Steve Cortes, former Senior Spokesman and Strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and National Spokesman of the Ron DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC, joined Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss his family’s move from Chicago, Illinois to Chattanooga.
Cortes, who moved to the Volunteer State two and a half years ago from Chicago, called himself a “refugee,” adding, “I am so thrilled to be a Tennessean.”
“I have to tell you, you know, a place where, look, you’re always going to find your crackpots, you’re always going to find some, you know, some crazy liberals. But in general, right, this is a place where common sense still rules, where God and guns matter and where the constitution still has relevance,” Cortes explained. “And it is frankly, for people like me, a refuge, you know, and we are refugees. I mean, we are sojourners, you know, in ways, who are seeking a place where we can still live a life for ourselves and for our families that has relevance and meaning. And it’s just incredible. I can’t say enough about how much I love the people, the topography, the culture – everything about being in Tennessee.”
Despite saying he “loves Chicago to my core,” Cortes noted he and his family “needed to get to red America.”
“I will always be, in my heart and soul, a Chicagoan. Chicago is the most wonderful city in the country that has been absolutely ruined by leftist leadership,” Cortes added.
Responding to a report Leahy cited about Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson being hospitalized for “anxiety” due to the immigration crisis in Chicago – a so-called “sanctuary city” – Cortes said he has “no such sympathy” for Johnson.
“As a human being, I would like to empathize with somebody who’s having such troubles that they have to go to the hospital. When it comes to Mayor Brandon Johnson, I have no such sympathy because of what he has done to the city. By the way, it’s almost impossible to imagine that you could go from Mayor Lori Lightfoot to a worse chief executive – he’s worse,” Cortes said.
Cortes went on to explain that the mass exodus of “sensible people,” including himself, led to Mayor Johnson getting elected in Chicago.
“And to the exodus of sensible people from blue jurisdictions to places like Tennessee and Texas and Florida, I think this is part of why Brandon Johnson was able to win. Because sensible people like me, anybody who’s able, has left,” Cortes said.
In a more broader scope, Cortes warned that the policies ruining Chicago now are a forewarning of what is yet to come for the rest of the nation, as the Windy City is the “literal and metaphorical heart of America.”
“Chicago, historically, has been the literal and metaphorical heart of America, right? I mean, it is the beating heart of America. I used to tell people, I did a lot of international business in my past life before I got into politics. I was in the hedge fund world, mostly covering hedge funds in Europe. And I would tell them throughout the nineties and early 2000s, when I was in the Wall Street world, I would say, “listen, you know, you come to New York and Washington, you haven’t seen America.” You need to go to Chicago, right? You need to go to the heart of America again, the literal and metaphorical heart. And that was the reality, I think. And if the heart is diseased, if the heart is sick like that, it is a warning sign for the rest of the country. I often say, believe me, Chicago is the canary in the mine for where the rest of the country can go,” Cortes said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
