Mayor Lightfoot says campaign recruitment emails to CPS teachers ‘should not have happened’ after watchdog launches investigation
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Controversy escalated Thursday surrounding recruitment emails sent by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s campaign seeking Chicago Public Schools students to work on her reelection campaign, with the schools’ top watchdog launching an investigation and the mayor publicly apologizing.
But even as Lightfoot worked to make amends for the scandal, new revelations raised more questions about the mayor’s campaign efforts to recruit students from educational institutions that she controls from City Hall.
At issue is an effort by Lightfoot campaign staffers to recruit students from CPS and City Colleges of Chicago — city sister agencies whose leadership is appointed by the mayor — by emailing faculty at the institutions to offer extra credit for students in exchange for volunteer work.
“This should not have happened,” Lightfoot said at an afternoon news conference where she repeatedly called the emails a “mistake” by a staff member and said she didn’t know her campaign had contacted CPS teachers at work until Wednesday, at which point she said she “put an immediate stop to it.”
“I have always held myself to a high ethical standard,” Lightfoot said.
A statement released by City Colleges of Chicago shortly after the mayor’s news conference, however, raised new questions. It said college officials had told the Lightfoot campaign previously that they do not “coordinate with political campaigns.”
“After receiving a campaign email in August seeking student volunteers, City Colleges staff notified its Ethics Department. Following the department’s guidance, City Colleges notified the campaign of CCC’s ethics policy and purged the emails from CCC accounts,” the colleges said in a statement.
Lightfoot, for her part, portrayed the effort to recruit students as a single staffer’s well-intentioned but wrong idea. The Lightfoot campaign did not immediately explain why it would contact CPS teachers in January when City Colleges had raised issues in the summer.
CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher confirmed Thursday that his office has opened an investigation into emails sent by Lightfoot’s reelection team to CPS teachers, asking them to solicit their students to volunteer on the campaign trial.
“CPS OIG has opened an investigation into this matter and we are currently gathering information to determine which, if any, policies have been violated,” Fletcher said in an emailed statement.
City Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s office said it is “aware of the public reporting on this matter” and is in contact with Fletcher, whom Lightfoot appointed in 2020.
Thursday, Lightfoot again nodded to the fact that she ran four years ago as an avowed reformer. She cited an expanded ethics law and curbs in aldermanic privilege among her accomplishments.
But critics have said her record on openness, ethics and political reform has been mixed. The revised ethics ordinance she got passed early in her term did not go as far as the ethics board wanted. Her efforts on curbing aldermanic prerogative have meanwhile been symbolic, and the old-time privilege of council members having major control over matters in their wards remains intact.
Good-government advocates also point to transparency failures such as the mayor’s office’s efforts to suppress a video showing police conducting a wrongful raid on the home of Anjanette Young.
Lightfoot had also called for an independent commission for the once-a-decade redrawing of ward boundaries, but that didn’t happen, nor were voters given the chance to decide on a new map.
The uproar began earlier this week after Lightfoot’s political team asked CPS teachers to help recruit their students for her reelection campaign in exchange for class credit — a practice that the incumbent mayor’s campaign later vowed to stop after her challengers blasted it as crossing ethical boundaries.
An email obtained by the Tribune that was sent to a CPS work account Tuesday included a message titled “Externship Program Opportunity.” It’s unclear how many teachers received the emails, which were first reported by WTTW-Ch. 11. The email asked CPS staff members to “please share this opportunity with your students” and included a link to a Google form to sign up for the 12-hour-a-week program.
“Lightfoot for Chicago is seeking resumes from any volunteer interested in campaign politics and eager to gain experience in the field,” the email read. “The ideal volunteer will be efficient, well organized and enthusiastic about joining a dynamic team. A strong commitment to Democratic ideals is essential. … We’re simply looking for enthusiastic, curious and hard-working young people eager to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring.”
In a series of statements, Lightfoot’s campaign first denied wrongdoing and characterized it as a typical learning opportunity offered by campaigns.
But the team later released an amended statement saying it would stop contacting teachers and noting that all campaign staff members “have been reminded about the solid wall that must exist between campaign and official activities and that contacts with any city of Chicago, or other sister agency employees, including CPS employees, even through publicly available sources is off limits. Period.”
The message immediately drew reproach from Lightfoot’s challengers, who said it was improper. On Thursday, ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell, said the email “is inappropriately coercive and raises First Amendment concerns.”
“The Supreme Court has made clear that government officials cannot use their office or power to coerce participation or to punish for lack of participation in political campaigns. Federal courts affirmed that principle in an ACLU of Illinois case (O’Hare Truck Service, Incorporated v. City of Northlake),” Connell said. “Because the mayor has the ultimate authority over the Chicago schools, teachers may feel coercion in this ask from the mayor’s campaign or fear negative consequences for lack of participation.”
Connell called on Lightfoot to “personally and publicly renounce this infraction in strong, explicit language, making clear that no one in Chicago should feel compelled to participate in her reelection campaign.”
At the news conference, Lightfoot said she did not intend to fire the staff member who sent the emails after apparently finding the teachers’ email addresses online. Lightfoot called the actions “well-intentioned” but said “guardrails” have been put in place to prevent it from happening again.
The city ethics ordinance requires a clear separation between governmental and political activities. It stipulates that no “official, employee, or candidate for city office shall intentionally use any city property or resources of the city in connection with any prohibited political activity,” which includes “soliciting votes on behalf of a candidate for elective office,” as well as other campaign activity like distributing materials or otherwise working on a campaign for elective office.
CPS’ ethics guidelines for employees also state that “a political campaign should not be using the CPS email system to solicit volunteers and donations. Please report the behavior and forward the emails to the Ethics Advisor.”
Lightfoot’s opponents in the Feb. 28 election expressed outrage over the emails, with some calling for investigations and others accusing her of trying to coerce teachers into helping her campaign.
Asked at the news conference about why the emails offered class credit to campaign volunteers, Lightfoot said she couldn’t answer the specific question but noted some professors encourage students in political science classes to do campaign volunteer work.
Later, Lightfoot said there was “zero conversation” between her office or campaign and the school district.
“There was zero, zero, zero coordination, coercion or anything else between the campaign and CPS on this issue, zero,” Lightfoot said. “I want that to be abundantly clear.”
