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. 

REDFLEX’S EXCELLENT CHICAGO ADVENTURE: EDDY BURKE ENTER(ED) THE FRAY

3/26/13

According to yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, which has been at least as dogged on the Redflex story as yours truly (See my 3/17/13 post, REDFLEX’S EXCELLENT CHICAGO ADVENTURE:  THE STORY THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, PART ????, only my latest in a series.), suspicions about the chicanery surrounding Redflex’s red light camera contract with the city of Chicago go back to at least 2007.

Even six years ago, people knew something wasn’t right about the contract and suspected favoritism was being shown to Redflex and now, of course, we know why.   Allegedly, Mr. John Bills, a purchasing manager in the city’s Transportation Department and, probably not coincidentally, a precinct captain in House Speaker Mike Madigan’s 13^th ward Regular Democratic Organization, was on the take from Redflex.   Further, as I noted in my 3/17/13 post, Mr. Bills remained indirectly on Redflex’s pad, after leaving his job with the city, through a Redflex funded non-profit called the Traffic Safety Coalition, which was run by one Greg Goldner, a big fundraiser for and long time friend of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Back in 2007, one of Redflex’s major competitors for the camera contract, American Traffic Solutions (“ATS”), suspected that the scales were tipped in Redflex’s favor.  Following a proud Chicago tradition,  ATS went to an alderman, in this case, uber-alderman Ed Burke of the 14^th Ward.   (As far as we know, nobody at ATS of any note lives in the 14^th Ward, which demonstrates how things have changed in Chicago politics, but that is grist for another mill.)   ATS, as it turns out, already had plenty of clout with the city and with Mr. Burke.   One of ATS’s major subcontractors, Quantum Crossings, LLC, has as the chairman of its advisory board Mr. Tom Donovan, whose name is known to anyone who has been familiar with Chicago politics for more than the last few months or so.    Mr. Tom Donovan was once patronage chief for the real Mayor Daley (Richard J., or Richard I) and the Mayor’s immediate successor, Mike Bilandic, otherwise known as Bilandic the Bland, since we are handing out monikers to former mayors.   Mr. Donovan went on to head the Chicago Board of Trade.   While his clout certainly had something to do with his obtaining that job, it’s quite clear that Mr. Donovan was surely one of Richard I’s very bright young men.  But I digress.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Donovan and Mr. Burke have been friends for decades.

Responding to ATS’s pleas, and, doubtless, to Mr. Donovan’s presence in the ATS bidding group, Mr. Burke initiated a bout of combat by mail with the Daley Administration, and, specifically, City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges and CFO Paul Volpe, over the Redflex contract and the shenanigans surrounding it.   As Chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, Mr. Burke threatened to hold hearings about the contract in the City Council.  Supposedly, the Daley Administration relented in July, 2007 and opened the contract to competitive bidding.   Burke never held a hearing in the City Council and the whole thing died.  Redflex wound up with the exclusive contract for red light cameras in the city of Chicago.  Now that the whole issue has blown up in Redflex’s, and, apparently, Mr. Bills’, face, Mr. Burke is interested again and is holding hearings.

A few thoughts…

First, this looks like a case of one clout firm getting upset that its clout was apparently transcended by another clout firm.   ATS, one suspects, was not upset that the scales were tipped; it was upset that the scales weren’t tipped in ATS’s favor.   Of course, no one can say that definitively at this point, but ATS’s hiring of Mr. Donovan’s firm as a subcontractor and its going to Mr. Burke, the king of clout at the time, when it had a problem indicate that ATS knew its way around the block in Chicago.   And one suspects that the powers that be, and maybe even Ed Burke, were asking each other “Who’s (Redflex’s) clout?  How can it be better than our clout?”  

Again, ATS may be entirely on the up and up here, and is almost certainly on the level legally, but being around the politics of this town for a long time makes one cynical.  As Chicago political legend Ed Vrdolyak put it a few years ago “Hey, not even fishing is on the square.”

Second, as the Tribune put it, questions regarding Redflex center on whether a mid-level bureaucrat like John Bills “had the juice to single-handedly steer a $100mm contract.”   No one thinks so.  That, as I have indicated in my many posts on this issue, is the crux of the case.   John Bills didn’t make this decision.  Someone else did.  And the entire $2mm (The number keeps growing, as does the depth of the reported relationship between Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Bills.) paid to Marty O’Malley, another 13^th Ward denizen, for “consulting, didn’t wind up in Mr. O’Malley’s pocket…or in Mr. Bills’ pocket.   Where did the money go?   Who made the decision to hire Redflex over the objections of another qualified firm with plenty of its own clout?

I don’t know whether I hate or love this story, but I do know it only gets more interesting…and will continue to do so.

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.