Anthony Williams' GOP Senate Campaign Pushes To 'Make America Healthy'

CHICAGO — There hasn't been a spotlight focused on who might survive the seven-way Republican primary for U.S. Senate from Illinois that insiders believe only allows the "winner" to get clobbered by incumbent Democrat Tammy Duckworth in November.

Voters aren't paying much attention, either. A recent poll found 66 percent of expected Republican voters were still undecided in early June.

For me, there's only one reason to care: the candidacy of the Rev. Anthony Williams.

Williams is running on one issue: Making America healthy. "That means addressing civilian violence as a public health crisis, pushing our nation to the center and remaining calm, cool and steady," he said Wednesday.

Williams' "singular, worthy quest," as the Tribune editorial board called it, often gets dismissed because he doesn't belong to a political tribe. He's made failed runs for office in Democratic, Libertarian, Green and Republican Party primary elections.

The one thing that's constant about Williams is his admirable unwillingness to quit.

Williams wasn't running for office when he "put violence on trial" in the Illinois General Assembly by pushing House Bill 158 as a civilian, and won. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law the legislation — inspired by Williams' advocacy after the slaying of his son — that directs state funding for mental health and economic development to parts of the state plagued by violence.

After that win, Williams continued to push lawmakers to declare gun violence a public health crisis.

When Pritzker signed an executive order that did just that, and promised $250 million in funding for violence prevention over three years, Williams warned that Illinoisans were falling for a political sleight of hand ripped from former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's playbook.

And he was right.

MORE ON PATCH: Pritzker Violence Executive Order Smells Like A Campaign Promise

Like New York state, which didn't swiftly spend money earmarked for treating violence as a public health crisis, we learned in April that the Pritzker administration had spent just one-tenth of 1 percent of that pledged federal cash — a grand total of $56,764, thanks to the reporting of WBEZ's Patrick Smith.

That news didn't shock Williams, because he's rooted in communities plagued by severe poverty and prolific violence.

From street level, it's clear that politicians react to the symptoms of violence — bloodshed and body counts — without making efforts to rectify the discriminating policies, disinvestment and neglect at the root cause of so much shooting.

That's not a talking point you might expect from a guy trying to win a Republican primary. But after Williams told me about his experiences participating in candidate forums, maybe the perspective of a level-headed conservative Black preacher is what some people didn't know they wanted to hear.

While he endured too many questions about the political past — Was the 2020 election stolen? Did you vote for Trump? — Williams stayed focused on his desire to advocate for a healthier American society.

"Some of these folks are crazy, Nazi-talking Trump-ites," Williams told me Wednesday. "But I always start by saying to everyone, 'If you love America, raise your hand.' Because if we all love America, we have to get our country healthy."

Tackling the root causes of violence tops his list, and part of that means pushing for the federal government to pay reparations for slavery, which the pastor said he has made clear during candidate forums.

"I tell 'em, 'Reagan gave reparations to the [100,000] Japanese' people incarcerated in internment camps during WWII," Williams said. "I mean, come on, the most violence in this country was American slavery. We need to have reparations for slavery and have that over with. It will create generational wealth and stimulate the economy. … And I'll tell you what, I was received well from white Republicans."

My gut tells me some of them were just being polite.

Still, I think the nearly two-thirds of likely Republican voters who haven't decided whom to back in Tuesday's primary should take a closer look at Williams' track record pushing for governments to invest in making America healthy for once.

Maybe some will decide that seeing a Black pastor from Chicago debate Duckworth will be more entertaining than someone pushing stale partisan rhetoric that's sure to keep her in office.

Whatever the case, I know this about Pastor Williams: Losing won't stop him.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.

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