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Just when you thought that the hare-brained schemes of the Democrats who run our beleaguered big cities couldn’t get goofier, Chicago has passed a new doozy. The Windy City is raising hotel taxes to, get this, increase tourism.
Ordinance 2026-0022544 will raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19% from the rate of 17.5%, with the proceeds going to an organization called Choose Chicago, which will use the cash for tourism marketing campaigns.
The top target on Choose Chicago’s wish list of events is the 2028 Democratic National Convention, and now, everyone who books a room in Second City gets to chip in a bit on the effort.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson listens as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference to address President Donald Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops into the city on August 25, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
It’s quite a thing: Only a leftist Democrat could possibly think that making it more expensive to visit Chicago will increase tourism. Maybe they should throw in a complimentary mugging to sweeten the deal.
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Now, everyday working-class tourists and business travelers will be paying directly out of pocket to pay for a campaign run by Democrats to attract the Democratic Party to town.
What we are really seeing at play here is not so much an effort to woo travelers to Chicago, but rather a kind of Tammany Hall-style patronage program in which the Democrats who run the city hand out expensive jobs to their friends.
This is, on a somewhat smaller scale, is exactly the type of scandal that helped to sink Kristi Noem’s tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, after she allegedly gave advertising contracts worth hundreds of millions to those close to her and her reported paramour, Corey Lewandowski.
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Let’s be honest here, who are the Democrats who run Chicago likely to hire to attract the DNC? Probably exactly the same people who make their political ads.
It is telling that this costly effort to sell Chicago as a travel destination is not focused on the average family taking a trip to one of our nation’s great cities, but rather, on conventioneers racking up more hotel points.
The “Greetings from Chicago” mural brightens a street in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood on March 30, 2018. (Patrick Gorski/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
It is the far-left Democratic Party in a nutshell: working class families paying the bills for the liberal elites.
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It is not just higher hotel taxes that keep the average Joe from packing up the minivan and heading to Chicago with the wife and kids. It’s that our urban centers are fast becoming playgrounds for the wealthy instead of family-friendly environments.
In big blue cities like Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and Philadelphia, one expects to walk over half-dead vagrants with needles in their arms, not a sight that any parent cherishes explaining to a young one.
But for the convention class, it’s no bother at all, they just step into their Uber X on the way to the steakhouse and fly right past the wrong sort.
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Chicago is sending the same message to working class Americans that Democrats all over the country are, that travel and tourism is not for you, that you should stay at home, watch Netflix and order UberEats while the rich people frolic.
Can Democrats just one time pass a city law that makes things less expensive for the middle class?
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The Left’s concept of governance seems to be to make everything basically free for the poor, and immigrants, show some thigh to the wealthy, and stick the ever-shrinking middle class with the bill.
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But don’t worry, the consultant class will do very well in this deal, as Choose Chicago offers them taxpayer-funded perks to bring their conventions which also pay the tax that goes right back to giving them perks.
Nice work if you can get it.
The family road trip is a staple of middle America, and Chicago, with its museums and fabulous architecture, should be the jewel of such trips. But the government of the city doesn’t seem interested in that. After all, those families have no political connections.
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If Chicago scores the DNC then I will likely be there, my company paying the new hotel taxes as I schmooze with expensive suits sipping pricey martinis. But if I want to take my son for a week, that just got more expensive.
It is the same old story with the Democrats, always taking money from hard-working Americans to hand over to their friends, and now, everyone who visits Chicago gets to chip in.
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