Move over Mr. Hearst, there’s a new newspaper mogul in town

At his height, William Randolph Hearst controlled 28 newspapers. Illinois conservative activist Dan Proft is making a strong run at toppling the titan of newsprint with his blizzard of new papers ending up in voters’ mailboxes.

I refer to publications Chicago City Wire, Will County Gazette and the one clogging my mailbox, DuPage Policy Journal. They’re pretty slick, catching my eye for a look see. I was jolted back to reality when I realized these papers were simply phony political ads for gubernatorial candidate Darrin Bailey disguised as legitimate newspapers.

Worse, they represent the lowest form of political pandering. Promoting the election of Darrin Bailey over JB Pritzker this November, they focus primarily on the specious charge Pritzker has unleashed a crime wave upon peaceful Illinoisans with his bail and other long overdue criminal justice reform. Proft’s ludicrous charge ignores the fact the reforms don’t even become effective till next year. Apparently, Proft has ESP.

When it comes to printing pictures of the alleged criminals Pritzker is flooding Illinois’ streets with, white folks need not apply. They’re virtually all black.

Besides Pritzker, many in law enforcement and criminal justice reform, rightly call these phony rags out for the unseemly stereotyping of blacks and pandering to voters’ worst fears with racist memes. There is no reasoned discussion crime or any critical issues of state governance.

When Pritzker alluded to Proft’s racist memes as racist, Proft responded with his typical infantilism, saying “It’s like being called ugly by a frog”. Proft’s previous juvenile Pritzker insult was directed at complaints he darkened Mayor Lightfoot’s skin color to accentuate her blackness in a TV ad: “We did nothing to her pigmentation just as we did nothing to the pigmentation of our pasty blowhard of a governor.”

While Bill Hearst’s record of 28 papers is likely safe, he’s just been dethroned as King of the Yellow Journalists by Daniel K. Proft.