Dupage Policy Journal

Former Downers Grove Clerk candidate Mary Lemanski is under fire after a series of tweets about the recent vehicular attack on a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. 

Critics have accused Lemanski of minimizing the deaths and injuries of innocent bystanders to make a political point. Lemanski responded to the criticism with a self-involved tweet. 

“Nobody cared about me like my whole life,” she tweeted. “My mom used to leave me for hours at a time alone in my play pen. I’ve put out music for 20 years, nobody gave a shit. Why do people all of a sudden care about my stupid remark? I can’t believe my 15 minutes of fame is for this shit.”

Lemanski ran as a Democrat for Downers Grove Township Clerk this year, notching just over 45% of the vote in a loss to Lorraine Grimsby. 

The original criticism was in regard to a series of tweets Lemanski sent out in the wake of the incident in Waukesha and relating it to the recent acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year. 

“Living in Wisconsin, he probably felt threatened,” Lemsanki tweeted about Darrell Edward Brooks, the driver in the Waukesha incident who reportedly plowed into a group of holiday parade-goers shortly after Rittenhouse's acquittal.

“I’m sure he didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Lemanski tweeted about Rittenhouse’s reasoning for carrying a weapon to defend local businesses at the Kenosha protests. “He came to help people.”

Brooks has a lengthy criminal background, having reportedly been arrested at least 25 times. Brooks has been deemed a domestic terrorist after Facebook comments were discovered in which he discusses killing white people. 

At the time of the incident, he was wanted in Milwaukee on a felony charge for which he did not show up in court. 

Lemanski was listed as a “DuPage Dems Difference Maker” on the official DuPage Democratic Party website. 

That listing has since been removed but is available here. 

She was first brought in to manage social media and blog posts for the DuPage Democrats during the 2018 campaign season and continued as the party’s social media manager. 

“I continue to manage the DuPage Democrats’ Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as help to do work on the website,” she said last year in a post to the DuPage Democratic Party website. “I recently volunteered to be a precinct committee person and have been busy collecting signatures to get Democrats on the ballot in 2020. I’m appointed to Downers Grove – Precinct 2, where I live, and I will be on the ballot myself to be an Elected Precinct Committee person on March 17, 2020.”

Her Twitter account notes she is “Former social media director, Democratic Party of DuPage County, IL/Actress at Second City.”