Mayor Johnson replaces blowhard Ramirez-Rosa with bombastic Quezada to represent the 35th Ward on the City Council
Earlier this month, controversial Cook County Commissioner Anthony Joel Quezada was nominated to replace former Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa to represent the 35th Ward.
On April 7th, Quezada was confirmed 32-11 to became Chicago's newest City Council member.
Or is he not so new?
“And hey, let's welcome our new 35th Ward alderman," Dr. D, the producer of the Ben Joravsky Show podcast remarked to the host earlier this month, "who I got to be honest, it seems a lot like our former 35th Ward alderman, like almost identical.”
Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a favorite of Mayor Brandon Johnson — he was briefly his floor leader on the City Council and his choice as chairman of that body's powerful Zoning Committee — announced his resignation as 35th Ward alderman two months ago after the mayor appointed him to lead the Chicago Park District.
However, Ramirez-Rosa's star plummeted two years ago after he attempted to block Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) from entering the chamber of the City Council before a vote on placing an advisory referendum on the 2024 ballot to repeal Chicago's sanctuary city status.
Quezada, like Ramirez-Rosa, is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. One socialist in and one socialist out — the count of DSA alderman remains at seven.
As the Illinois Policy Institute pointed out last month, Chicago is the only major city where the mayor — pending City Council approval — can appoint an alderman to a vacant City Council seat. This is no small matter. For example: By the end of his two-decade tenure as mayor, Richard M. Daley had appointed 19 of the 50 sitting members of the City Council. As mayor, the younger Daley enjoyed the most obedient City Council since his father's long reign.
Such an arrangement violates a crucial linchpin of American democracy — checks and balances on executive power.
And such an arrangement explains how such horrendous bills — such as the sale of the Chicago Skyway and the parking meter deal — manage to become law.
There are many reasons why Chicago desperately needs a city charter — ending a mayor’s ability to appoint aldermen is just one of them.
The 35th Ward is located on the Northwest Side and it includes parts of Logan Square, Avondale, Irving Park, Hermosa, and Albany Park.
The rise of a socialist
At 29-years-old, Quezada is Chicago's youngest alderman, but he brings in old, failed ideas to the City Council. Among them, the rich are evil and they need to be singled out for more taxation, capitalism oppresses the working class, and the environment is falling apart before our very eyes.
In 2022, Quezada was elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He prevailed with just 35 percent of the vote in a five-way Democratic primary that summer, defeating incumbent Luis Arroyo Jr., the son of Luis Arroyo Sr. The elder Arroyo, a former state representative, was sentenced to prison for bribery a month before the primary. Name recognition, such as it was, probably doomed the son in that election.
A few months later, at the Socialism 2022 conference, Quezada had this to say about his victory. “But I ran against a very corrupt eight-year incumbent,” he recalled, “by the name of Luis Arroyo Jr.”
The younger Arroyo has not been charged with any crime.
Prior to his county commissioner victory, Quezada worked in Ramirez-Rosa’s ward office. Reminiscing about the glory days in Rosa's office at a socialist event, Quezada said:
"So we’ve definitely developed a movement bureaucracy where our people are not just bureaucrats punching in service requests, but they’re also embedded in the community, organizing and also building connections with other organizations and offices across the city. We're actively organizing."
Actively organizing? Embedded in our community?
Remember, when leftists say “organizing,” they mean politicking. Even if their activism is not done directly, such as "vote for this person."
Early in March, Johnson announced a “a robust community-led process” to choose Ramirez-Rosa's successor. The mayor lied. The end-result of the "community-led process" was about as pre-ordained as a WWE match.
Army veteran and entrepreneur Daniel Tobon had applied for the aldermanic seat appointment. In an interview with ABC Chicago, Tobon dismissed the charade of the selection process as well as the role of the “independent” United Neighbors of the 35th Ward organization that almost universally endorsed Quezada for the seat. United Neighbors' office is next door to the 35th Ward's official government offices, then shared by Ramirez-Rosa and Quezada.
“’The mayor has every right to appoint whoever he wants. He should just come out and say that instead of kind of building this Kabuki, this political theory, theater, to justify or make it seem like it's more democratic than it is, right?’ Tobon said. ‘I’m not trying to impugn anybody, but it's clear that they had already selected Anthony, and are building a process to kind of justify that selection.’”
Johnson, and presumably Ramirez-Rosa, of course got their way.
Pushback from the City Council
While mayors appoint aldermen to vacant City Council seats, the other 49 aldermen still must ratify that selection. Traditionally, alderman have voted unanimously or nearly unanimously to back the mayor’s choice for the City Council.
This time, however, the nominee faced opposition because 11 aldermen voted “No.” In the run-up to the City Council vote on Quezada, the media over-reported Quezada's use of a racial slur on Twitter in a since-deleted post that he made as a teenager, which he has profusely apologized for. Nonetheless, no journalists covered the City Council remarks by Alderman Debra Silverstein (50), that body's sole Jewish member, when she explained her “No” vote to her colleagues.
“And at this point, I cannot support somebody who has been at anti-Israel and anti-Semitic events, and so for that reason, I will be voting ‘No.’”
Last year, Quezada, along with Ramirez-Rosa, spoke at the pro-Palestine/anti-Israel encampment at the University of Chicago.
Two days before the first anniversary of the bloodiest days for Jews since the Holocaust, Quezada posted on X: “End the occupation, end the apartheid, end the war.” Yet what about the Israelis killed by the terrorists? What about the hostages? Some of them are still being held today by Hamas.
Quezada in his own words
While Quezada explained away the racial slur as a youthful mistake, some of his more recent statements, now that he's a member of the City Council, are more troubling.
At the 2022 socialism conference, Quezada of course attacked the wealthy.
“So, I wanna make sure that the county's playing a leading role in taxing the rich.”
At that same leftist hoe-down, Quezada, sounding like Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, castigated mainstream Democrats, whom he dismisses as “neoliberals,” declaring that they are “definitely holding back our potential from being the socialist utopia that we believe Chicago can be.”
Also in 2022, while a guest on the traditional local stamping ground for lefties, the Ben Joravsky Show podcast, Quezada condemned the traditional view of the American dream.
“That's not what the American dream is about. And actually, I would argue, I would possibly totally argue that democratic socialism is more about the American dream than capitalism is.”
Quezada has a twisted, race-centered view of politics. While discussing with Joravsky the congressional campaign of Mayra Flores, a Texas Republican, Quezada set forth this bite of hate:
“There’s also a really good saying that my good colleague, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, likes to highlight, that not all skin folk are kinfolk. And so, Mayra Flores is not kinfolk, y’all.”
In 2022, Pacione-Zayas was a state senator. Now she is Brandon Johnson’s chief of staff.
At least one other DSA alderman loves that racial phraseology favored by Pacione-Zayas and Quezada, the impetuous gasbag who represents the 20th Ward, Jeanette Taylor. She said of U.S. Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican who represents South Carolina, "All skin folks ain't kinfolks."
Finally, with socialists, their central spiel is always about rich versus poor and employers versus employees. In other words: A society of "oppressor versus oppressed." Chicago’s new 35th Ward alderman is no different. In a 2023 interview with the far-left Jacobin, Quezada went down that road.
“When I was running for office, I said this all the time. I said we need to tax corporations, because we can’t just keep nickel-and-diming poor and working-class people. And people would say well, what are you going to do if those corporations leave? Instead of asking, why do corporations have the right to do that? Why do they get to dictate the terms when we hold them accountable? Why do we accept that and not say, hey, it’s wrong when corporations leave and destroy entire communities?”
There is so much wrong with Quezada’s bile.
I'll just attack the last part, where he all but says he wants to create obstacles to prevent businesses from leaving Chicago. Yes, businesses leaving is a bad thing. But employers are reluctant to set up shop in Chicago already, because of crime, high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, corrupt and incompetent public officials, and so much more. If people like Quezada and his socialist pals make it difficult for companies to leave town, they'll have one more reason not to come to Chicago in the first place.
Before long, that is, if the Socialist Caucus in the City Council expands and gets its way, the opening of a convenience store on North Michigan Avenue might be the lead story at Crain’s Chicago Business.
Pity that store if it decides to later bolt from the city.
