RAHM VS. THE LILLIPUTIANS

9/23/14

Fran Spielman, the City Hall reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, write a story published today (“Long shot could force runoff,” page 11) arguing that while Alderman Bob Fioretti cannot possibly win a mayoral race against Rahm Emanuel, the presence of both Mr. Fioretti and Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis on the primary ballot could make a runoff more likely.   (See ALDERMAN BOB FIORETTI THROWS HIS HAT IN THE RING:  OH, HEART BE STILL, 9/13/14 for more illumination on Mr. Fioretti and his minuscule chances for winning the big office on the 5^th Floor.)

A brief primer on the mayoral election process in Chicago is in order here.  Chicago mayoral elections are no longer officially partisan; instead, there is a nonpartisan primary in February.  If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, s/he becomes mayor.  If no candidate wins 50% of the vote, a runoff is held in April.  Since this officially nonpartisan process was initiated in 1999, there has been no runoff election.

Ms. Spielman, like any political junky reporter, loves a good story.  She even trotted out old school independent strategist Don Rose in support of her thesis, or at least in pursuit of her story.  But Ms. Spielman is, in this case, clearly delusional.  

As I have said before (e.g., TONI PRECKWINKLE RULES OUT A RUNFOR MAYOR OF CHICAGO…MY READERSYAWN, 7/15/14), no one is going to beat Rahm Emanuel in February and there will be no April election.   Mr. Emanuel has the money, the organization, the cowering pols, the obsequious “business community,” the private sector unions, and certainly the fawning press, national and local, behind him.   Politics everywhere, but especially in Chicago, is about money and the people who make money, or can potentially make money, from politics in this city on the make are either behind Mr. Emanuel or will be wooed by promises of money, or by threats, to get behind Mr. Emanuel.  Whether Mr. Emanuel runs against one, two, or a million opponents, that will be the case.

Mr. Emanuel’s inevitability would be, if anything, enhanced by the presence of both Ms. Lewis and Mr. Fioretti on the primary ballot.  Yes, there are differences between them…professional background and race come immediately to mind.  But, fully mindful that ideology is overrated in the governance of cities, it is useful to point out that these two are ideological clones.  Their philosophies are identical…vilify and tax the wealthy in order to pander to the poor.  In a mindless jihad that could only be conceived by those with complete ignorance of economics, both Ms. Lewis and Mr. Fioretti would increase the tax and regulatory burden to make the city sort of dystopia for the productive in a gormless appeal to the baser instincts of the masses.  Hello Detroit.

If we were to join the fantasizing about the possibility of unseating the Wise and Mighty Rahm, we would do well to heed Greg Goldner, Mr. Emanuel’s campaign manager in his 2002 run for Congress, as quoted in the Spielman article, who said

“They’re (Ms. Lewis and Mr. Fioretti) almost splitting the progressive community.  That’s not the right starting point to go to the white ethnic base on the Northwest and Southwest sides that might be dissatisfied with the mayor but don’t share those leftist political views.”

If we had either Mr. Fioretti or Ms. Lewis in the race, but not both, and a candidate who could appeal to the justifiably angry voters on the Southwest and Northwest sides whom Mr. Emanuel regards as an endless parade of Mikes and Mollies, then we might have something of a race…but ultimately, at best, a race to see who gets slaughtered in the April run-off.  That other candidate, however, has not surfaced and will not surface and, as Mr. Goldner points out, those teed off people from my old neighborhood and their kindred spirits from the geographical fringes of the city are not going to back Karen Lewis or, once they’ve read more than a few paragraphs on the man, Bob Fioretti.  They’d rather hold their noses and vote for Mr. Emanuel.  So Mr. Fioretti and Ms. Lewis, if they both wind up in the race, will be battling each other for that fraction of the black and/or progressive vote that hasn’t been bought off or similarly mollified into voting for Mr. Emanuel…like two dogs fighting over a picked over bone.

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.