McHenry Times

Gary Rabine, a former gubernatorial candidate based in McHenry County, is slamming the failures of Democrat leadership after mob violence wracked Downton Chicago in mid-April. Rabine runs a number of businesses under the Rabine Group.

He said he will be shutting down a Chicago facility and will no longer do business in the city due to crime. Rabine mentioned about catalytic converters being stolen "at a crazy pace in the city of Chicago by gunpoint." He also said that their "employees are being held up or their wallets and their phones at gunpoint."  

“So we have businesses we built in the Chicago area for over 40 years and in the construction services world and in Chicago, we did a lot of patching of city streets. We did a lot of work all over the city streets of Chicago. And today we choose not to work there,” Rabine told Fox News. “We've got a facility in Chicago that we'll be selling and moving out our customers, many, many of which are retailers and stuff, are moving out of city as well. Our employees who live in the city don't want to be there anymore. It's a terrible place to be. And we've got a governor and a mayor and a future mayor of the city. We're promoting this anarchy.”

Rabine noted that staying in Chicago is "not worth it anymore" and he and his employees "can't put up with it any longer.” 

“If you watch the messaging from our governor and from the past mayor and even more so the new mayor, it's all about basically reparations, right?" he added. "It's okay to rob and pillage and steal. You're not going to get in any trouble. And it's just a great form of reparations by the mindset of this new mayor and the governor has done nothing to stop either. So it's not fair to the community because as these jobs go, so this opportunity for all these people, the good people in the city, I see four Wal-Mart stores closing. Think of the thousands of jobs and the thousands of opportunities and small businesses that are given out from those stores. I mean, it's an incredible number.”

The businessman blames the governor and the outgoing and incoming mayors of Chicago.  

“This anarchy is not going to stop as long as we have terrible leaders like Brandon Johnson, J.B. Pritzker, and Lori Lightfoot," Rabine said. "It will not change. It's only going to get worse. I have family members and loved ones that live in the city. They all want out and are getting out. I have great employees across my companies that will rather be in any state in the country than Illinois. This was never the case five years ago and back. It's an urgent issue here of change. It's not going to happen, unfortunately, with terrible leadership the way out.” 

Rabine’s comments come over a week after an estimated 1,000 teens streamed into the 31st Street Beach and the Loop over two nights. The incident resulted in torched cars, smashed windows, and people being attacked. Three were shot during the two days of mob violence.

Chicago’s mayor-elect Brandon Johnson explained away the mob violence.

"Demonizing children is wrong. We have to keep them safe as well," Johnson said, FOX 32 Chicago reported.  

Johnson excused away the mob violence, chalking it up to being “silly.” 

"They're young. Sometimes they make silly decisions,” Johnson told legislators. “They do. And so we have to make sure that we're investing so that young people know they're supported. And we also have to make sure that police officers who put their lives on the line have the resources that they need to keep us safe.”

Illinois in the past few years has seen several major employers leave. The Wall Street Journal produced a movie that neatly summarized the closing of significant corporate locations. “After years of operating in Illinois, three major companies—Boeing, Caterpillar and Citadel—are moving their headquarters out of the state. In this video, WSJ looks at the economic and political implications,” the Wall Street Journal said in its preview of the video.