It’s over for Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard.
The embattled leader, who has been the center of allegations of chaos, controversy, and corruption for the last four years, was ousted Tuesday in the village’s Democratic Primary election.
Fed up voters elected candidate Jason House, who won a landslide victory, taking nearly 88 percent of the vote to Henyard’s 12 percent.
House’s extremely large margin was a huge statement expressed by frustrated Dolton voters who had grown tired of the negative headlines, toxic Village meetings and Henyard’s flamboyant leadership style as mayor of the predominately Black community.
Despite the extensive news coverage and desire to remove Henyard, voter turnout was just 27 percent; 4,446 of Dolton’s 16,506 registered voters went to the polls Tuesday.
Henyard will not only lose her mayoral seat in Dolton, but she will also likely lose her job as Thornton Township Supervisor. She must run as a write-in candidate for the position in the Township’s April election. In January, a judge rejected her request to stay on the ballot following the Democratic nomination of Illinois State Senator Napoleon Harris as the Party’s candidate of choice.
Write-in candidates rarely win, but Henyard’s unpopularity in the Township may be the biggest challenge she faces in winning a second term there.
Until the very end, Henyard was the defiant Dolton mayor who believed she would be elected to a second term after she won 82 percent of the vote in 2021.
But this time around, after a rocky freshman term that included a federal investigation, Henyard lost to House, a former supporter who ran on the campaign theme “Clean House.”
On election night, House walked out to a recording of rapper Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance of “Not Like Us” and danced his way to the podium, where he addressed his supporters.
“We faced four years of intimidation, four years of failure, and tonight is the new day for the village of Dolton,” House said.
Henyard did not show up at her election night watch party and did not concede to her opponent. Only hours before the polls closed, she had told ABC7 Chicago that she would win by a “landslide.”
House’s campaign platform proposed a community benefit agreement between the Village of Dolton and the Dolton Park District to improve park facilities and ramp up recreational opportunities for residents. In addition, he pledged to address infrastructure issues and resolve negotiations of the village’s firefighter’s contract.
But it was Henyard’s unpopularity during her term as mayor that helped House win the Primary.
Last June, Henyard canceled an interview with the Chicago Crusader. In January, during a live interview on radio station WVON 1690, Henyard compared herself to Jesus Christ and civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who would not give up her bus seat to a white woman in 1955. Henyard said she was not going to give up her mayoral seat to her political opponents. However, most of the Village Board and residents wanted her gone as she made unflattering headlines in broadcast and print media across the country and the world.
In a 2022 referendum, Dolton residents voted to recall Henyard, but an Illinois Appellate Court ruled the referendum was illegal, allowing Henyard to remain in office.
During her first term as mayor, Henyard was a defendant in a lawsuit, and the FBI investigated her leadership. She has been accused of using taxpayers’ dollars to pay for expensive clothing, meals at high-end steakhouses, and five-star hotel stays.
The Village Board in 2024 agreed to pay former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to investigate Henyard’s spending.
According to Lightfoot’s investigation on the Amazon website, more than $50,000 was spent on ice skates and artificial ice tiles for a winter rink. Lightfoot said those purchases violated Dolton’s purchasing policy. The investigation alleged that receipts for purchases made using the Village’s six known credit cards were “rarely provided.”
Lightfoot’s report stated that in April 2022, Dolton’s general fund balance was $5.61 million. By May 2024, it had fallen to a deficit of $3.65 million.
Lightfoot examined village credit card transactions over a nine-month period. In 2023, card charges amounted to more than $779,000.
In March 2024, Fenia Dukes, the mayor’s former assistant, filed a civil lawsuit against Henyard and Village Trustee Andrew Holmes following a taxpayer-funded economic development trip to Las Vegas. There, Dukes alleged Holmes had non-consensual sex with her after dinner and a stroll on the Las Vegas strip.
Dukes accuses Holmes of assault and alleges Henyard retaliated against her after she reported the alleged encounter through Officer Byron Miles, who was part of Henyard’s security detail. He was demoted after he reported the alleged assault to the mayor. Miles has also filed a lawsuit against Henyard.
Henyard is also being sued by former police chief Robert Collins, who alleges she fired him in 2023 because she believed his wife was one of her political adversaries.