SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF WRIGLEYVILLE

4/2/13

Despite my south side heritage, and my relative indifference to professional baseball (See my now seminal 8/8/12 piece in the Insightful Pontificator, “DADDY, CAN WE GO TO THE BALL GAME?” for some expostulation on the latter.), I considered the Wrigley Field renovation of sufficient import to make it the subject of my first post on Mighty Quinn on Politics and Money.  (THE WRIGLEY FIELD REHAB:   “(RAHM) LIKED MY DEAL, DIDN’T HE?”, 1/24/13).    If I were a gambler, I would have bet substantial money back then that a deal would have been wrapped up long before Opening Day.   I would have been wrong.   Something smells here.

As loyal readers know, I am no fan of Mayor Rahm Emanuel; for only the latest expression of my displeasure with the man, see my 2/20/13 post THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S ROLE IN “MODERN” CHICAGO:  SHUT UP AND PAY.   But with the Ricketts family putting what looks like an unbelievable deal on the table, the Mayor had a chance to do something unheard of, something truly remarkable and unprecedented in modern American politics, i.e., to have a major stadium renovated to state of the art specs with NO taxpayer subsidy.   This would have been a nearly unbelievable achievement and would have been accomplished largely due to the Mayor’s stalwart refusal to put yet another billionaire ownership on the public dole.   If the deal the Ricketts family is offering is all that meets the eye, and if it gets done, Mr. Emanuel will have achieved , largely through exertion of his seemingly indomitable will, something no other mayor or governor has been able, or willing, to do for the last forty years.   Such an achievement would help immensely in Mr. Emanuel’s increasingly obvious quest:  returning to his true hometown, the city where his heart is, but this time residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yet the deal is not done.

Something is clearly wrong.   What is standing in Mr. Emanuel’s way of taking “yes” for an answer?

The most visible opponent of the deal is Alderman Tom Tunney (pictured with two members of both his and Mayor Emanuel’s natural constituencies, Christie Hefner and Bill Marovitz, two of the uber-wealthy who, as my dad would have put it, have little going for them beyond their fathers’ having been born before them) who clearly has been bought with $190,000 in campaign contributions from the leaches who run the rooftop clubs who purloin the product and then raise a stink when someone attempts to get in the way of their thievery.  But when in the last 58 years or so has an alderman ever gotten in the way of a Chicago mayor’s plans?   The local ward boss, when he dared to stand up for his constituency or, more often, for his own financial and political interests,  has been bought off, exiled to a lifelong sinecure in some other branch of the public payroll, or publicly humiliated and never heard from again.  Further, Mr. Emanuel has paid even less attention to the wishes of the ward poohbahs than his predecessors.   No mere alderman can thwart the Mighty Rahm.  And, given the pusillanimous nature of most of the fifty poltroons who presently populate the Council, few have any desire to do so since it would mean the end of their fancy office, title, salary, and ostensible power.  

Even if one does not agree with his aims or motives, one must tip one’s hat to Mr. Tunney for showing more courage than any of his colleagues, who seem to define either “go along, get along” or “Thank you sir; may I have another?”  But if Mr. Emanuel wanted this deal done, Mr. Tunney would have been cast aside long ago, so one wonders whether the Alderman is really displaying courage or if he knows something most of us don’t.

The neighbors, or at least a vocal group of the neighbors, of the ball park are opposed to the Ricketts’ plan to finance their $300mm renovation of the charming yet dilapidated Wrigley with more night games, vastly expanded signage, and regular closing of streets for cutesy-pie street fairs, the type of thing one would think Wrigleyville residents would find somehow “urban,” but I digress.  And they are working through their alderman to shoot the gift horse the Ricketts are offering.   But, again, if Mr. Emanuel wanted to steamroll this pack of patheticoes who seemingly just woke up yesterday to discover a ballpark in their backyard, he could do so.  

One reason Mr. Emanuel mighty have for not just tossing Mr. Tunney and his bankrollers over the side is that the types who populate Wrigleyville, i.e., young professionals who grew up on the north shore, just moved into the city, and decided that they are the vanguard of the new urban elite, are Mr. Emanuel’s consanguineous, natural constituency.   Mr. Emanuel has nothing at all in common with police and fire types who live on the geographic fringes of the city or with the poor and minority citizens who inhabit the neighborhoods just to the west and south of the dazzling urbanite core he prefers.   His people are what have at various times been referred to as the quiche eaters, the “foodies,” the yuppies, the fern bar denizens, the Starbuck’s crowd, or whatever else one prefers to call the suburban kids who were born on third base, thought they hit a triple, and decided to make a stop in the city for what they somehow consider an urban experience before heading back north to raise their families while making snide jokes about the suburbia that has been so good to them.   Why, Mr. Emanuel only needs to look in the mirror, or to his cheerleaders in the press, to realize that he is one and the same with the types who are opposing the Ricketts’ and, we hope, Mr. Emanuel’s, plans for Wrigley.

Another possible reason that the Ricketts gift hasn’t been opened is because there is more to it than we are being told.   On its face, the Ricketts offer is almost too one-sided, in the city’s favor, to be true.   As the legendary Fast Eddie Vrdolyak once said “Hey, not even fishing is on the square.”  Perhaps there is something in this deal that Mr. Emanuel cannot accept and/or dare not reveal.

So why hasn’t the Ricketts’ offer for Wrigley been accepted yet?  It is simply too good a deal for the city to turn down.  I am not being disingenuous when I say that I don’t know.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.