T MINUS 9

2/13/11

My thoughts on Chicago’s mayoral election, nine days before the 2/22 first, and maybe final, round of that contest:

The race between Gery Chico and Rahm Emanuel is a manifestation, perhaps the culmination, of a two developments in Chicago politics that have been going on for at least the last fifty years and which are reflected in my books, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge: the shift in power from the old ward based machines to a new machine centered on the fifth floor of City Hall and the demise of either type of political machine in favor of mass-media based political campaigns. Gery Chico is running with the support of a number of powerful ward organizations that form a geographic ring, with some interruptions (most notably the 19th Ward Organization, which is little more than an arm of the Daley organization), around the city from the lake on the Indiana border to the lake on the Evanston border. Rahm Emanuel is running with a huge media budget and the support of the Daley family and its minions. Rahm Emanuel is winning big and might, some say probably will, win outright next Tuesday with no need for a runoff. While the old ward based machines drew some hope from the victory they provided last Fall for their nominal chieftain, Joe Berrios, in his run for Cook County Assessor over Forest Claypool, who can best be described as a 2/3 scale Rahm Emanuel, the tides of history have more or less finished them off, at least in high profile races like the mayoral election.

There is also the Carol Moseley Braun conundrum. Some will say that her being an also-ran in this race is a reflection of the end of racial politics in this city. There may be something to that, but there is more to the increasingly obvious fact that Ms. Braun is a miserable, horrible, incompetent, caricature of a self-absorbed diva, or worse, who not only has no even remotely discernible qualifications to be mayor and has also apparently lost the one positive she brought to this contest: her former skill as a campaigner. Note I said “campaigner,” not “candidate,” two different things. She is a joke. A stronger black candidate (Danny Davis, for example, or even James Meeks) would still be in the race, and largely, and justifiably, on the basis of his or her race.

Ms. Braun presents a conundrum for Gery Chico. He wants to come out ahead of her for second place but doesn’t want her to implode to the point at which Rahm Emanuel wins outright on 2/22; as black support leaves Ms. Braun, it is more likely to go to Rahm Emanuel than to Gery Chico. So Mr. Chico has to go after Ms. Braun without going after her too vociferously, a very difficult task.

As loyal readers know, I am quite surprised that Rahm Emanuel may be on the verge of winning outright next Tuesday. As I wrote on 9/7/10, the day Mayor Daley announced he would not run for reelection (See my 9/7/10 post “LONG LIVE THE KING!”):

The big talk is about Rahm Emanuel. While I don’t like to make predictions, this is one I will make: Forget Rahm Emanuel for mayor of Chicago. He’s been away a long time and never was much of a power in this town. I say this even after saying that money wins elections.

What changed? I had no idea that the Daley family would go so thoroughly into the tank for Mr. Emanuel. They provided the organization, some troops on the ground, and even more money from the business interests in this city that put Mr. Emanuel into the position he currently enjoys.

An interesting question is why the Daley family, and their supporters in the 11th Ward, the 19th Ward, and most importantly, their loyal acolytes in the business community, is so enthusiastic for Mr. Emanuel. The obvious answer is that the city badly needs federal money to get itself out of the financial jam for which Mr. Daley is largely responsible and to keep Daley’s supporters and friends at least decently ladled with no-bid and lightly bid contracts. Mr. Emanuel, as a close friend of President Obama and other powers-that-be in the Imperial City, is seen as most likely to be able to extract that money from the federal government. The flaw in this line of reasoning is that the federal government itself is pretty much out of money and the new Congress is in no mood to borrow more money to dispense to the political organization that controls Chicago, but hope springs eternal in those who have made their fortunes through their close association with the people who have controlled City Hall for the last 21 years or so.

An alternative, and probably accompanying, theory regarding the Daleys’ support of Mr. Emanuel involves the psychology of Richard II. According to this theory, Mr. Daley is not nearly as proud of his Bridgeport roots as was his father. He far prefers the near north side and north shore crowd to the types of people who live in the wards of the city. He actually believes that the aforementioned “better” crowd actually likes him for him, garbled speech, still rough-hewn Bridgeport mannerisms, lack of a degree from what is considered up there to be a “better” institution, and all, not for what he has been able as mayor to do for this crowd. He actually believes that, when he is out of the mayor’s office, this crowd will still like him because they like Rich Daley, not Mayor Richard M. Daley. (Those of us who came out of the neighborhoods and once managed large pools of institutional money can relate to this feeling, but I digress.) Since Rahm Emanuel is the archetype of the “better” type of person, who grew up on the North Shore and lives in one of the gentrified neighborhoods that line our north side lake shore, it is natural that the Daleys would back him rather than a guy who grew up in one of the neighborhoods they’d rather forget. So Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle could forget about Mr. Daley’s support no matter what they did; they simply are not among the glitterati to which Mr. Daley either aspires or of which he genuinely believes he is a part. This is perhaps a harsh assessment, but some people believe it. Once again, what I’ll think about and what I’ll believe are two different things.

So how is this going to turn out? As I have said since this race started, it is foolish to make predictions at this time, or at any time, about this race. I will only point out a quote in the Chicago Tribune this morning in the Tribune (Sunday, 2/23, page 7) from Gery Chico:

“We have a lot of good friends in the wards that are working alongside (sic) us.”

And a quote in the same article from a “Chico adviser”:

“It’s a street battle. Get your people to the polls.”

These two are obviously talking their position, but please note that the unions are also largely behind Chico and the cops and firefighters have no love for Rahm Emanuel, largely because he is seen, increasingly correctly, as a surrogate for the Daleys. That combination of ward organization, union, and cop and firefighter support would have made this election a foregone conclusion thirty years ago. That it hasn’t had a remotely similar effect this year just shows how much the politics of this city have evolved; again, see my books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics.