The economy and immigration have emerged as top issues on voters' minds this election cycle,
so much so that they're causing some voters to switch parties.
Antony caught up with former Chicago Democrats who now say they plan to vote Republican.
T.O. Hardiman, better known as Mr. Ceasefire, is the president of Violence Interrupters.
It's a Chicago-based group that mediates between gangs to foster peace on the streets.
Hardiman twice ran for governor of Illinois, both times as a Democrat,
but he says he felt silence when he opposed some party policies.
He now plans to vote for candidate Trump. As someone who's worked with gangs for years,
he says legislation is being applied in the wrong places.
A major hot-button issue is gun control, right? I support the Second Amendment because it's not
the legal gun owners that are out here shooting and killing everybody, right?
So somewhere along the way, the system is failed when it comes down to intercepting
the illegal gun trafficking, right? But that's not the only reason Hardiman
says he'll be voting Republican. Like millions of other voters,
he says illegal immigration needs to be urgently addressed.
Another thing, the illegal immigrant situation, okay? You had about 66,000 homeless people already
living in Chicago before the illegal immigrants arrived in Chicago, but their priority became
supporting the illegal immigrants. That's not right. Look out for the people here first.
Another voter who made the switch to Republican is Dr. Cornel Darden Jr.
Once a Democratic voter, Dr. Darden is now one of the leaders of the Illinois Black
Republican Caucus. He says many of its members voted for President Biden in the last election,
but after witnessing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration spending,
they now say they're voting for Trump. A lot of these people are at the city
council meetings in Chicago all the time. Mayor Johnson just posted that we have a
half a billion dollar shortfall, but he spent a half a billion dollars on migrants.
So now he's considering ways to raise revenues and taxes from the citizens who he's not taking care
of. The single biggest issue in Chicago right now that everybody's talking about
is the migrant crisis. It's causing a huge problem here in Chicago.
Darden has a message to Republicans who want to win the votes of Black Americans.
Come talk to these people. These people are regular people. They are Americans. Many of
their families have been here for 200 years or more. So these aren't immigrants by any
stretch of the imagination. These are true blood Americans, and they just want to be heard,
and they want people to reach out. Charles Williams of the Ward 6
Republican Committee also recently switched parties. He says voting Democrat in 2020 was
a big mistake. Williams says the Democrats' policies do not help the homeless people of
Chicago. Violence has gone up, and the economy has suffered.
We're a smorgasbord of smart and capable individuals. We don't need anyone else to
help us. We need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get the job done.
We need more businesses. We need more people that's into the job industry. We need more
trades in the community. And I absolutely feel that Trump has to answer for that.
Williams also mentioned some of the legislation on social issues Democrats passed,
which caused him to switch parties.
Allowing children to come to school and make a decision whether they want to be a boy or a girl,
and parents don't have say so on that. These are the things that made me change
my viewpoint. That's absolutely ridiculous to me, and I will never accept that.
The Democratic National Convention was just held in Chicago.
