DOWNTOWN — Jesus "Chuy" Garcia may not be a household name in Chicago, though he's been an alderman and a Cook County commissioner.
Here are five things you may not know about the 58-year-old Little Village resident.
• Why "Chuy"? It's a common nickname for Jesus.
• What's with the mustache? Garcia told DNAinfo Chicago's Mark Konkol the facial hair dates to age 14.
“If you look closely, my mustache has a rainbow of colors that represent our city’s great diversity,” Garcia said. “Even Harold Washington didn’t have the mustache credentials I do. His was mostly black and white. He couldn’t boast having strands of brown, red and white and black in his mustache.”
• Garcia said he almost didn't run because of his wife Evelyn's multiple sclerosis. But she urged him to run.
"That's when I knew I was in trouble," he told the Reader's Steve Bogira.
• Garcia was born in north central Mexico. He came to Chicago when he was 10 years old after his father got a job in a meat-packing plant.
• In 2007, his son, Samuel Garcia, was arrested on a felony charge, accused of attacking two off-duty police officers. The son was convicted on a lesser charge, but the free use of lawyers from Mayer Brown later earned Chuy Garcia some bad publicity. The Sun-Times' Dan Mihalopoulos reported that Chuy Garcia, as a Cook County commissioner, co-sponsored a measure that gave bond work to Mayer Brown.
"I did not ask them to represent my son," the mayoral candidate told Mihalopoulos.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
