Wilson rips into Lightfoot, jokes if he becomes mayor he'll have cops escort her back to Ohio

CHICAGO - Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson on Wednesday blasted incumbent Lori Lightfoot and the pandemic policies that shut down some institutions, while leaving others open.

"She going to close down the churches, but won't close down the marijuana houses," Wilson said.

Wilson also doubled down on his promise that Chicago police should hunt down murderers "like rabbits."

Mayor Lightfoot has criticized that remark, but Wilson referred again to the bitter memory of his own 20-year-old son, Omar, being gunned down.

"I don't want to see that happen to anyone else. When I made the remark that we would hunt anybody down like a rabbit that kills another person – go down the next week and kill someone else, and the next six months and kill someone else, and have not been caught – hunt him down like a rabbit!" Wilson said.

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The Lightfoot campaign has attacked Wilson in at least three separate mailings, including the latest one, apparently betraying concern about Wilson’s appeal to some voters. He said he takes her attacks personally.

And, in what he later said was a "joke," suggested he looks forward to seeing Lightfoot, born and raised in central Ohio, return there.

"If I get to be mayor of Chicago here, I’m going to assign police cars and helicopters, ‘escort her to the line of Ohio.’ I don't wanna see her no more! She's not one of us!" Wilson said.

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Wilson, of course, was born into an impoverished sharecropper family in Louisiana, becoming a multi-millionaire after moving to Chicago.

Two other candidates, Congressman Chuy Garcia and Ald. Sophia King, were out meeting voters on Wednesday.

As the same time, Mayor Lightfoot has repeatedly tried to claim that the nine-candidate contest is now a two-person competition between her and Paul Vallas. Several recent polls say otherwise, and so do Lightfoot’s other challengers.

"Again, she's not living in reality. There's no way she's, I think, correct on that," Ald. King said.

"I think the mayor likes to construe things," Garcia said. "She's trying to hang on for dear life."