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

No doubt that Rahm has dirt on the guy.

 

I'm stunned. I figured Tom Dart had a great, great shot to win. Maybe he did, too, and that's why he's backing out. Too bad, because he actually could have been a good mayor.

 

I heard Dart on a national show on NPR the other day. Very, very impressive guy. Maybe he has bigger plans?

 

Keep Rahm from spreading around the "glossies"?

 

TigerVols -- I think Dart had his eyes on the mayor's office all along, but I don't think he thought the opportunity would present itself soon. However, given the sorry state of Chicago's finances and post-Daley political chaos to follow, maybe Dart figures he'll have another shot to run in four to eight years. In other words, he doesn't want to be Gene Bartow.

 

I've only been here for five years, so I'm not super familiar with all of the candidates.

But, I don't feel like Sheriff is a terrific jumping board.

Yeah, you have some law enforcement responsibilities. And he's been able to make some headlines by cracking down on Craigslist and by halting foreclosure enforcements, but you're essentially the Jailer.

Running the Jail is his top job.

Is that a great place to launch a mayoral campaign?

 

For the last 25 years, there has been NO place to launched a mayoral campaign. So sheriff is as good a place as any. Especially because Dart is fairly high-profile, and has gotten a lot of good pub for the stands he's taken on foreclosure (making banks show they have the paperwork, setting up counselors to go with deputies to help families who are being forced out, setting up ways to help tenants whose landlords went into foreclosure). Dart also was a state's attorney (prosecutor) -- just like Daley. And Dart lives in the very politically connected Beverly neighborhood.

Dart might also have been scared off by the massive fundraising he would have to do against Rahm. That may scare off a lot of people.

 

Worked as a springboard for Dick Ogilvie in the mid-'60s. Served as CC sheriff, then wound up governor of the state, a year after that.

 

African-American community tries to find a consensus candidate:

 

Non-negotiable doesn't mean what it used to.

Congratulations James Meeks, you are officially a politician first and a Reverand second.

 

Re Meeks: Religious issues aside, you can't be a big-city mayor and run an active business on the side. When Michael Bloomberg became he mayor, he stopped his everyday involvement with Bloomberg LP. Meeks can't run a 20,000-seat church and Chicago. Just can't happen.

Meanwhile, if Braun or Rogers is the anointed "black candidate," then you might as well run Ronnie Woo-Woo for all the political traction they have. When Harold Washington was the "consensus black candidate" in 1983, that was the result of years of grooming and inside deals, and a relative dearth of candidates in an age when Chicago's most racist tendencies were far more open. This isn't the environment of 1983, and to paraphrase Rick Pitino, Harold Washington's not walking through that door. What with him being dead and all.

 

If Carole Moseley Braun runs, the rotting corpse of Martin Kennelly would win by 20 percent.