Rosanna Pulido is the Republican nominee for the 5th Congressional District of Illinois. This is her website: http://www.rosannapulido2009.com

Rosanna Pulido is also an active poster on the conservative message board FreeRepublic.com under the name “chicagolady”. A link to her posting history is available to the right.

Proof that Rosanna Pulido is also chicagolady is provided in this interview with the Chicago NBC affliate. Her candidacy – and affiliation with Free Republic – is also noted here, and here.

Rosanna Pulido is the founder and director of the Illinois Minutemen, a branch of the Minutemen Project – a border vigilante group which has attracted the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, the Anti-Defamation League, and former President George W. Bush. You can read about their various incidents which include racial slurs, violence, and faking murders on video at their Wikipedia entry here. Rosanna has brought up her association with the Minutemen in her Free Republic posts, and reposts blog entries by other Minutemen on the site as well.

**Update #2 – April 2**

John Curry, the 32nd Ward Republican Committeeman has posted the following bulletin regarding Ms. Pulido this evening on his website. Mr. Curry had previously sent Ms. Pulido private correspondence regarding her inflammatory comments about Cardinal George, which she chose to repost on Free Republic. This bulletin clarifies that Mr. Curry, acting in his capacity as a representative of the Republican Party, does not endorse Ms. Pulido and encourages a write-in vote instead.

I DO NOT ENDORSE ROSANNA PULIDO” I wish to report to Republicans in the 32nd Ward and in the 5th Congressional District that I do not endorse Rosanna Pulido. Since the primary election and more particularly over the last two weeks, I have become aware of extremely disturbing information relating to Ms. Pulido. That information can be summarized as follows: Pulido has an established relationship with another political party, America’s Independent Party. Pulido has not dispelled concerns that she is running as a “Trojan Horse” candidate, one who exploits the name of the Republican Party to her personal advantage only to promote a non-Republican or anti-Republican, fringe agenda. Pulido is on record as making groundless and reprehensible remarks, unworthy of a good citizen, disparaging the Cardinal of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, gays, Mexicans, African Americans, and others. Little, if anything, is known about Pulido’s personal and professional background. Pulido has refused to respond to reasonable requests from the Republican Party to account for her actions and the actions of her campaign or to cooperate with the Republican Party in any professional or reasonable way. Based on the above, I do not endorse Rosanna Pulido or recommend that any Republican vote for her for Congress in the upcoming Special Election. Instead, I encourage all Republican voters who wish to show their support for the true principles of the Republican Party and protest the absence of a worthy candidate on this ballot to cast a write in vote for “Abraham Lincoln” as their candidate. You may ask for assistance from the election judges on how to write in “Abraham Lincoln”, and they are required to provide you with that assistance. I take this action in order to uphold the integrity of the name of the Republican Party. –April 2, 2009

**Update – April 2**

At least three individuals have retracted their endorsements of Ms. Pulido due to her comments on Free Republic. The first is York Township Trustee Moon Kahn, who released this letter to various outlets:

Dear Ms. Rosanna Pulido, In the tradition of Islamic forgiveness, while I still believe in pardoning you for pronouncing some hateful remarks against Muslims, assuming it might have happened in a moment of rage and ignorance, the continuous revelations of plethora of your provocative statements, which were completely unknown to me until a few days ago, delineate a disturbing mindset. Several community organizations that include Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Council of American-Islamic Relations, Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, Jewish Council of Urban Affairs, Priests for Justice for Immigrants, and other civic organizations and friends of mine, whose judgments I highly respect, have been referring to clippings of your quotes, published on blogs under the pseudonym of Chicagolady, demonstrate that while advocating your viewpoints you frequently transgressed the boundary of robust discussion and veered off to demonize and dehumanize the groups you wanted to oppose. Considering this transgression, which is antithetical to one of the core values and attributes of a leader, I experience deep anguish in continuing my endorsement, which I extended to you earlier without the knowledge of the newly revealed testimonials of yours. As such, I withdraw my endorsement for you for the Illinois’ 5th Congressional District seat and request you to remove the endorsement text and my picture off your website. Take care,

Moon Khan

York Township Trustee

Asian American Liaison of DuPage County Republican Party

The second retraction of support came from the Chicago News Bench, a conservative blog which was also one of the first to cover the issue of Ms. Pulido’s comments.

Rosanna, In spite of knowing that I very publicly pulled my support for your campaign, you maintain a link to my blog on your website at http://www.rosannapulido2009.com/ in your “Illinois Blogs” list. Please remove it immediately. For your reference, you have it listed (incorrectly) as “Rogers Park Bench.” I asked you on several occassions, prior to my un-endorsement of your campaign, to correct the name of my blog, which is NOT “Rogers Park Bench,” but is “Chicago News Bench.” You were not considerate enough to show me that courtesy, and now you compound that discourtesy by keeping a link to my blog on your site. That gives the false impression that I still support you, which I do not. (You cannot say that you don’t know that I un-endorsed you, as you and I have discussed it several times by phone and email. Remove all links and references to me and to my blog from all of your campaign websites, including any Facebook or MySpace pages maintained by you or by your campaign. (You did that for Mr. Moon Khan, York Township Trustee, Asian American Liaison of DuPage County Republican Party.) I note as well that you still have Right Not Wrong listed on your blogroll, in spite of the fact that blogger Chris Barkulis also pulled his support for you. Sincerely, Tom Mannis

Chicago News Bench

http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com

The third is another conservative blog, RightNotWrong.com. While RightNotWrong and Chicago News Bench both retracted their support last week, to keep things somewhat organized all three retractions are listed in this single update.

Some of you may have recently heard about the NBC 5 news report about Rosanna Pulido and her anonymous comments under the name Chicagolady on the Free Republic conservative message site. In light of the recent development of what those comments actually were, I cannot in good conscience back Ms. Pulido or her campaign. As much as I would like to see a Republican elected from the 5th during this special election, I don’t believe it should be someone marred by questionable activities in online forums. This is not a disagreement with what stance on the core conservative issues she has, but more of how she portrayed some of them. Candidates that have made comments bordering on racism do nothing good for the advancement of the Republican Party. On the contrary they set us back by giving fodder to the Democrats. For years the Democrats have tried to fool people into thinking that all Republicans are backward thinking racists and any little bit they can chomp on they exploit to prove this fallacy. Truth be told there are Republicans that are racist, but there are also Democrats that are racist. No party can insulate themselves from it because unfortunately racism is something that exists in America. Do I like it? No. That doesn’t mean I need to excuse it or stand with it just so my party may have a chance at winning any type of political office. This is not an endorsement of Democrat Machine candidate Mike Quiqley. What this district and the State of Illinois needs is a Republican representative that can stand above the Democratic Political Machine and be free of controversy. I look forward to the 2010 midterms where hopefully the Illinois Republican Party can put forth and fully support a strong, viable candidate for the 5th Congressional District.

**Update – March 31**

Various civil rights advocacy groups have held a press conference highlighting Ms. Pulido’s comments:

CHICAGO CONDEMNS HATE SPEECH BY IL GOP CANDIDATE

(CHICAGO, IL, 3/31/09) – A number of religious and civil rights groups today held a news conference to condemn intolerant and hateful remarks made by Rosanna Pulido, the GOP candidate for the 5th congressional district seat.

“Ms. Pulido’s statements under the blog moniker “Chicagolady” contain vicious remarks maligning groups such as Catholics, Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, and gays,” said Ahmed Rehab, Executive Director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago. “All Americans including Pulido are entitled to a free opinion; by the same logic, we are entitled to oppose bigotry, particularly from those seeking leadership positions within our country.”

Speakers at the news conference included Juan Salgado, Board President of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Reema Ahmad, Government Affairs Coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago; Junaid Afeef, Executive Director of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC); Jane Ramsey, Executive Director of Jewish Council of Urban Affairs; Father Larry Dowling from Priests for Justice for Immigrants; Shayla King, NAACP student chapter president, Loyola University of Chicago.

CONTACT: Catherine Salgado, Communications Director, ICIRR, E-Mail: csalgado@icirr.org, 312.332.7360 x 235; Reem Rahman, Communications Coordinator, CAIR-Chicago, 217.493.0912; E-Mail: communications@cairchicago.org

Additional information is available at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. They have requested a meeting with Illinois Republican Chairman Andrew McKenna to discuss Ms. Pulido’s comments and how they reflect on the Republican Party that supports her candidacy.

**Update – March 25**

Thanks to Jill Garvey at Imagine 2050 for doing additional investigation work into Ms. Pulido’s comments. Ms. Garvey has learned that one of her endorsers, a Mr. Moon Khan (who happens to be the first Muslim elected to a public office in Illinois) has emailed Ms. Pulido and extracted an apology from her – you can read the apology, and more information on the fallout from Ms. Pulido’s comments, at Imagine 2050.

**Minor Update – March 25**

A Free Republic poster has found a Chicago-area blog highlighting Ms. Pulido’s posting history (they also link to this blog) and has posted a thread about it at freerepublic.com. While Ms. Pulido has not yet posted in the thread, given the fact that she’s already gone to Free Republic for campaign advice and assistance illustrates how influential the message board is in her decision-making process – influence that one could assume would continue through her term as an elected official. A typical comment from the thread:

“How many Americans have illegal gangbangers killed here in the US?

Typical Lib maggot who refuses to see the truth…in his rush for Communism (you know, taking our money to fund the “entitled”) they forget the BILLIONS of cost of illegal immigration.”

**Update – March 24**

Ms. Pulido may find it interesting that, as the founder of the Illinois Minutemen, she has been touted as a “voice of reason” at the white supremacist site Stormfront.org. A screencap of the original post is here; if you’re not at work and don’t mind Stormfront showing up in your browser history, the original post is (NWS) here. (NWS) Stormfront.org also reposts an email from the Constitution Party where they mention working with Rosanna Pulido; screencap here, original link (NWS) here (NWS). Finally, and most recently, in a thread titled “Mexicans are a bigger problem than we think”, a Stormfront.org poster promotes Rosanna Pulido’s candidacy by calling her the “anti-invasion candidate” and encourages other Stormfront posters to look up her web site. Screencap here, original link (NWS) here (NWS). This connection fits the Anti-Defamation League’s findings that the Minutemen and various white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups have campaigned and worked alongside each other, even if no direct association exists.

**Update – March 23**

Ms. Pulido has posted on freerepublic.com asking if reproduction of Free Republic comments are “ok” – referencing this blog. If any visitors to this blog have the opportunity to ask Ms. Pulido about her comments on Free Republic, it may be worth asking a followup question about who (or where) she tends to go to for advice.

Here’s a quick reference to various posts made by Rosanna Pulido on FreeRepublic.com over the years. If you’ve never been to Free Republic, the fact that these posts inspired encouragement from other Freepers, rather than derision or outrage, should provide enough background.

Rosanna Pulido thinks Obama will sell black people into slavery.

Rosanna Pulido prefers illegal medication, and distrusts the FDA.

Rosanna Pulido will give her guns to liberals “bullets first”.

Rosanna Pulido says Muslims at prayer remind her of a dog “smelling buts”.

Rosanna Pulido is proud of being a “Bible-thumper” who tells people how to live their lives.

Rosanna Pulido promotes Minuteman Rick Biesada.

Rosanna Pulido thinks anti-war demonstrators are communists.

Rosanna Pulido calls gay men “fudge packers”…a lot.

Rosanna Pulido says offering amnesty to illegal immigrants will cause an African-American genocide.

Rosanna Pulido believes in gay indoctrination.

Rosanna Pulido believes in hanging politicians for treason when it comes to immigration.

Rosanna Pulido has been calling Obama “Osama” since 2004.

Rosanna Pulido thinks Matt Lauer is a menace to society because he’s a liberal.

Rosanna Pulido becomes enraged when she hears someone speaking Spanish.

Rosanna Pulido thinks stealing is part of Mexican culture.

Rosanna Pulido thinks that Mexicans are the “new Ku Klux Klan with the tan”.

Rosanna Pulido fearmongers about Muslim rapists.

This site is a work in progress, more posts will be added as they’re found.