Daley won't run for re-election (Chicago)

As a former Illinois resident now living far away enough to not have heard about this, I'm envious of the Chi-town news reporters.

Chaos makes for great copy, and the power scramble after Daley retires will be epic.

Somewhere, a Harold Washington is out there ... and who knows? The next mayor might even be Latino.

Just as long as it's not Luis "the worm" Gutierrez.

 

Ha. I was joking, but this guy is serious:


Richard Daley’s decision to retire as mayor of Chicago at the end of his term has thrown the city into a minor panic. After two decades in office, Daley is often credited with transforming Chicago from a racially polarized Rustbelt disaster to a flourishing global metropolis. Though widely admired for his vision and effectiveness, Daley has also been called out for his authoritarian streak, a pale but unmistakable reflection of the notoriously thuggish methods employed by his father in the same office. With Daley fading from the scene, there is no clear successor to inherit his patronage networks. And so there is a rare opportunity for the right candidate to build a new Chicago dynasty, and to set the city on a new course. So far, speculation has centered on Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s hotheaded chief of staff, who has told anyone who’ll listen for years that he intends to succeed Mayor Daley. But as President Obama struggles on the national political scene, he should give serious thought to resigning from office and running for mayor of Chicago himself.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-08/chicago-mayor-race-obama-should-run/

 

Bob Cook makes good points about the City not looking for someone to clean it up, only to divvy up the pie the right way, but with the pie shrinking instead of growing, that's going to be a tough call.

When New York Republicans were looking to oust Mario Cuomo in 1994, they basically sketched out a profile of the type of candidate that could beat him and then found someone to fit the profile. They found George Pataki and he went on to beat Cuomo.

With the current mood, the Republicans have their best opportunity to compete for City Hall, but with no elected officials to choose from, there's no obvious candidate.

And while I'm not sure the Party is even organized enough to find and recruit a credible challenger (D'Amato organized the search that lead to Pataki being chosen), I would look to find someone who would fit one of three potential profiles:

1.) The Multi-Millionaire CEO. A Chicago version of Mike Bloomberg. Someone who can self finance. Can spend tons of money introducing himself to voters and can hire the best political consultants. Someone who can tout their management experience and their business experience. They've created jobs & grown a business.

Unfortunately, I can't think of anyone who fits this profile. Everyone I can think of is a big time Dem, lives in the suburbs, or is too old.

Maybe Sam Zell will give it a go. (Kidding.)

2.) The common sense local businessman. Chicago's version of Denver's John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper is the (Democratic) Denver Mayor currently running for Governor of Colorado. He was formerly a restauranteur who was active in the redevelopment of the LoDo area surrounding the ball park.

They'd run on their record as a small businessman (or woman), their record of creating jobs, and their experience dealing with the City bureaucracy.

I don't have anyone in mind here either. We've got plenty of successful restauranteurs. But I'm not sure that someone like Rick Bayless (who I'd bet is a liberal) would be interested or viable.

3.) The corruption fighter. Chicago's own Rudy Giuliani. He'd campaign on a platform of cleaning up government, reforming the Convention Center & Navy Pier.

Collins has been mentioned in this role. I don't know enough about him to know if he'd be any good or if he could get elected.

It will take someone telegenic and likable to compete. Someone who can raise a lot of money or spend a lot of his own. And it will take a really bad Democratic candidate. Like really, really bad.

And it's going to take a united, organized Republican party who can quickly identify the right candidate & get behind him. And they're going to have to get national support for him, especially with fundraising.

I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not confident there's someone out there who fits the profile.

 

This campaign and election is going to have all the political decorum and civil discourse of the leadership handover of a South American dictatorship.

 

Bob, Blago should consider himself freaking fortunate this evening that no one is uttering "Democratic" in that line.

I remember reading a biography about Daley from his birth in Bridgeport to his death. It's been 20+ years since I read it as a kid, but wasn't Ed Kelly a dirty mayor and Martin Kennelly tried to clean it up until the party bosses dumped him for Daley in '55?

 

D-3, the book is "American Pharoah," and you are correct that the machine dumped Kennelly because he was too serious about fighting corruption, when the machine wanted him to only SAY he was fighting corruption. Plus, Ed Kelly committed an ever bigger political crime: he wanted to integrate public housing.

 

Thanks Bob. I don't think it was "American Pharoah" that I read. It was Royko's book, "Boss". I was a big Royko fan as a kid.

 

"Boss" is great, of course. "American Pharoah" ain't Royko, but it's a good history on Old Man Daley and the development of the Chicago Machine.

Also, to bring home how seemingly ancient history and grudges aren't so ancient, my mother-in-law was a tween living with her six brothers and sisters and widowed Irish immigrant mother in the Chicago housing projects when the Machine ousted Kelly.

 

Dead on.

 

Kelly was an epic hack. Kennelly did run on a quasi-reform platform,
but as you noted, that just wasn't the way it was going to be.

 

Obama tells ABC that he thinks Rahm will wait until after the mid-terms to make his decision:

But the Times thinks he'll have to decide much sooner as the race to succeed Daley is already under way. It also questions whether he has any built in constituency:

 

If Rahm is smart, he won't run. I don't see how he'll win. It's going to be tough for a candidate, at least before the primary, to cross racial and ethnic lines, because already candidates are being drafted and/or being supported on the basis that they are of their certain race or ethnicity. Plus, by the time Rahm gets around to making a decision, everyone will have had a head start doing such important things as setting up precinct committees, working the neighborhoods, and promising city jobs to anyone willing to shill for them.