HYDE PARK — The 3rd Ward aldermanic race has barely started and it has already turned ugly.
Residents said they have received anonymous fliers that they say use harsh racial language to criticize Ald. Pat Dowell in what was expected to be a relatively quiet campaign.
“It was scathing — you can criticize the alderman without saying the things that were said,” said Tammi Bowden, who found the flier on Nov. 17 posted on the window of her home at 3716 S. Wabash Ave.
The two-page attack on Dowell claims she “has no regard for black-on-black love” and her policies have “sold us out again for the white man agenda.”
The flier goes on some bizarre turns, criticizing Dowell for projects in other wards and presenting conspiracy theories about her trying to halt the popular Bud Billiken Parade.
Scott Kummer said he found the flier on his front gate at 3748 S. Wabash Ave. on Nov. 12. He said he attributed it to someone with a personal grudge against the alderman and promptly threw it away.
“If it was related to the election, it would not have used those inflammatory racial things.” Kummer said. “It was a real shotgun approach.”
In her bid or a third term, Dowell is facing former Water Reclamation District Commissioner Patricia Horton and Clarence Desmond Clemons in the upcoming election.
Neither returned multiple calls for comment.
Dowell said she thinks the flier is about the election and is not coming from someone outside the campaigns acting on their own.
“These were not attacks from individuals who have been wronged, this is an attack by someone who disagrees with my leadership of the ward,” Dowell said after reviewing the flier.
She said her campaign has been contacted by multiple people across the ward who claimed to have gotten the flier.
“I expect this sort of thing during the next three months, I expect this will happen again,” Dowell said.
The 3rd Ward race was expected to be relatively quiet this year.
Clemons has run for political office at least three times since 2000 and in almost all cases has been booted from the ballot for failing to get enough signatures, not showing up to defend challenges to his nominating petitions or failing to file the correct paperwork for his campaign with the state.
Horton has struggled to win an election since 2011 when she lost her bid for city clerk. She then lost her position as commissioner in 2012 election. A bid to challenge Cook County Commissioner Jerry “Iceman” Butler never got off the ground in 2013 and she didn’t appear on the ballot.
She also faced charges in September that she assaulted a 50-year-old man at the Daley Center after a case about a landlord-tenant dispute involving her home at 3720 S. Calumet Ave.
The source of the flier is still undetermined and there is no evidence to link it to either Clemons or Horton’s campaign.
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