Jesus “Chuy” Garcia defended his pledge to hire 1,000 new police officers Wednesday, a promise that Rahm Emanuel's campaign calls “fairy dust.”
“Going back to a day in which you make pledges where you can’t afford them will get us right back where we were before,” Mayor Emanuel said Wednesday.
Emanuel made that same pledge four years ago before having to revise it.
Garcia fired right back to the mayor's remarks, saying he is "the last one, the last person who can criticize anyone else."
As for why?
"Because Chicago appears to be in a financial free fall that happened under his watch,” Garcia said.
Garcia’s plans were not the only subject of criticism coming from the mayor Wednesday, as he headed to a Chicago firehouse to speak on how he believes Gov. Rauner’s budget cuts will hurt the city departments including fire and police.
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Garcia, on the other hand, believes Emanuel is using the event as an attempt to distance himself from Rauner, who the mayor has been photographed vacationing and sharing a bottle of wine with in the past.
“The mayor should go to Springfield and sit with Rauner,” Garcia said. “Maybe open up one of those expensive bottles and figure out how he’s going to really fight for the people of Chicago.”
In Emanuel's first television ad for the runoff, which began airing Wednesday, he admits he can be too aggressive.
“If I made a mistake, I own it,” Emanuel said in his appearance at the Chicago firehouse. “It's on me.”
As for the biggest change since the mayor was placed in a runoff? He's more accessible to reporters. Emanuel took more than a dozen questions from reporters, the most ever taken in his four years.
