- Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Media
- Keiana Barrett says she wants to oust Seventh Ward alderman Natashia Holmes but isn’t using armed private investigators to help her do it.
Keiana Barrett says she didn’t send guys with guns to talk to people supporting her opponent.
Holmes was appointed alderman by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013, after predecessor Sandi Jackson and her husband, former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., were convicted of misusing campaign funds. Barrett had served as Sandi Jackson’s chief of staff and hoped to get the appointment that went to Holmes.
A spokesman for Holmes says the tactic might have worked: one P.I. told the election board that she’d approached 16 voters and was able to get four to sign affidavits denying that their signatures were on Holmes’s petitions.
Meanwhile, another candidate, LaShonda “Shonnie” Curry, says an investigator started asking about the validity of her petitions several weeks ago. “I don’t know who was behind it,” she says. “I can only say a mysterious person showed up at my church one Sunday and tried to coerce my notary into signing false affidavits saying that she did not sign [off] on the petitions when she did.”
