Thread: BREAKING: Gutierrez Won’t Run For Reelection

Posted By Amber Randall On 12:56 PM 11/29/2017

A Democrat representative from Illinois plans to test the waters to see if a run for presidency is a viable option, according to a Fox News report.

Illinois Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez resigned Tuesday from his office which would give him the opportunity for a potential run as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, Fox News reported. Fox News learned that Gutierrez will set up a six month schedule in 2018 to visit various cities to see how he is received in the country.

Chad Pergram
✔
@ChadPergram
Fox has learned that Dem IL Rep Luis Gutierrez will test the waters to potentially run for President in 2020. Gutierrez announced his retirement from Congress earlier in the wk. There were indications he would run for another office.
8:03 AM - Nov 29, 2017

Chad Pergram
✔
@ChadPergram
Fox is told Dem Rep Gutierrez will set a national schedule to test the waters for a possible 2020 presidential bid. He will visit cities around the country in 2018 after he retires from Congress to test the waters.
8:04 AM - Nov 29, 2017

Gutierrez announced he would be stepping down from office Tuesday, and endorsed current Cook County commissioner Jesús “Chuy” Garcia to take his position.

“I’m not giving up in the fight for equality for immigrants, Latinos, women, for fighting for the LGBTQ community, the environment and racial justice,” Gutierrez said Tuesday. The 64 year-old representative has been a long time champion of open borders, co-signing many amnesty deals and remaining a staunch opponent of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/29/de...dency-in-2020/

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Gutierrez will probably announce today that he is going to run for governor of Puerto Rico.

Apparently he has higher ambitions and wants to run for 2020 Presidency of United States.

Barf-bag please!

Gutierrez: 'I haven't decided to run' for president
Chicago Tribune
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez said Wednesday he'd consider entering the 2020 presidential contest if a bid would be the best way to spur immigration reform and the rebuilding of a hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. But Gutierrez said it's far too early to count him in. Just a day earlier, he announced he won't ...

Then there is this.

FLASHBACK: Retiring Rep. Luis Gutierrez Paid His Wife $400K From Campaign Coffers

Is Gutierrez retiring to avoid a scandal?

ByEMILY ZANOTTI

November 29, 2017
23.7k views

"Retiring" Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who presides over one of the single most gerrymandered Congressional districts in the country, will receive a staggering $62,000-per-year pension thanks to his quarter-century term in national office, the Chicago Tribune announced this morning.

But the number pales in comparison to wealth Gutierrez and his wife acquired while in office. The pair were revealed, back in July, to have enriched themselves to the tune of nearly half a million dollars on the backs of campaign donors — and it's possible Gutierrez is resigning to avoid further inquiry on the matter.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, Gutierrez's wife Soriada joined his Congressional campaign back in 2010, and has operated as Luis' office manager, treasurer, and chief fundraiser, collecting hundreds of thousands in payments and reimbursements from her husband's campaign.

FEC documents reveal that in Gutierrez's last campaign alone, Soriada racked up more than $100,000 in compensation and was Gutierrez's highest paid employee. The pair's daughters also earned some extra cash working for the campaign as book-keepers and on fundraising projects.

If it sounds fishy, that's because it is. Members of Congress are allowed to put their families on their payroll, but only because another Illinois Congressman, former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., asked the Congressional ethics committee to issue a finding on the matter in 2001. Jackson, of course, went on to funnel millions in campaign funds to his wife's consulting firm. They were both convicted for using that money for personal endeavors — including a large fur collection — back in 2013.

Gutierrez's sudden departure leaves open the question of whether he was looking at an internal ethics inquiry, or even a federal inquiry into his spending habits — and, based on what the Free Beacon discovered, that's certainly a possibility.

But some believe Gutierrez has more nefarious reasons for departing office early. Gutierrez is a longtime ally of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is looking at a tough re-election bid next year. As Gutierrez announced his retirement, he also announced his hand-picked successor, avowed socialist Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, one of Rahm Emanuel's most frightening challengers.

Gutierrez made his speech with just six days left to file a petition to run for his seat, cutting off the possibility of an open primary and shutting everyone but Garcia out of the race. Garcia insisted that there was no "quid pro quo," but the pair had to do a lot of convincing that they were no longer at odds, particularly in light of the last mayoral election.

Chicago politicos speculate that perhaps a deal was struck somewhere in the higher echelons of the Chicago Democratic machine to rid the mayoral campaign of an Emanuel opponent while helping Gutierrez avoid further investigation into his campaign spending.

Chicago politics, perhaps, at its best.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/24109/...emily-zanotti#


From the ALIPAC archives..

Luis Gutierrez Paid His Wife Over $300,000 From Campaign Funds

Illinois congressman also paid daughters thousands from campaign stash

ep. Luis AP

BY: Joe Schoffstall
June 20, 2016 5:55 pm

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) has paid his wife and daughters hundreds of thousands of dollars from his campaign’s coffer since 2010, according to campaign finance data.

Gutierrez, who was first elected to Congress in 1993, brought his wife, Soraida Gutierrez, onto his campaign’s payroll six years ago to act as his office manager, treasurer, and fundraiser.

Soraida Gutierrez was a registered lobbyist in the state of Illinois from 2003 to 2009 before joining Gutierrez for Congress. She has since raked in more than $300,000 for her work on behalf of the committee while being the top recipient of campaign cash in three cycles since stepping into her role.
https://www.alipac.us/f9/luis-gutier...-funds-333989/

Column:
The dance of Luis, Chuy and Rahm is no coincidence


John Kass
Contact Reporterhicago Tribune


When it comes to Chicago mayoral politics, do you believe in coincidences?

Some of you who’ve been watching the recent public dance of Luis, Chuy and Rahm may believe in coincidences. That’s unfortunate.

Because only children believe in coincidences, and a few opium-smoking poets, and perhaps the odd romantic fool.

But Chicago politicians don’t believe in coincidences. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a Chicago politician.

To Rahm, chaos is a ladder. He knows you should never let a good crisis go to waste. He believes in preparation, control, secrecy and himself.

And he wants no part of a Chicago political version of “Stranger Things.” Rahm does not leave anything to chance. He does not wish to live in the upside down.
Which brings us back to the delicate dance of Luis, Chuy and Rahm.

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez announced he wouldn’t run for re-election, that he was backing Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in a congressional run.

Garcia frightened Rahm by forcing him into a mayoral runoff in 2015. If Gutierrez hadn’t backed Emanuel , and if Emanuel hadn’t sat on that devastating Laquan McDonald video — showing a white cop shooting the black teenager 16 times until dead — until after the runoff, Garcia would be mayor today.

Now Chuy is on his way to becoming Congressman Garcia. And Luis is on his way to the rest of his life.

“I believe life is like a novel. And there are only so many chapters,” Gutierrez said.

So I’m waiting for the chapters about Luis going into the Puerto Rican real estate development business — using his many political contacts and making a fortune on his hurricane-ravaged ancestral home island.

All this leaves Rahm — at least for right now — without a credible challenger for the 2019 mayoral campaign. But without a credible challenger, Chicagoans might get the idea that nothing in this town is on the square.

So Rahm will have to find a palooka, a candidate to take a beating and fall down, a somewhat credible opponent who won’t punch him too hard to the body.

Chicago politics isn’t about speeches. It’s about arithmetic.

And for Rahm, that means doing everything he can to prevent Latinos and African-Americans from coalescing behind one candidate and running him off.

“He’s a surgeon; he’s artistic,” said a Latino Democrat at the Chuy/Luis no-deal news conference. “Rahm knows his business.”

At their news conference, Gutierrez and Garcia insisted there was no deal, no arrangement to make Rahm happy.

No deal, they said.

It just happened, I thought to myself.

Kind of like the time on the Charlie Rose talk show (remember him?) when then-presidential chief of staff Rahm Emanuel mentioned — as if by accident — that he’d really like to be mayor of Chicago someday.

And then Rahm’s boss, President Barack Obama, let Rahm come to Chicago and welcomed Bill Daley to Washington as his White House chief of staff.

And longtime Mayor Richard Daley moved to the political afterlife, where he couldn’t testify under oath in federal court about all the things he had done to the city.

Kind of like a fairy tale.

After the Chuy/Luis news conference, I walked outside and spotted one of Gutierrez’s business/political associates.

I asked him when the Gutierrez Puerto Rican real estate development company would be announced.

“You’re such a cynic, John,” he said.

Me? A cynic?

No. I’m not a cynic.

Years ago I wrote a series of columns about how Gutierrez, a former chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Real Estate, lived almost tax-free in a spacious, new Bucktown home.

Luis had a $340,000 house in the mid-1990s and paid only $274.42 in property taxes. The year before it was only $264 and change.

Luis’ home wasn’t even on the Cook County property tax records. It was listed as a vacant lot.

So I’m really not a cynic. I believe in miracles. Like the miracle of Luis, the heroic taxpayer.

But what I really liked at the Chuy/Luis news conference at Maggiano’s on Tuesday were two giant photographs flanking the lectern.

One was of a young, smiling Garcia with the late Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor. The other was of a young, smiling Gutierrez with Harold.

Gutierrez mentioned the photos, how they smiled, how things were back in the day. And, Gutierrez said in that almost sincere way of his — when you know he’s half full of it, and he knows you know — that Harold was like a political father to him and Garcia.

“The two of us in the pictures, we’re like Harold Washington’s sons, you know?” Gutierrez said.

His sons, Luis?

Chuy, yes. But after Washington’s death, Luis made sure that Rich Daley was his daddy.

There are other Latino Democrats interested in the Gutierrez seat. They don’t like the idea of an anointed candidate, even a progressive like Chuy.

One is Chuy’s fellow Bernie Bro, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th.

Ramirez-Rosa is circulating petitions. Like Chuy, he’s of the political left, but further to the left, even further than Democratic gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss, if that’s possible.

Biss had tapped Ramirez-Rosa as his running mate but dropped him after the alderman’s harsh criticism of Israel’s foreign policy.

So there could be an interesting campaign for the heart and future of progressive Latino politics.

And where does all this leave Rahm Emanuel?

It leaves him in a good place. It leaves him just fine.

As if by coincidence.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...128-story.html

Chicago has been corrupt since Al Capone.

The only way to clean up the mess is to get the Democrats out!