“I RESEMBLE THAT REMARK”

3/1/09

The storied Fifth Congressional District of Illinois, the district of Rostenkowski, Flanagan, Blagojevich, and Emmanuel, will effectively select a new Congressman on Tuesday. Who’s going to win? No one knows. Reliable, independent polling is largely unavailable. State Representative John Fritchey has the support of most committeemen in the district. Alderman Patrick O’Connor of the 40th Ward has his powerful ward organization, and whatever support Mayor Daley can muster in the district, behind him. State Representative Sarah Feigenholtz and Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley split the independent, progressive vote between them and with labor Tom Geoghegan. So no one knows who will win, but it is highly unlikely to be anyone but the aforementioned four current officeholders.

What prompts me to address this race was a comment Alderman O’Connor made in an interview on an Irish radio show on WCEV-AM to host Sean Ginnelly. Ginnelly, obviously cognizant of the advantage that Irish names have on the ballot in Chicago (or anywhere in this country, for that matter), laughed as he asked O’Connor “Does the name help out at all?”

Alderman O’Connor replied “I’ve always been proud of it, so I don’t hide from it for sure.”

What an idiotic reply! Who in anything resembling his right mind would hide from a name like Patrick O’Connor, especially in a district in which Dan Rostenkowski (whose surname surely didn’t hurt him in that district for LOTS of reasons, not least of which is the large number of Polish-American voters who live there) was defeated by a guy named Michael Patrick Flanagan? Alderman O’Connor is either too obtuse to see that Mr. Ginnelly was joking or too obsequious and timid to take any kind of risk by giving a light-hearted reply to Mr. Ginnelly’s obvious softball.

A personal point: If we ever move back into the city, any district in which people with names like Rostenkowski, Flanagan, Quigley, O’Connor, Feighenholtz, and Geoghegan are, or were, politically viable is a district in which I would want to live. Okay, so it’s not the 19th ward, but it still sounds like a great place despite that obvious shortcoming.