ALDERMAN BOB FIORETTI THROWS HIS HAT IN THE RING: OH, HEART BE STILL

9/13/14

So 2^nd Alderman Bob Fioretti has thrown his hat into the Chicago mayoral ring.  Yawn.

As 1^st Ward Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno said of Mr. Fioretti’s quixotic quest

“I think he has no shot.  None.  It’s delusions of grandeur on his part.”

Delusions of grandeur are somewhat characteristic of Mr. Fioretti, but probably only to a slightly greater degree than is the case with most politicians.   Like most pols, Mr. Fioretti is convinced that he has all the answers and that he is duty bound to enlighten us with his brilliance.  His feelings in this regard pale beside those of the man he seeks to unseat, but I digress.

There is nothing endemic to Mr. Fioretti that renders his bid for the 5^th Floor laughable.   While being accused of being somewhat loony left, it is hard to label the advocacy of more cops on the street, removing control of the Chicago Public Schools from the mayor’s control, and elimination of red light cameras as being somehow leftist.  A commuter tax is a potentially ruinous idea that does smacks of liberalism run amok.  But, on balance, there isn’t as much room for ideology in running a city as most would have you believe.  The most dyspeptic aspect of Mr. Fioretti is, in any case, not his ideology but his aforementioned ego.  In a field that includes Rahm Emanuel and Karen Lewis, however, Mr. Fioretti’s ego would be, by comparison, a non-issue.

Mr. Fioretti does have some admirable qualities.  What immediately comes to mind is his courage to stand up to Mayors Daley and Emanuel when his colleagues in the City Council were, and are, acting like love struck schoolgirls desperately angling for so much as an approving grin from the object of their sycophancy.   Those who decry the financial ravages Mr. Daley inflicted on our city would do well to have imitated Mr. Fioretti’s voting record in the Council.   Those who decry Mr. Emanuel’s highly unpopular attempts to deal with this mess would have a hard time finding a more genuine champion than Mr. Fioretti.

None of this matters, however.  Mr. Fioretti could be a flawless candidate with impeccable credentials and a solid voting base (He has none of those.) and still get clobbered by Rahm Emanuel.   As I’ve said ad nauseam in the past (KAREN LEWIS, THE HUMAN MONOPOLY GUY: SOME QUESTIONS THAT HAVEN’T BEEN ASKED, 8/14/14, TONI PRECKWINKLE RULESOUT A RUN FOR MAYOR OF CHICAGO…MY READERSYAWN, 7/15/14, et. al.), Rahm Emanuel has all the money and all the organization.  Chicago is an array of constituencies that can readily be bought, one way or another, making it an especially fertile ground for pols with money and organization.   Toni Preckwinkle, who has more name recognition and qualifications, and a more natural voting constituency, than Mr. Fioretti, realized that she had no chance and dropped out.   Karen Lewis, with at least two more natural constituencies than Mr. Fioretti, may be in the process of seeing the light and dropping out.  Who knows what she will do?  But that, too, doesn’t matter; nobody is going to beat Rahm Emanuel in 2015.

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. 

PAUL VALLAS ON THE TICKET: PAT QUINN MAKES ANOTHER BRILLIANT MOVE TOWARD RE-ELECTION

11/8/13

Regardless of what you think of the guy’s ideology, background, or performance on the job, you have to admit that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) is running a brilliant campaign for re-election.  (See my 9/16/13 post ILLINOIS DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY:  DALEY IS OUT; IS LISA BACK IN? for only the most recent of my comments on the campaign.)  The latest manifestation of this brilliance is his selection of Paul Vallas as his running mate.

Mr. Vallas’ being on the Quinn ticket makes sense for all the obvious reasons.  Originally a budget wonk in Springfield who caught a lot of important people’s eyes, he was appointed budget director for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley early in the reign of Richard II, when the scion was a good mayor and fiscal manager, before Mr. Daley became a living, breathing argument for the wisdom of term limits.  After leaving that post, Mr. Vallas did a great job, or at least as good a job as anyone could do, given the circumstances, as the CEO of the Chicago Public School System.  After a failed run for governor (against Rod Blagojevich; how would you like to have that vote back?), which was partially Mr. Vallas’s fault but was at least partially engineered by the bosses in Chicago who ran Roland Burris to siphon the black vote from Mr. Vallas in the primary, Mr. Vallas went on to run the public school systems in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and, currently, Bridgeport, Connecticut.  His performance in all three tough jobs has been admirable.  So Mr. Vallas has expertise in the areas of education and budgets, the first of which is always important and the second of which is beyond critical at this point in Illinois’ history.

Some can argue that Mr. Vallas had made enemies among the teachers’ unions in his tenure at the helm of the CPS.  But so what?   Mr. Quinn has already enraged the public employee unions with his aggressive push for a solution to the state’s public pension problems.  And where else are the public employee unions going to go?  

So Mr. Vallas is a great candidate for the obvious reasons.  But yours truly also finds merit in the selection for what it says about Governor Quinn.  Mr. Quinn’s Republican opponents, who are supposed to eschew such things as racial, ethnic, and gender quotas out of principal, go about selecting running mates who just happen to be women, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, or some combination thereof.  Mr. Quinn, however, eschews such tokenism and selects a running mate based on the man’s merits.  This refusal to kowtow to the conventional wisdom is a mark of character on Mr. Quinn’s part. 

Don’t think voters don’t notice Mr. Quinn’s good sense…and his opponents’ hypocrisy lily-livered obeisance to pollsters, conventional wisdom, and addle-brained political correctness.  Don’t misunderstand me; Mr. Quinn has made a career of obeisance to pollsters, conventional wisdom, and addle-brained political correctness, but voters have short attention spans and hence politics becomes a game of “What ya done (for me or to me) lately?”

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. 

PAT QUINN VS. BILL DALEY: “THIS GUY DOESN’T THINK THIS IS A SHOW; HE THINKS IT’S A FIGHT!”

7/16/13

Now that Attorney General Lisa Madigan has opted out of the Illinois governor’s race (See today’s other post, LISA MADIGAN WON’TRUN FOR GOVERNOR:  WOULD YOU WANT THE JOB?), we are left, for now, with a one-on-one Democratic primary race featuring Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) and ex-White House Chief of Staff, ex-Commerce Secretary, ex-corporate bigshot, ex-everything Bill Daley, who also happens to be the son and brother of Chicago’s two longest serving mayors.

Mr. Daley’s chances in the upcoming primary have increased markedly, some might say infinitely (See 6/6/13’s “GOVERNOR BILL DALEY…SENATOR BILL DALEY.   THERE JUST WASN’T THE TIME…”), with Lisa Madigan’s exit, which was more or less forced by Mr. Daley’s entry into the race; again, see today’s other post.   While yours truly would certainly not argue that Bill Daley’s chances of becoming governor are a heck of lot better than they were yesterday, I would not count out Governor Quinn.  (See my 7/10/13 piece, PAT QUINN SUSPENDS  LEGISLATORS’ SALARIES:   FOUR MORE YEARS? and the posts to which it will refer you.)   Don’t misunderstand me; I am not predicting a Quinn victory.  I am simply NOT, for a number of reasons, among those who are saying the man has no chance at re-nomination or re-election.

Cousin Pat (not really, but I like saying that more of late) is the incumbent governor.  In the first quarter, he raised more money than either Bill Daley or Lisa Madigan.   Further, he is running a populist campaign that, while loaded with what some might consider silly, or irresponsible, stunts, like suspending legislative salaries, seems to be striking a chord with the typical voter.  Further, if Mr. Quinn can get the appropriate inspector general off the dime and quickly conduct a review, both of which are big “if”s, he can pull another such maneuver by firing the entire Metra board.  (See another post from yesterday, WE ARE SHOCKED…SHOCKED!...TO LEARN OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE AT METRA and the posts to which it will refer you.)   If you think the voters liked suspending legislative salaries, think how they will react to firing the legion of toadies, lackeys, hacks, has-beens, and wannabes that comprises the Metra board.   And Quinn just might to it.

Further, everyone speaks of Bill Daley’s fundraising prowess, but I wonder.  Now that his brother is no longer mayor and thus cannot deliver a near instant return on donors’ investments, is Bill Daley the “prolific fundraiser” that he is made out to be and indeed once was?   One suspects that Mr. Daley would not embark on this race unless he was confident he had the ability to raise a lot of money, so I might be wrong here, but even Mr. Daley has made miscalculations in his career.  Further, people don’t give political donations in this state, or just about anywhere, because they like the candidate or the party to whom they are giving.  They give because they expect a return on their investment, and the return here is not immediately obvious unless the donors are certain Mr. Daley will go to Springfield.  But they can’t be certain of that unless he gets a LOT of money; you can see the chicken and egg problem here.  While this problem is faced by just about all political candidates, it might be especially acute for Mr. Daley, given his background and his reputation as a “prolific fundraiser.”

One person that I have heard nothing about in regard to the governor’s race is the Mayor of Chicago, that idol of the consanguineous media, Rahm Emanuel.  Mr. Emanuel may protest publicly that he is not taking sides in the gubernatorial primary, but, c’mon, Mr. Emanuel staying on the sidelines of any political race?   And if you were Rahm Emanuel, would you want a potentially very strong Bill Daley to be governor?   Wouldn’t you prefer the weaker Pat Quinn?   Don’t try to argue that Mr. Emanuel has, or feel he owes, some sort of loyalty to the Daley family, which went a long way toward making him what he is today on a number of fronts.   Loyalty counts for little for Mr. Emanuel, unless it is to himself.  Ask the Clintons.

So suppose that Mr. Emanuel, secretly or perhaps not so secretly, puts out the word that he would rather not see Bill Daley in the governor’s office.  What will that do to Daley’s ability to raise money?

All that having been said, one can never factor out two things…the electorate’s general level of disappointment with Governor Quinn or the deal making skills of the Daley family.  On the latter, I smell what one might call a rat, or two rats, if I didn’t have some genuine admiration for what some might call underhanded political tactics.  See, for example, chapter 8 of my first book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics.  What such seemingly malodorous tactics might one be seeing in the upcoming gubernatorial primary?

As of now, the Democratic gubernatorial primary is a two person race.  However, as soon as Lisa Madigan opted out of the race, talk of two other potential candidates started.  The first is state Senator Kwame Raoul of Chicago who is a something of an up and comer among black politicians.   The other is state Senator Dave Koehler, who is from Peoria.  

Hmm…

Pat Quinn’s strongest, most loyal constituency is black voters, primarily in Chicago.   Wouldn’t it be nice for Mr. Daley if Mr. Raoul, who has been known to play political ball, were to enter the race and take at least some, and probably more, of the black vote from Mr. Quinn?

Mr. Quinn is also expected to run well downstate in the primary, not so much because the Governor is so well liked in the “other Illinois” but, rather, because the Daley name is like a pox down there.   Wouldn’t it be nice for Mr. Daley if, say, Mr. Koehler or another downstater were to run and take some of that downstate vote from Mr. Quinn?

I am starting to smell something like current ward of the federal government Rod Blagojevich’s first run for governor in 2002.   His main opponent in the primary, Paul Vallas, had great strength in the black community, largely due to the relatively good job he had done as head of the Chicago Public Schools.   A third candidate, Roland Burris, an at times amiable hack from the south side, emerged to drain Mr. Vallas’ strength in the black community and thus hand the primary to Mr. Blagojevich, who eventually repaid Mr. Burris by appointing him to Barack Obama’s U.S. senate seat when Mr. Blagojevich’s back was against the federal wall, but that is another story.  Did Alderman Dick Mell (See my 7/7/13 and 7/6/13 posts, respectively, DICK MELL USED OUR MONEY TO PAY PEOPLE TO SLEEP: “THEY’RE GONNA SAY…WHAT A GUY!”  and FAREWELL, DICK MELL…SORT OF) have anything to do with Mr. Burris’s entry into the 2002 gubernatorial primary?   Are the White Sox a lousy baseball team?

Similarly, should Mr. Raoul, Mr. Koehler, and/or someone else who is black and/or from downstate enter this race, would Mr. Daley or his minions have had anything to do with his sudden desire to be governor?   Are the Cubs a lousy baseball team?

This is going to be a far more interesting race for governor, even without Lisa Madigan, than most people think.

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. 

FAREWELL, DICK MELL…SORT OF

7/6/13

Dick Mell announced last week that he will be leaving his post as 33^rd Ward alderman after 38 years on the job.  The Chicago media, generally hostile toward guys like Dick Mell, are, predictably, falling all over themselves with accolades for the City Council’s second longest serving member and something of a living relic of a bygone era, a time depicted in my books, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge.  The press’s apparent hypocrisy, though, is understandable; gentlemanliness, or gentewomanliness, is almost always to be applauded and one of its manifestations is finding something nice to say about people at such milestones in their lives.

As you might guess, yours truly has some thoughts on Dick Mell who, despite being a self-made millionaire even before entering politics and despite running one of the most effective ward machines in this most political of cities will always be known first and foremost as Rod Blagojevich’s father-in-law.  (See my 6/19/13 post MIKE MADIGAN, JOHN CULLERTON, AND PENSIONS:   SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS JUST A CIGAR? for some background on the relationship between Dick Mell and his infamous son-in-law.)

First, Mr. Mell would like his daughter Deb Mell, who is currently a state representative, to replace him.   Mayor Emanuel has instituted new procedures for selecting replacement aldermen that are made to look fair, transparent, and representative.  But one suspects that Mr. Mell would not have left without the fix being in for his daughter, so Ms. Mell will probably have no trouble ascending to the post her father has held since she was seven years old.   She does have at least nominal competition for the job, however, in the person of State Senator Iris Martinez.

Note that I used the verb “ascending” when describing a move by Deb Mell from the state legislature to the city council, and that was no mistake.  Perhaps only in Chicago would a move from state representative or state senator to alderman be considered a promotion.   But this follows a proud tradition.   For example, back in 1973, when Roman Pucinski was effectively moved from the United States Congress to alderman of the 41^st Ward, he, probably rightfully, considered it a promotion and thanked Mayor Daley, and not at all disingenuously, for moving him up the ladder.   We take our aldermen seriously in Chicago.   Sometimes one wonders why, but I digress.

Second, the Chicago Sun-Times should have been more careful in its article about Mell’s retirement (“On way out, Mell talks family ties,” 7/6/13, page 6).   Deep into the story, the Sun-Times says

Mell operated (emphasis mine) one of the strongest ward organizations in Chicago, one that relied on precinct captains even after court rulings loosened the stranglehold the Democratic Machine had on government hiring and weakened other ward organizations.

Even though he is leaving his aldermanic seat, Mr. Mell will remain Democratic committeeman of the 33^rd ward and thus will continue to operate “one of the strongest ward organizations in the city.”   The post of committeeman isn’t what it used to be for a variety of reasons, but a ward’s committeeman controls the party apparatus in that ward.  Mr. Mell is not giving that up, at least not yet.

Third, in his parting comments, Mr. Mell had a few, and one suspects as few as possible, things to say about his infamous son-in-law, to wit…

“People loved him on the campaign trail.  He was phenomenal.   But when it came to actually governing, he was a problem.”

Hear, hear, despite the understatement in the second sentence.

Mr. Mell also said that if he could do it all over again, Blagojevich

“…would have never gotten out of state rep.  He would never have went (sic) to Congress.  He would have been a state rep until he decided to quit or be a lawyer or whatever.”

That’s great sentiment in retrospect.   But you can’t tell me, or anyone remotely sentient, that Mr. Mell only discovered the deep character flaws in his son-in-law only after Blago was elected to Congress and then to the governor’s mansion, both of which would have been impossible without Dick Mell’s help.   Many of us could see what a popinjay Mr. Blagojevich was long before he got to the governor’s office.  (In a later post I will tell you of the time yours truly and then Congressman Blagojevich sparred for an hour on a talk radio program…and will especially note Blago’s parting words to yours truly.  It’s a good story, but not as good as it sounds.)  Dick Mell is no fool and he was far closer to Blago than any of us who followed Blago’s career, so he had to be aware from pretty much the get-go of the poltroonishness of his son-in-law.  Yet Mr. Mell still used all of his powers and all of his abilities to put Blago first in Congress and then in the governor’s office.  For all his hemming and hawing now, and for all his other accomplishments, Mr. Mell’s foisting his son-in-law upon the people of Illinois (And I am by no means absolving our misinformed or simply uninformed, voters; anyone who has read just about anything I’ve written knows that.) will remain his most salient “achievement.”

Fourth, Mr. Mell went out of his way to be not all that uncharacteristically sycophantic toward Mayor Emanuel:

“Of all the mayors I worked with, I really like this guy (Emanuel) because he’ll make a decision based on what he believes is right.”

Mell went on to laud the Mayor’s “courage” in reworking the parking meter deal (See RAHM EMANUEL AND THE PARKING METERS:   “GOT TO MAKE THE BEST OF…A BAD SITUATION”, 4/30/13)…

“You think if I were mayor I would have touched those parking meters?”

It could, of course, be that Mr. Mell genuinely likes Mr. Emanuel and has enjoyed working with him, or at least that he has liked working with nominal north sider Emanuel more than he liked working with south sider Rich Daley.  But one suspects that Mr. Mell is following a not so proud tradition of the supposed tough guy aldermen, committeemen, and other pols around this town:  being shameless suck-ups to whoever happens to be occupying the Fifth Floor at the time. 

Perhaps the esteemed aldermen have no choice.   Beginning with Richard I and continuing with Richard II and Rahm Emanuel, Chicago mayors have almost completely emasculated the ward organizations, so the aldermen have to beg for the crumbs that fall from the Mayor’s table.   In this case, Mr. Mell really needs something from Mr. Emanuel:  the appointment of Deb Mell to the 33^rd ward city council seat.   One wishes, however, that these Chicago pols would stop masquerading as tough guys when, in reality, they have been reduced, and more or less willingly, to lap dogs and lickspittles.

Last, readers of my books, the Chairman and the Chairman’s Challenge, liked to try to guess who Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins is in real life.  When they aren’t guessing Ed Burke, Mike Madigan, Ed Vrdolyak, Bill Banks, or Rich Daley, they are guessing Dick Mell.  People ask me frequently if Collins is one of the aforementioned gentlemen, and Mell’s name comes up a lot.   My answer is the same for Mr. Mell as it has been for any other suggestion:  Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins is nobody in Chicago politics and he is (almost) everybody in Chicago politics.  He is one man who embodies the characteristics of many men.   Collins, as Don Vito Corleone was for the New York Mob of the mid twentieth century, is an amalgam of characters in Chicago politics of the latter part of that century.   Chairman Collins, like Alderman Mell, is an intriguing, enduring character, but, unlike Dick Mell, Eamon Collins is fictional.

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. 

ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE DALEYS AND THE MADIGANS?

6/9/13

Now that Bill Daley looks like he might be making a run for Illinois governor (See my already seminal 6/6/13 piece, “GOVERNOR BILL DALEY…SENATOR BILL DALEY.   THERE JUST WASN’T THE TIME…”), bollixing up the plans of House Speaker Mike Madigan and his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who both assumed the governor’s mansion was Lisa’s for the asking, much is being made among the punditocracy about the “antagonism” between the Daley and Madigan families.  

Hmm…

I’ve followed Chicago politics for a long time, longer than most of the punditocracy has been alive, and, until the last few months, I had never heard of a Daley/Madigan family feud.   Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention, being distracted by other things, but it always seemed to me that the Rich Daley worked well with Mike Madigan.   If there is any personal antagonism between the two, or between any members of the family, it is news to me, though I’m not in a position to know of such things; I know neither man, have met Rich Daley only once, and have never met Mike Madigan.

But even if there exists between the families some personal animosity, or simply professional rivalry beyond that which normally exists between ambitious families, it doesn’t matter.  Mr. Madigan and all four Daley brothers who hold or held power in one form or another in this town know how to put personal feelings aside when there is business to be done, as evidenced by the sterling, one might even say warm, professional relationship between Mr. Madigan and Rich, Bill, John, and Mike Daley.

Speaking of being able to put personal antagonism aside, it is said by elements of the media, including Monique Garcia in this morning’s (i.e., Sunday, 6/9/13’s, page 1) Chicago Tribune, that the “Daley-Madigan family antagonism,” as she puts it, dates back to the 1980 State’s Attorney’s race in which Mike Madigan backed Ed Burke in the primary against Rich Daley.  

Hmm…

The famous rivalry (antagonism might, and only might, be too strong a word) between the Burkes and the Daleys goes back to at least 1953, when Ed Burke’s father, Joe Burke, was part of the 14^th Ward cabal, that included Clarence Wagner and James McDermott, that teamed with the 19^th Ward cabal, that included John Duffy and Tom Nash, to try to deny Richard J. Daley the post of Chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, which Dick Daley assumed was his when placeholder Joe Gill stepped down.  When Mr. Wagner died in a car crash in Minnesota, the 14^th and 19^th Ward forces faded and Dick Daley took his rightful place at the head of the Party.   Mr. Daley, like most of his fellow Irishmen, including yours truly, suffered from Irish amnesia…we forgive, but we don’t forget.   Still, Dick Daley worked well with Joe Burke, who succeeded Wagner as 14^th Ward Alderman, and served as alderman and committeeman until his death in 1968, when he was replaced by his son, Ed. 

When the Burke/Daley rivalry came to a boil again in 1980 with the State’s Attorney’s race between scions Ed and Rich, the Daleys came out on top.   Richard II  shared Richard I’s case of Irish amnesia, and probably harbored some lingering bitterness toward Ed Burke, and vice-versa (again, I’m not in a position to know; I’ve met Rich Daley only once and know Ed Burke only to say “Hi,” if that well any more).   But that didn’t stop the younger Mr. Daley and Mr. Burke from working very well together as, respectively, Mayor and Council Finance Committee Chairman and all around uber-alderman and committeeman.

Pros know how to put aside whatever personal piques that may exist.  And if the Daleys and the Burkes were able to put aside anything that may have been between them, the Daleys and the Madigans would surely be able to do the same, especially if the origins of the Daley/Madigan feud lay in the Daley/Burke feud, as Ms. Garcia suggests in today’s Tribune.

Further, the suggestion is that the Daley/Madigan “antagonism” that exists today has its roots in the Daley/Burke 1980 race for State’s Attorney.   This makes very little sense.  If the Daleys were antagonistic toward everyone who opposed Rich in the 1980 State’s Attorney primary, they’d be antagonistic toward a lot of people.  As I recall, of the 50 Democratic ward organizations in Chicago, only two, the 11^th Ward and 19^th Ward Organizations, backed Rich Daley for State’s Attorney.   If the Daleys really despised the pols that backed Ed Burke over Rich Daley for State’s Attorney, they harbored 48 grudges for a long, long time.  That’s a lot of grudges for a long time, even for an Irish clan.

I don’t know how the Daleys feel about the Madigans.  But I do know that, even if there were some “antagonism” arising out the 1980 State’s Attorney’s race, or anything else, Rich Daley, John Daley, Bill Daley, Mike Daley, and Mike Madigan were able to put it aside in the interest of doing business for a long, long time.  If both Bill Daley and Lisa Madigan run in the Democratic primary for governor in 2014, which I doubt (See, again, my seminal 6/6/13 post.), the professional rivalry between the families will arise or be resurrected.   But one, or neither, of the families’ representatives will win the primary, and both families will go back to doing business.

We Irish have our faults, but a distorted sense of priorities generally isn’t one of them, especially when money and/or power is at stake.

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. 

THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S ROLE IN “MODERN” CHICAGO: SHUT UP AND PAY

2/20/13

Today’s (i.e., Wednesday’s, 2/20/13, page 2),Chicago Sun-Times reports

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is challenging a business community that bankrolled Millennium Park, the NATO summit, and Chicago’s failed Olympics bid to raise $50 million over five years for a higher moral purpose:  saving the lives of thousands of at risk kids.

“Emanuel is putting his formidable fund-raising skills to work to raise money for early intervention programs for younger kids….

This shake down of local businesses is only the latest illustration of the attitude of the mayor of Chicago, both this one and the last one, toward the “private sector” or the “business community.”   These mayors speak in hallowed tones when they utter the words “private sector,” but to them the “private sector” is only an appendage of the public sector, there to do the bidding of the politicians and to pick up the checks for the never ending self-aggrandizement these politicasters call “careers in public service.” One can almost understand Mayor Daley’s and Mayor Emanuel’s utter failure to understand the true role of the private sector in a free market political system; neither of these gentlemen had ever worked a legitimate job in the private sector prior to becoming mayor.  Selling one’s influence and calling it investment banking, by the way, is not a legitimate job.  Or perhaps their belief that the private sector exists only to do the bidding of the public sector arises from the growing reality that we no longer live in a free market system, but rather a perversion of that system in which nominally private big business and big government work as one to insure an ever tightening monopoly on the wealth a society produces.

How can one argue that “saving the lives of thousands of at risk kids” (It’s always “for the kids” or “for the children” isn’t it?) isn’t a worthy goal?   It’s easy to make such an argument, given the history of these ad hoc nonprofits that spring up to pilot something the Mayor and his cronies seem to want.   The money is raised and gets chewed up in the rat hole of bureaucracy.   And it always seems to be the same handful of politically connected players who are involved in such “civic endeavors.”   “The private sector” was pressured to finance the NATO summit and the G-8 conference.   The NATO summit went off reasonably well, but the G-8 never made it here.  There was plenty of shake down money left over after that summit that the Mayor is still using as a piggy bank for his cherished projects, like boat houses along the Chicago River.  The Olympic committee shook down local businesses for millions; we didn’t get the Olympics, but a lot of people got big salaries working at Chicago’s Olympic committee and they and others took lavish trips to promote our bid.   Millennium Park looks good now, but its luster wears off when one considers that it came in at whole number multiples of original cost estimates.   No problem, according to then Mayor Daley; we’ll just hit up the “private sector” for more dough.

If developing “intervention programs for younger kids,” whatever that means, is a worthy goal, why aren’t these types of endeavors financed with tax dollars?   Maybe because Chicago is broke and the taxpayers do not deem such programs sufficiently worthy to justify higher taxes.  So the Mayor extracts tribute from the “business community.”  To a certain extent, such giving is done from the goodness of the corporate hearts of those being “asked” to donate.  But local businesses have to be growing tired of the endless extortion racket that the mayors of Chicago call “public/private sector cooperation.”   Either that or the “donors” are being secretly paid back in city contracts or other consideration that comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets (See, for illustrative purposes, my 8/4/12 post on the now defunct Rant Political, TRUSTING THE CHICAGO POLITICIANS, reproduced below, for further illumination and speculation on such dealings.) or in simply being allowed to do business in Chicago without being harassed to an even greater extent by those who control both the bully pulpit and the enforcement mechanisms of the city and state.

Businesses that are operating here or considering operating here have plenty to discourage further investment in or relocation to Chicago:   high and increasing taxes, especially at the state level, a history of endemic corruption, still sub-par public schools, a crumbling infrastructure, a voracious and growing crime problem, even dyspeptic weather.   For the last twenty five years or so, they have to add “serving as the bottomless bursar for the career aspirations of the politicians who run the place” to the list of disagreeable traits Chicago displays for actual and potential investors.  This is no way to attract business to this once greatest of American cities…unless the Mayor and his minions are only interested in attracting businesses willing to play ball.

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. 

TRUSTING THE CHICAGO POLITICIANS

8/4/12  

Like most cities, and especially like most cities in our industrial heartland, Chicago is having problems with its aging and often creaking infrastructure.   It seems that, over the years,  the public fisc has been exhausted by the types of things that pack the most potent payback for the pols, such as new parks, schools, streets, etc. and handouts for groups, such as officially and permanently aggrieved parties and billionaire owners of sports franchises, that compete for the title of most stentorian in making their demands of the politicians for the taxpayers’ money.   This has left little to maintain the old parks, schools, roads, bridges, etc., with the predictable consequences.

So back in the Spring, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan for an “infrastructure trust” (“IT”) was approved by the pack of lap dogs we call a City Council in the city of my birth.   I first addressed the IT, before Rant Politics came into being, in one of my other blogs, The Insightful Pontificator; see my 4/18/12 post entitled “WHO YA GONNA TRUST; ME OR YOUR OWN EYES?”  The IT was rendered necessary, at least in the eyes of Mr. Emanuel and the mewing sheep who gaze ever lovingly into his eyes for their next order, because Chicago either can’t, due to the fiscal mess Mr. Emanuel’s predecessor, Richard M. Daley (“Richard II”) left the city, borrow any more money or at least can’t borrow money for the types of projects the IT is designed to finance.  

While we know that the IT is billed as “private/public partnership,” a term that, while sounding comforting to most of the populace, sounds more than vaguely Orwellian to yours truly, we know very little else about the workings of the IT, partially because details have yet to be worked out but partially, one suspects, because the Mayor and the participants in the IT would rather not have us know much about how this Goldbergian beast is to operate.   Even yours truly, who knows a thing or two about finance and financial structures, is confused about the IT.   Will the IT lend money to the city for various infrastructure projects?   Will the IT actually purchase assets, presumably to take advantage of the tax code’s depreciation provisions that are not available to municipalities that pay no federal income tax, and lease those assets back to the city?   In either case, the projects would go on the city’s books as debt, at least according to generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”).   As Alderman Jason Ervin said at the show hearings in the City Council for this monster, “It (the IT) looks a lot like debt,” to which Chicago CFO Lois Scott replied “You’re right.  It would be, in many ways, like debt.”  

So the reasonably financially cognizant, or even the merely concerned citizen, might ask why we need the IT if it is just a vehicle to lend money to the city that the city could otherwise not borrow.  Ms. Scott replies that

“The bulk of what the city is going to do in terms of infrastructure won’t have a ghost of a chance of going through an alternative source of financing.”

So why would the participant in the IT provide the city with such financing if conventional investors would not provide such financing?    One can think of three reasons.

First, the investors in the IT will demand, and justifiably so, outrageously high interest rates and/or lease payments to make a decent risk adjusted return on the financing no one else, according to Ms. Scott, will provide.  

Second, the investors in the IT will expect a return commensurate with the risk they are assuming, but not necessarily directly from these projects because doing so would make Rahm Emanuel look bad.   The Mayor would like to trumpet the IT as a “creative” way of doing infrastructure projects; to pay investors market rates would expose the IT for the batch of sweetheart deals it appears to be.   Better to hide from the taxpayers the IT’s juiciness for its investors by somehow nudging those investors to the head of the line for other projects the city is doing.

Third, the Mayor is bullying the “private sector” participants in this “public/private partnership” into taking a less than market return on their investments.   How, one might ask, can the Mayor bully even multinational corporations into subsidizing the city?  

To answer that question, one has to understand what politicians, and especially Chicago politicians, mean when they refer to “the private sector.”  To these lifelong pols, whether we mean Rahm Emanuel, Rich Daley, or any of the sycophants with whom they have surround(ed) themselves, the “private sector” refers to that group of nominally private companies, large and small, who wait obediently and obsequiously to be tossed, in a process that the politicians laughingly call “privatization,” one of the monopolies over providing formerly public goods or services.   Operating a monopoly is quite lucrative, as Econ 101 tells us; the prospect of attaining such a monopoly, or of losing one, can be quite intimidating to the companies that unashamedly refer to themselves as participants it the “private sector” in this town.  Such intimidation can be quite effective in motivating those whose idea of “free enterprise” is sitting at the Mayor’s feet, gazing pitifully, yet hopefully, yearning to be tossed a bone or two.

Whatever is at work here—actual market returns to endeavors that are supposedly undoable in the real marketplace, side rewards to IT participants, or intimidation of IT and prospective IT participants, the Chicago taxpayers are going to have to finance, one way or another, the upkeep of the infrastructure that makes the city work.   This will be expensive due to the raids pols have made on the city’s treasury for years.  The Chicago Infrastructure Trust is just a means of hiding these costs from the taxpayers while keeping the same old Chicago political games going.

2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT PRIMARY IN ILLINOIS: ROBIN KELLY-- BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE?

2/18/13

State Senator Toi Hutchinson dropped out of the race to succeed the disgraced Jesse Jackson, Jr. as 2^nd district Congressman in Illinois.   (See 2/16/13’s already seminal post LET’S FINALLY TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT JESSE AND SANDI JACKSON.)  This surprised many observers, including yours truly, though Hutchinson was losing ground of late to her chief rival, long time political hanger-on Robin Kelly, whom Ms. Hutchinson endorsed after dropping out of the race.  

Ms. Hutchinson (pictured) had two big things going for her.   As of the last filing date on 2/6/13, she had more than twice as much money ($199,901 vs. $88,820) in her campaign fund as did Ms. Kelly.   She also had the endorsement Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.  Ms. Preckwinkle is not only very popular but also used to employ Ms. Kelly; thus, her endorsement of Ms. Hutchinson over her former employee said a lot.   However, there seemed to be momentum building behind Ms. Kelly, resulting in her fundraising picking up considerably in the last few weeks.   The entrance of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pro gun control  Independence USA PAC into the race on Ms. Kelly’s side, to the tune of $2.1 million, convinced Ms. Hutchinson it was time to go.

 The suspicion on the part of many, and not only those backing the sole white candidate in the race, former Congressman Debbie Halvorson, is that there was more to Ms. Hutchinson’s dropping out of the race than Mr. Bloomberg’s supporting Ms. Kelly because of Ms. Hutchinson’s record on gun control, which could be construed, after more than a modest amount of twisting and turning, as anti gun control.  In this still racially charged part of the country, the thought is that the black political leadership in the district is coalescing behind Robin Kelly for fear of Debbie Halvorson winning the primary, which is tantamount to winning the election, in a district that was redrawn to assure black representation.

It’s tempting to draw parallels between the 1983 general election for Chicago mayor and the 2013 primary in the 2^nd Congressional district.   In 1983, 1^st District Congressman Harold Washington won the Democratic primary against two white candidates, the incumbent Jane Byrne and Cook County State’s Attorney Rich Daley.   Given the racial character of much of politics in Cook County back then (and now), the Republican nominee, State Representative Bernard Epton, suddenly had a chance to win by drawing the votes of white voters who couldn’t stomach the idea of a black mayor.   Mr. Epton, by no means a bigot, seemed to have gotten caught up in his newfound good fortune, using as a campaign slogan:   “Bernie Epton—Before It’s Too Late.”  And he came reasonably close to wining in this heavily Democratic town; Mr. Washington won 52% to 48%, a very close margin by Chicago standards.

The opposite parallels, if you will, between the 2013 2^nd District race and the 1983 general are not as clear cut as one might suppose, however. 

First, and most obvious, the current race is a primary election while the 1983 Washington/Epton race was a general election.   Thus, Washington could count on the support of those party loyalists who put party before race and could therefore count on a substantial white vote.  But there was substantial support for Republican Bernie Epton coming from white regular Democratic Organization committeemen who put race before party.   The party was split, allowing Epton to make it a race. 

The party is again split in this primary, as is the nature of a primary.  While it seems that most of the powers-that-be are uniting behind Ms. Kelly, there is substantial support for Ms. Halvorson among regulars in the white townships in the district.   And a third major candidate, Alderman Anthony Beale, is a ward committeeman and is likely to draw support not only from his ward but from regulars in the portion of the district that lies in the city of Chicago.

So the primary/general distinction is not as great as one might suppose.   

Second, Bernie Epton was a very unlikely receptacle for the support of whites who were voting nearly solely on the basis of race, some might say on the basis of bigotry.   Mr. Epton was a liberal Jew from Hyde Park, not exactly the type of candidate that white bigots would ardently support were he running against a regular Democrat named, say, O’Brien, Kowalski, Melchiorre, or Siliunas.   Robin Kelly is a black liberal whose race and political philosophy are very much in keeping with the district.  She would thus be a very logical receptacle of the support of liberal black voters. 

Third, the demographics of the district make a victory by Ms. Halvorson very unlikely, even had Toi Hutchinson stayed in the race.  Only 34% of the voters in the district are white.   As much as we would like to wish otherwise, people vote their race.   If Ms. Halvorson got every white vote, the black vote would have to be split nearly evenly among the three (before Ms. Hutchinson’s departure) black candidates for her to win.   (When Ms. Halvorson ran against Mr. Jackson in the primary in 2012, she was trounced 71% to 29%.)  Ms. Halvorson also claims that she will be outspent 30-1 by Ms. Kelly.   But she’s wrong; if you count Mayor Bloomberg’s money, she will be outspent 40-1.   Simply put, Debbie Halvorson, because of her race but also because she is not a very compelling candidate and is not well financed, never had much of a chance in the primary, with or without Toi Hutchinson in the race.

A better parallel might be drawn between the current primary in the 2^nd District and the 1983 primary for mayor in which, as I said before, Harold Washington won the race because the white vote was split nearly evenly between Mr. Daley and Ms. Byrne; the actual outcome was

Washington                  37%

Byrne                           33%

Daley                           30%

Until the last few weeks of the race, moreover, Mr. Washington was not expected to be a factor; that was a Byrne/Daley race until Mr. Washington came out of seemingly nowhere to win.  (And it was an ugly enough race even before Washington entered the race and the anti-black bigotry rose to the surface.   Remember the Daley supporters and their unsanctioned “Dump the b----, vote for Rich” signs?)

Doubtless, the black political power structure was thinking about this outcome when they persuaded Toi Hutchinson to leave the race, but they still might have a parallel situation on their hands.   There are three major candidates remaining:   Robin Kelly, Anthony Beale, and Debbie Halvorson, the latter of whom is the only white candidate.   In addition, there is a host of minor candidates, most, if not all, of whom are black.   So there is the potential for racial ticket splitting resulting in a Halvorson victory.  

However, again, the demographics of the 2^nd district are very different from the demographics of Chicago in 1983.   Every white vote wouldn’t win the race for Ms. Halvorson even in a crowded field.   And Debbie Halvorson is no Harold Washington.

Yes, race permeates politics in Chicago and its environs, even to this day, but that doesn’t mean the 2^nd Congressional race is an eerie reverse parallel of the 1983 mayoral general or primary election.

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.