Pointing to lost contracts for conventions in Chicago, Republican Illinois comptroller candidate William J. Kelly is calling for the resignation of Juan Ochoa, chief executive of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority.
The authority has come under fire recently after several organizations pulled out of negotiations to hold conventions in the city.
In just November, both the Society of Plastics Industry Inc. and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society announced they were holding upcoming conventions elsewhere, and officials at the National Restaurant Association said they were considering a similar move.
All three groups cited high costs of holding a show at McCormick Place, and observers have widely pointed to the cost of the city's union contracts as the cause of collapsed talks.
But Kelly says Chicago is losing conventions because it has another problem.
"It's a political-corruption, pay-to-play image problem," he says. "Blaming the union guy for doing his job is like blaming the fireman for the fire."
Kelly's position is an unusual one for a Republican since his party generally distances itself from support for organized labor. But his argument does sync with GOP members who continue to attack Democratic appointees leftover from the administration of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
"I've never met Juan Ochoa. He might be a nice guy. He might be a very capable guy," Kelly told me. "But when you look at this rogues' gallery of political appointees, this is really at the heart of … political corruption."
Ochoa did not immediately respond to a request for comment through the authority's press office.
Kelly compared the situation in Chicago to Aruba, a popular vacation destination that has stoked fears among Americans after a young woman disappeared on the island just north of Venezuela.
"How many people would like to go to Aruba, but they believe that if they go there, they will never be seen again?" he asked. "What are the chances that that would happen? Probably about zero percent. But a lot of people have canceled their trips to Aruba."
Similarly, he says, organizations want to keep conventions out of Chicago because they fear their event being tainted with a sense of political corruption.
"A lot of people don't come to Chicago because they believe that the second they get off the plane in Chicago, they're going to get the political shakedown."