It takes a whole lotta hypocrisy to cast yourself as a supporter of the Occupy movement, champion of the little guy and foe of the 1% while owning three homes and pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in pay and benefits. Welcome to the con being offered to Chicago voters as they consider teachers union president Karen Lewis as candidate for Chicago mayor. (She is currently leading incumbent Rahm Emanuel handily.) Dan Mihalopoulos and Chris Fusco report in the Chicago Sun-Times:

She has ripped Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a tool of corporate Chicago, labeled him “Mayor 1%” and described herself as “not egotistical or rich.”

Lewis isn’t as wealthy as Emanuel, a multimillionaire who made his fortune during a short stint as an investment banker. But she makes more than $200,000 a year and has an ownership interest in three homes, records show.

That includes vacation homes in Hawaii and in the upscale “Harbor Country” area of southwestern Michigan, where Emanuel has a second home, property records show.

Pretty impressive property portfolio for a populist. I am all for using Alinsky on leftists and forcing them to live up to their espoused beliefs. Just as social conservatives get eviscerated when caught in sexual escapades, lefties who live high on the hog while challenging the rich ought to be called out on their hypocrisy.

Last week, Lewis put the odds at “50-50” she will run.

A recent poll done for Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times politics portal, gave Lewis a 9-percentage-point lead over Emanuel in a hypothetical mayoral matchup.

In the wake of the 2012 teachers’ strike and a record number of school closings last year, a Lewis campaign for mayor appears poised to key on growing income disparity in Chicago. The teachers union leader already has called for raising taxes on the richest to fund education.

Call me a cynic, but Lewis is never going to worry about where her next meal will come from, or how she will pay for medical care, or how she will be able to afford retirement. For the governing class, rhetoric about the poor is just lip service.