More than a day after it was revealed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s former communications director was terminated amid allegations of sexual harassment, misogyny, racism and other abusive behavior, the mayor said Wednesday evening his administration does not tolerate such behavior but shed no other light on the scandal.
“While my administration does not comment on specific personnel issues, I want to be clear to the people of Chicago that any form of intolerance, sexism, antisemitism, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, or abuse is completely unacceptable in my administration,” Johnson wrote in a statement to the Tribune.
The Tribune reported Tuesday that Ronnie Reese, a longtime friend of the mayor’s who headed the mayor’s press shop after Johnson took office in May 2023, was terminated last month following three internal complaints over alleged behavior that ranged from unwanted physical contact to making disparaging comments about marginalized groups and intimidation tactics.
A former spokesperson for the Chicago Teachers Union, Reese also was the press secretary for Johnson’s mayoral campaign last year.
In his statement, Johnson did not say how much he knew about Reese’s alleged behavior before Reese’s termination. Current mayoral spokesperson Erin Connelly did not comment Wednesday evening about what the mayor knew about Reese’s behavior.
The statement also didn’t provide the administration’s response to details in the complaints that the mayor’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, was made aware of many of the allegations but didn’t address them swiftly enough.
The records show Reese kept his job for months even after a city human resources investigator notified Pacione-Zayas of the formal complaints about Reese’s alleged behavior this summer. When she did organize a meeting with Reese’s staffers, she faced pushback for allegedly suggesting “peace circles” and “restorative justice” for his behavior.
Reese on Tuesday “strongly and unequivocally” denied all the accusations made against him, which the Tribune obtained through a public records request for Reese’s personnel file. The three complaints detailed a culture of fear and retribution in Reese’s office because he indicated that “he was ‘untouchable’ and couldn’t be fired.”
“There are many, many others who know my character, and who know the truth,” Reese said in the statement. “I stand confident in that truth as I continue to prioritize my wife, my children and the health of my family in the next chapter of my career.”
An administration source said Wednesday that it had begun the process of placing Reese on the city’s do-not-hire list, which would ban any city department or agency from hiring him as long as he remained on that list.
Internal complaints regarding Reese’s behavior began in the summer of 2023 after three press office staffers were fired and then placed on the city’s do-not-hire list, an unusually contentious and punitive move, after they complained about how Reese and another top Johnson staffer treated them. Two of the ex-employees, both women, remain on that list now, but a male staffer successfully petitioned to be removed.
The administration source said Wednesday that the mayor’s office had initiated a process to remove any individual Reese placed on the do-not-hire list from that list but did not share a timeline.
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