The high-profile prosecution of six people charged in connection with their protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview claimed its first political victim as one of the six — a candidate for Cook County Board — has dropped out of her race for office.
Catherine “Cat” Sharp, one of the so-called Broadview Six, announced late Monday she was no longer running for the County Board seat because she needed to “focus on winning the legal battle against the Trump administration.”
“Navigating this unimaginable legal process and all the costs — emotional and financial — that come with it, have made running for office much more difficult,” Sharp wrote in a post on X. “When I launched this campaign for the Cook County Board back in the summer, I said I was running because we need principled, bold leadership at the local level at a time when our communities are under attack from the federal government. I had no idea how true that statement would prove to be over the last several months.”
Sharp’s political decision came hours before more than 50 Border Patrol agents arrived Tuesday afternoon. A U.S. Coast Guard plane carrying the agents arrived at DuPage Regional Airport. After a quick meeting inside the terminal, they headed to a suburban hotel in a 15-vehicle caravan that included cargo vans with U.S. Department of Homeland Security license plates and several SUVs with out-of-state tags.
The charges against Sharp and the five others by Republican President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice have been highly controversial, as the defendants and some legal observers have called the prosecution a politically motivated effort to punish opponents who pushed back against the administration’s deportation actions in the Chicago region as part of its Operation Midway Blitz.
The others charged were Democrats Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, 26, who is running for the 9th Congressional District seat, 45th Ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbitt, 62, Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, 38, and Andre Martin, 27, originally of Providence, Rhode Island, who is Abughazaleh’s deputy campaign manager. Joselyn Walsh, 31, of Chicago, was the sixth person charged. She has no personal connection to her five co-defendants.
All six pleaded not guilty in November to charges stemming from one in a string of protests outside ICE facility in Broadview where federal immigration agents processed hundreds of people as part of the operation. Prosecutors accused the six of conspiring to forcibly impede an ICE agent while he was driving into the two-story ICE facility in the west suburb in September.
The 11-page indictment alleged the group “banged aggressively” on the side and back windows, hood, and other parts of the agent’s vehicle, then “crowded together in the front and side of the Government Vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.” The protesters also scratched the body of the vehicle and etched the word “PIG” into it, broke one of the vehicle’s side mirrors and broke a rear windshield wiper, according to the indictment.
“I know that we will prevail against these unjust, ridiculous charges, which were designed to force people like us to sit down and shut up,” Sharp wrote in her statement, before adding she would continue to work as chief of staff for Chicago Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, the position she held and used as a partial launching pad for her County Board run.
“When I launched my campaign, it was to run it to win,” Sharp said Tuesday in an interview with the Tribune. But she said the case has refocused attention on “keeping her neighbors safe.”
Sharp is getting help from family but is otherwise paying for her own legal representation and launching a legal defense fund. In cases like these, the government does not reimburse defendants for legal costs, even if they win.
“I can attest to how difficult it’s been for me and my family, but it’s been a reminder too that there are folks who are really experiencing far more severe situations with ICE and (Department of Homeland Security) and Border Patrol,” she said. “We have a responsibility to look out for each other in this moment.”
Sharp was campaigning in the March 17 Democratic primary for the board seat representing Cook County’s 12th District, which includes the Chicago neighborhoods of West Town and the Near West Side. It is currently represented by Bridget Degnen, who is not running for reelection and endorsed Sharp as her successor.
Sharp’s exit will likely reshuffle support in the race. In addition to being endorsed by Vasquez, Rabbitt and Degnen, Sharp was also backed by Aldermen Scott Waguespack, 32nd, Brian Hopkins, 2nd, and Timmy Knudsen, 43rd, and other North Side political organizations.
The Democratic primary race is still crowded: Liz Granato, Jose ‘Che-Che’ Turrubiartez Wilson, and Isaiah White remain in the race. Granato is head of the county’s Bureau of Asset Management and married to state Rep. Ram Villivalam. Wilson helps run civic engagement at the LGBTQ+ organization Equality Illinois, and White is a CPS teacher. Sharp said she did not know yet whether she would endorse someone else.
In a release, Wilson said Sharp was being punished for standing up for her values.
“What Cat is experiencing should alarm all of us. The emotional and financial toll she has been forced to shoulder is not incidental. It is meant to exhaust people, silence voices, and deter others from speaking out in defense of human rights. That is unequivocally wrong.”
In a separate County Board race, Democratic incumbent Maggie Trevor is running uncontested in the March primary for the 9th District seat after fellow Democrat Kevin Robert Murphy was removed from the ballot. Murphy failed to secure enough valid signatures to qualify. The district includes Arlington Heights, Mount Prospect, Park Ridge and Norridge.
2nd District Commissioner Michael Scott will now face Andre Smith in a head-to-head race in the March Democratic primary after the third hopeful, Eddie Johnson III, withdrew. The district stretches across both the city’s South and West sides, through the Loop, and includes Austin, Englewood, East and West Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Little Italy, Noble Square, and the West and South Loop.
In the countywide race for assessor, where two-term incumbent Fritz Kaegi is facing off against Lyons Township Assessor Patrick Hynes, unions continued to back Hynes’ campaign following the endorsement of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Those donations have allowed Hynes to nearly double the roughly $368,000 he had in the bank at the end of September. The influx includes $100,000 from the Chicago Laborers District Council PAC, $50,000 from Electrical Workers Local 134’s PAC and $25,000 from Carpentry Advancement PAC.
Support from trade unions that thrive during building booms is not surprising, but Hynes has also won backing from SEIU’s Illinois State Council, whose membership skews more progressive. They endorsed Hynes in November ahead of the CFL and gave him $30,000 from SEIU Council PAC. The council did not endorse in the assessor’s race in the 2022 primary. Its member organizations include SEIU Healthcare and Locals 1 and 73, representing workers across various industries, including janitors, child care workers, and private security officers and doormen.
Fundraising will be key for Hynes against Kaegi, who fronted his campaign $1 million since November of 2024. Kaegi ended September with $1.3 million in the bank and reported about $60,000 in other large contributions since then.
Further down the ballot, Board of Review intrigue continues. Incumbent Samantha Steele had her attorney issue a cease-and-desist letter to her Democratic opponent, Liz Nicholson, after Nicholson filed an official complaint with the county’s inspector general against Steele.
Steele is defending her seat on the three-member Board of Review, which hears property tax appeals.
The cease-and-desist letter, provided to the Tribune by Nicholson’s campaign, was written by a lawyer from the firm Ford & Britton, where Cook County Board Commissioner Scott Britton is a partner. Britton is a friend of Steele’s and was one of her first calls at the scene of a car crash and alleged DUI. He is not representing her in that case and did not write the cease-and-desist letter. He declined to comment, but did contribute to Steele’s campaign last quarter.
Nicholson’s complaint said two people reached out to her suggesting Steele would give Nicholson a job if she dropped out. Steele’s cease-and-desist said that it was both “false” and “published with actual malice,” and demanded a retraction within a week.
Nicholson has not done so and instead wrote to the county’s inspector general again, asking that the completed investigation be referred to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office “when practicable,” noting both intermediaries were willing to speak to investigators.
Steele reported raising just $5,500 in the last quarter that ended in December and has about $80,000 on hand, according to state records. She lent her campaign $50,000 in the fall. Nicholson has not yet submitted her quarterly report, but reported $28,000 in large donations between October and the end of December, according to campaign finance records.
The race for another Board of Review seat will be a head-to-head match rather than uncontested after county officials ruled incumbent Commissioner George Cardenas was safe on the ballot. His Democratic opponent in the primary, Juanita Irizarry, almost knocked him off with a challenge to his petitions but fell just short.
Chicago Tribune’s Stacy St. Clair contributed.
