Who wil be the next Mayor of Chicago!?

Ok, I know a lot of you aren't citizens of the Kingdom of Daley, but the fact that one of Chicago's longest serving mayors, who's father was also one of Chicago's longest serving mayors, announced today that he won't be seeking reelection is pretty incredible and (at least to me) surprising.

What is also very interesting is that the Chicago election will be in March 2011, which means we could have a new mayor in about six months. In Chicago, there is no primary so to speak, everyone runs in an open election and if you get 51%, you win. If not, the top 2 vote getters face off in a runoff election.

What are people's thoughts? Rahm Emmanual has expressed interest, several Chicago alderman have been mentioned...

 

Is Rahm Emanuel really loved in Chicago or something? As one of the biggest Washington insiders, how could he possibly win at a time like this?

 

I guess Daley wants to retire on his own terms. Better that than lose. Whether he deserved it or not, I do remember there being a lot of anger at him about the 2016 Olympics business.

I have a funny feeling Oprah might run. But that's just probably the Chicago outsider in me playing connect-the-dots... "There has always been speculation about Oprah's political ambitions, if she has any.... and Oprah lives parttime in Chicago... HENCE SHE'S THE NEXT MAYOR!"

 

The mayor of Chicago, whoever he is, will be one of the most powerful politician in the state, up there with the governor, Dick Durbin and the seemingly immortal Michael J. Madigan, speaker of the house in Springfield.

I'd love it if Rahm would come back to Chicago and run. I don't think he would last as many terms as Daley, but he might be able to tackle the city's budget issues. Someone has to do it. Like any big city, major problems include the budget, the school system, the rusting public transportation infrastructure and crime.

The mayoral race will be exciting in any event, and we'll know within weeks who the major candidates will be.

 

Daley.... won't be mayor...? Is that... legal?

 

Don't worry. He will make it legal.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I was about seven the last time he wasn't mayor of Chicago.

 

If I were Emanuel I'd let this election cycle go. Let the next person come in and screw up the city royally. The next mayor will be fighting the city's aldermen non stop for several years as they try to reassert control. Rahm can sweep in for the next election and promise to knock heads together and bring discipline back to city politics.

 

A sado-masochist

 

I agree, Jabba. There's still news talk that Rahm is going to jump ship and run for Mayor, but he would truly have to be either an idiot, or so full of hubris that he is blind to the vaccuum in the city right now.

I'd say that Rahm would have an excellent chance to win the mayoralship, but if he did so right now it would 1)all but ensure he would be a 1 term mayor, and 2)probably end his future aspirations. Better to let a complete opportunist like Jackson Jr, have a term now, and then step in 4 years.

The wild card is Tom Dart, who probably has the only network to hold onto power, and is a pretty popular sheriff.

 

I'd vote for Dart if I could vote in the election.

 

Rahm, Jackson meet on mayor's race

Rahm has a $1.2 million campaign chest. That won't be enough. Try to imagine what this is going to be like. If indeed the city's financial crisis becomes the central theme of the campaign (and what else would it be?) the opportunities for blaming the former mayor for the problems will of course be extremely limited. Welcome to Obama's world. Candidates for Illinois governor have it easier, since Blagojevich of course is still like a super sponge for soaking up blame for all our fiscal problems. If he ever gets convicted, so much the better. Democratic mismanagement of the state's finances will play very well as it always has. Not for the next mayor of Chicago, though. The first post-Daley mayor will be the sole proprietor of all the city's past, present and future financial woes, of which there is a nearly limitless variety.

 

Except Daley won't ever be blamed in any meaningful way. The city council is going to be the dumping ground. Daley was the closest thing to a King the US had, and that wasn't always a bad thing. But attacking Daley is like attacking the heart of the city itself. He did a lot of great things for the city, and did it without red tape. I mean, he took on the federal government, probably violating every federal aviation law on the books over Meig's Field, and won. He practically dared the feds to come into Chicago, but everyone knows you don't mess with Chicago while a Daley is mayor.

No possible candidate is going to be as strong as Daley in that regard, so it's going to come down to who can rise above the city council and organize the strongest coalition. Think of post-Daley politics as a Mafia war. The Godfather just stepped down. Who is going to rise to be Michael Corleone among a field of Fredos, while trying not to be a Sonny.

 

Except Daley won't ever be blamed in any meaningful way. The city council is going to be the dumping ground. Daley was the closest thing to a King the US had, and that wasn't always a bad thing. But attacking Daley is like attacking the heart of the city itself.

That's exactly the point I was trying to make, except that you made it clearly.

 

Yeah, I agree. And it's going to make for an interesting race. I'd say the most exciting aspect is that there isn't time for a long, drawn out race. The (relatively) compressed time schedule is going to result in the purest political campaign out there, with no time for back and forth periods of manipulation.

That is, unless of course the famous Chicago graveyard voter rolls again come out. I wonder who they going to be passed to?

 

Chicago must be a very difficult city to govern. Why would any of these people want to?

 

Combine the race and neighborhood politics with the business power base and you get a challenge, but probably no worse than any other American city of the same size, not that there are many of those.

But lots of Rahm news. He's allegedly announcing his decision to leave the White House this week. Too bad. I think it's a mistake, but he is as clever a politician as Chicago has ever had, not that being clever is necessarily the kind of thing that will help him. Money won't be a problem either, although it would really help if he were black or Hispanic. Or hurt.

 

Chicago must be a very difficult city to govern. Why would any of these people want to

Because if you're a strong enough leader, you get everything.

Chicago is unique in that there is no opposition in the city. Everyone is beholden to the mayor-The chief of police, the fire chief, the city council, the public works union boss. I can't see, for example, the LAPD chief of police ever standing up at a press conference and saying "Whatever the mayor wants, ask him.." But that's the reality in Chicago. At least under Daleyx2.

Traditionally, the rest of Illinois is republican, while Chicago and Cook Co are democratic. Effectively, there is no opposition party in Chicago, so traditional political realities like having to compromise and form coalitions don't exist. Things are changing now. The democrats are making inroads into the suburbs, while there's now an active GOP in the city.

Daley personifies the last vestige of that reality, because most of the relationships were cultivated by his father. Even the mayors that served between father and son were really just placeholders. But those relationships are dying off, being dilluted, and so on.

I agree with Jabba in that I can see Emmanuel being elected to mayor, I just think it's absolutely the wrong time if he has further political ambitions. Rahm has a strong personality, he just doesn't have the unification that Daley does.

 

I really hope that if Rahm, runs, he is running to be the next Daley, not as a candidate using the Mayor's office as a stepping stone for higher office. I want a Mayor of Chicago whose sole ambition in life is to be Mayor of Chicago.

 

I don't think being a big city mayor has traditionally been much of a stepping stone for higher office. Grover Cleveland I think is the only mayor to become president. Sarah Palin came close to the vice presidency of course.

The real pathway to the U.S. presidency is being a state governor. But because of state politics as Mr44 pointed out above being the mayor of Chicago would be a poor stepping stone to becoming Illinois governor.

Rahm may want to round out his career as a U.S. Senator from Illinois, and has a realistic shot at that if he's successful at mayoral politics.

In any case, Emanuel's resignation is all but official. The president is apparently going to make the announcement tomorrow.

 

Chicago doesn't need a mayor, it needs a king...a sausage king. Everybody knows that Abe Froman is the sausage king of Chicago, so why not just appoint him?

 

Because he looks a little young....

 

Anyone else hear that Rahm may not be eligible to run for Mayor, because he rented out his Chicago residence since going to the White House, and Chicago law requires you reside in Chicago for the 12 months prior to becoming elected Mayor?

 

I read that Emanuel was caught sanitizing his hands after shaking hands with supporters. Not a good start..

 

That's really not bad, you don't want to spread germs from some supporters to all the others, or to yourself.

I have Crohn's disease (an overactive immune system that attacks my digestive system), and the medicine I take (remicade) weakens my immune system... so now I catch everything, was sick all of August just because I went to a funeral and caught pneumonia. If I went to meet a politician, I sure would hope he would be sanitizing his hands and not passing along the germs.