CHICAGO — Willie Wilson, who came in third in the 2015 Chicago mayoral election, got more than 22,000 votes in the national popular vote to become the Democratic nominee for president, but got zero in the North Dakota caucuses Tuesday.
Including results from Tuesday's California primary results as of Tuesday morning, Wilson picked up 22,482 votes in seven primary contests and one caucus. That puts him in fifth place overall.
For comparison, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton got more than 13.2 million votes nationally. Her main challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, got more than 10.2 million.
With a small amount of counting remaining, 8,700 Californians voted for Wilson. In March, 6,565 people in Illinois voted for him.
Wilson, a businessman who made his fortune from McDonald's franchises, filed paperwork to run for president in May 2015, three months after the mayoral election in which second-place Chuy Garcia pushed eventual winner Rahm Emanuel to a runoff vote. His mayoral campaign made headlines when he was quoted in the Sun-Times saying: “To the whiteys here, I’m letting you know, I ain’t prejudiced."
Willie Wilson traveling to New Hampshire
— Dr. Willie Wilson (@DrWillieWilson) June 8, 2015
Wilson made it on the primary ballot in seven states: California (8,700 votes so far), Illinois (6,565), Louisiana (1,423), Mississippi (919), Missouri (307), South Carolina (1,314) and Texas (3,254).
Nobody voted for Wilson in the North Dakota caucuses Tuesday. Caucuses have much lower turnouts and function differently than primary votes like those in Illinois.
He is not on the ballot in next week's Washington, D.C., primary, the final vote before the official nomination.
Here's a look at his campaign platform:
In addition to Clinton and Sanders, the other two named candidates to garner more Democratic votes than Wilson were former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and California businessman Rocky De La Fuente.
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