5-Apr-20 – The coronavirus may not be as serious a threat as we’re being told, says the River North resident running for United States Congress, and it’s time to re-open the country for business.

“The medical industry, media, and politicians are trying to undermine the president and country into believing the coronavirus is a threat,” says Tommy Hanson, the Republican candidate challenging 5th District Congressman Mike Quigley. “Their motive is to take down America in order to elect a Democrat president and profit off of this fake cloud looming over and destroying America.”

Hanson (left) defeated Dr. Kimball Ladien in the March 17 Republican primary, receiving 81 percent of votes cast.

On January 30, he said at a candidate forum in Elmhurst that former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat serving a 14-year prison sentence at the time for soliciting bribes, should be pardoned. Less than a month later, on February 18, President Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence.

Estimates vary of the number of people who will die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, with the grimmest guesses exceeding two million people.

“It would be far more important to get back to business as usual than the estimated two million people who will catch and die from this virus,” said Hanson.

Though admittedly harsh, Hanson says the alternatives would be worse, including an increase in crime. “Sophisticated break-ins...will turn into common, everyday looting and killings from the anarchy that is coming.”

As for the City of Chicago closing its parks and lakefront, Hanson says if he was the United States Representative for the 5th District, he would not have allowed it. Such places, he says, are needed “for mental health purposes.”

Hanson, a commercial real estate broker and condominium unit owner, was the Republican candidate in the November 2018 general election for 5th District Representative. He received 23.3 percent of the votes, losing to Quigley, who received 76.6 percent. Quigley has represented the 5th District, covering parts of Cook and DuPage counties, since 2009.