote in a Facebook post after the ruling. 'When voters are inundated with false information about candidates, we lose out on electing the best and most qualified.' We agree. In addition to spreading falsehoods and increasing vitriol, hateful campaigning is one of the reasons people check out of politics altogether, a problem that weakens our political system. We hope the Lucas decision has a chilling effect on the kind of nasty, ad hominem attack ads that all too often end up in our mailboxes and on our TVs, finding their way into our kids' hands and ruining our enthusiasm for our representative democracy. Voters deserve campaigns that respect truth and dignity, not ones that poison the well of public trust.
CBS News
4 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Former opponent wins defamation suit against Chicago Ald. Lamont Robinson over attack ads
It's no secret that political campaigns can get nasty — but how far is too far? Chicago Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th) and his team are under fire for mailers and texts during the campaign for the 2023 election. A jury just awarded his opponent more than $1 million in damages in the trial for her defamation lawsuit. Ebony Lucas said her campaign to be alderman of the 4th Ward on Chicago's South Side was going well in the winter of 2023 — but then she got a call. "The biggest thing is I was hurt," Lucas said. Just as early voting began, Lucas said her office got flooded with inquiries about campaign material sent to homes from the 4th Ward Democratic Organization. One mailer called her a "bad landlord," and featured a picture of a rat. Meanwhile, a text message sent to voters asked, "How can we trust her?" and listed several unpaid bills. "I mean, the things that they were saying were horrible — and they weren't true!" Lucas said. Lucas said a simple fact check would prove the attacks were false. CBS News Chicago took her up on that. One allegation involved an IRS tax lien amounting to $18,139. The website for the Cook County Clerk's office said the lien was released almost two years before the election. "They put citations at the bottom of the mailer to different websites to make it seem like the information was true," Lucas said, "and if you looked at the citations, the citations didn't say what they said." Robinson went on to win the aldermanic election. But his campaign, and the 4th Ward Democratic Organization, were not victorious when it came to the defamation lawsuit Lucas filed over the mailers and texts. "You sent out false information about me to 33,000 people — and that's a lot of people," said Lucas, "and now, I still have a business to run, a community to live in." A jury considered that impact, and awarded Lucas a combined $1.475 million. "It's not an insignificant amount," said Robinson. "It sends a message. It sends a message that politics cannot be like it is." No one answered the door at the 4th Ward Democratic Committee office on Thursday, and Ald. Robinson was unavailable for an interview. But statements from both the politician and his campaign partners said they will be appealing the court decision. Robinson himself released this statement: "This lawsuit has always been politically motivated — we will be appealing the decision. Residents of the 4th Ward voted for me because they knew I would fight for them, and that's exactly where my focus remains. With critical funding for programs like Job Corps just being cut, I'm focused on supporting the students who will be impacted and strengthening public safety efforts in our community. My priority is addressing the real challenges we face, not engaging in political theater." This statement was issued by the Lamont Robinson for Alderman Committee and the 4th Ward Democratic Organization: "While we respect the jury system, we cannot allow this decision — which fundamentally changes defamation law as it applies to political organizations — to stand. Under established legal standards, a candidate must prove that a statement was made with actual knowledge of its falsity and with actual malice. "We are committed to providing voters with accurate, well-sourced information so they can make informed decisions. In this instance, we relied in good faith on information provided by our researchers and reported by credible media outlets — none of which were sued for publishing the same material. "We strongly disagree with the verdict and believe it reflects an unprecedented misapplication of the law. Importantly, the jury made no finding that we knowingly or intentionally made any false statements — the threshold required for a defamation claim. We believe this type of verdict for a good faith reliance upon publicly available and published information is in error, unsupported by law, and will be reversed. "We remain confident in our position and will be appealing the ruling." So what will Lucas do with her more than $1 million? She said she will not be using it for a new campaign, and she is done running for election.
