Grande dame trio in charge of Chicago – now THERE’S a historic first

The Associated Press billed Monday’s inaugural as a “first black woman” being sworn in as mayor, while other news entities found ways to work either “gay” or “lesbian” into the headlines so as to justify the use of the word “historic.”

LIGHTFOOT: No. 55 in Chicago history

Yet the intriguing aspect that I think truly justifies considering this date historic, rather than just another political hack put into place, is the composition of our city government.

AS IN THE fact that our city’s mayor, treasurer and clerk are not only all women, but not quite so Anglo-oriented as people once would have thought possible.

We have, aside from Lightfoot as mayor, Anna Valencia as city clerk and Melissa Conyears-Ervin as city treasurer. As in an African-American woman, a Mexican-American woman and another African-American woman – to be specific.

The “old boys network” at City Hall is most definitely a thing of the past.

Unless they’re now going to be convening in that legendary (and most-definitely cliched) “smoke-filled room” and complaining in some 21^st Century version of the “He-Man Woman Hater’s Club” (remember the old Our Gang film shorts that continued to air for decades to come along with “The Three Stooges?).

VALENCIA: Getting clerk term in own right

FOR THE NEXT four years, it will be the women in charge around City Hall. Instead of the old variation of what was once considered diversity in city leadership – various ethnicities along the lines of the old New York political “Three I’s” structure (an Irishman, an Italian and someone of Israel – as in Jewish).

Not that it’s a total change. For in the case of Valencia, she already was Chicago city clerk. Her post was considered one belonging to Latinos (she’s of Mexican-American ethnic origins).

She took over the office when Susana Mendoza gave up the clerk’s post to become Illinois state comptroller in 2017, finishing up her city clerk term. The significance of this year’s municipal elections is that Valencia managed to win a four-year term as clerk in her own right.

 

CONYEARS-ERVIN: Returning to Chicago

Making her potentially the city government official with whom the typical city resident will have contact. It will be her name printed on all those city stickers that motorists are required to purchase if they wish to avoid being constantly ticketed by police while driving their cars around the city.

WHILE CONYEARS-ERVIN IS the one life-long resident of Chicago amongst the trio. Born on the South Side and raised on the West (the Austin neighborhood, to be exact), she was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

Until she gave up her Springfield-based post to become a part of the city political structure proper. As opposed to Mendoza, who gave up her city post to become a part of the Statehouse-based Illinois political structure.

Conyears-Ervin will be in charge of the city entity that manages municipal monies and investments, along with pension funds for city employees and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Which will put her right in the middle of the financial morass that will wind up preoccupying much of Lightfoot’s time and attention. Lori Lightfoot may well get the blame (or praise) for whatever becomes of Chicago’s financial situation. But Conyears-Ervin may well wind up being the person who will suffer severe headaches trying to figure out the convoluted fiscal mess and what (if anything) can be done to fix it.

VALENCIA HAD THE easiest path to election – since she managed to get all her opponents knocked off the ballot. She ran unopposed. While Conyears-Ervin had to beat now-former alderman Amaya Pawar – who if he had won the April 2 run-off would have been the first Indian-American citywide official.

PAWAR: Historic in own right, or standing in way?

Although his victory would have been perceived as screwing up the grande dame scenario of female leadership at the top of Chicago. Which is what we’ll see through the spring of 2023.

I do find one aspect intriguing in that there are those of Chicago who insist one has to be native-born and raised to really belong here. But in the case of Lightfoot of Massillon, Ohio and Valencia of Granite City, Ill. (where the nearest big city is St. Louis), it would seem we’ve handed over our city’s leadership to outsiders.

Or at the very least, to people who came to Chicago later in life – and came to realize how wonderful the city could be, to the point where they’re not likely to want to leave.

  -30-

Chicago gets to see what real electoral competition looks like come Tuesday

Tuesday is Election Day, and we’re finally going to get a clue as to whom our city’s next mayor will be.

MENDOZA: A mayoral preference

This is a particularly unusual election cycle (“the most important election cycle in decades,” says the Chicago Tribune) in that we have real competitive candidates. We don’t have a clue as to who will win.

BECAUSE WE USUALLY GET a case of a frontrunner who is so clearly the establishment favorite running against another person or two – one of whom may be the choice of idealists but who really doesn’t have a chance of achieving political victory.

It’s almost like our municipal elections are a done deal before the candidates even file for slots on the ballot.

This time is different!

It’s all about the 14 candidates who are of varying levels of qualifications. I’m sure there are some people who think the real problem is that we’re letting just anybody get on the ballot, creating such a mass of candidates that even now, some people still don’t have a clue who they’ll vote for.

IT MAY WELL be that some people won’t make up their minds until they literally set foot in the voting booth. There also will be many who will make their choice – then wind up regretting it as the stupidest thing they ever did.

Will Cook Co. 'mayor' become 'Boss Toni?'

So who’s going to win? I really don’t have a clue.

I’m really not comfortable saying who the “top two” candidates will be who would qualify for an April 2 run-off election – which will have the feel of a more conventional election in that the number of choices are limited.

Even the pundit predictions are all over the place. I know I’ve already written that the campaigns of one-time White House chief of staff William Daley and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle could wind up as the “top two” picks, creating a brawl giving an establishment and a progressive-leaning candidate a chance to face off.

BUT THEN AGAIN, this election fight could turn out to be so bizarre that the predictable top two will manage to fall short.

Could we get Mayor Daley III?

What happens if the candidacy of former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot manages to catch on just enough that she can overcome what some originally thought would be the inevitable ascension of Preckwinkle to the mayoral post?

Then again, there also once were people who thought that this would be a year of politically powerful women – with Preckwinkle and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza managing to create a historic brawl. While knocking the third coming of a “Mayor Daley” out of the race altogether.

We also have those people who think that Willie Wilson (who turned ownership of McDonald’s franchises in inner city neighborhoods into a financial fortune) is a colorful enough character that they’d like to see him remain in the running after Tuesday.

PERSONALLY, I’D BE inclined to support the Mendoza candidacy – in part as a gesture of increased political empowerment of the growing Latino population in Chicago. I think it would be an excellent “up yours” gesture for Chicago to pick her at a time when the supporters of this Age of Trump would want us to think that people of Latino ethnic origins (she’s of Mexican-American background) as the ultimate political losers.

LIGHTFOOT: Upset in the making?

We’ll see, however, what happens once the votes are counted Tuesday and we have to figure out how long it will take to count the absentee ballots to see if the election is so close that it literally will come down to counting EVERY SINGLE VOTE.

Something that I’m sure many political watchers in Chicago will find to be a bizarre experience. It ain’t supposed to be that close – they’ll think.

While they’re probably wondering why all municipal elections can’t be like the one for city clerk – where incumbent Anna Valencia managed to get all of her challengers knocked off the ballot outright!

  -30-

Does ethnic, racial diversity in slating really create voter candidate appeal?

It was a guiding principal of slating candidates to run for political office known as “the three I’s,” and it would seem to be in place in 21^st Century Chicago – albeit in a slightly adapted form.

VALENCIA: Keeping Latino streak alive

The “three I’s” implied that candidates have to work as a team in order get the most votes, and the “team” has to have an individual who would directly appeal to everybody – hence a perfect ticket ought to include someone who’s Irish, someone who’s Italian and also someone who’s Jewish, which for purposes of an easy label became Israel.

THE THIRD “I.”

We still have that principle in place, although now it means we need to have a white candidate, a black candidate and someone with ethnic origins in Latin America. Which doesn’t create for a cutesy label, but is the same basic idea.

It seems that Mayor Rahm Emanuel followed the principle earlier this week when he announced his appointment of a replacement city clerk – Anna Valencia, who had actually been one of his staffers before getting a post that gives her a title with some authority.

Of course, being city clerk means she’s in charge of the office that usually manages to frustrate people when they have to deal with it – particularly when it comes to that time of the year when people have to renew the vehicle registration stickers they’re required to post on their cars (and pay for) in order to legally drive.

BEING THE STICKER saleswoman may not sound like much. But it means that Valencia will have a chance to run for a city-wide government post come the 2019 election cycle.

Valencia will get her name on automobiles all across Chicago when new stickers come out

Valencia gets the post because previous Clerk Susana Mendoza gave the city office up to become the Illinois comptroller through 2018. She gained that post back in 2011 when then-Clerk Miguel del Valle ran unsuccessfully for mayor.

You literally have to go back to 2006 to find a non-Latino city clerk (it was James Laski, who had to resign following his criminal indictment and conviction),

Which put the pressure on Emanuel to appoint a replacement clerk with Latin American origins (del Valle was born in Puerto Rico and came to Chicago when he was 4, while Mendoza’s parents were immigrants from Mexico).

MENDOZA: Movin' on up from City Hall these days

OF COURSE, THERE also were those people with African-American origins who would have liked to have seen a black person put into another city-wide position. Although I doubt Emanuel would have had the nerve to take on the Latino community of Chicago (about one-quarter of the city’s population) in a political fight when he has so many other people to quarrel with.

Besides, there is city Treasurer Kurt Summers who is black, and it reinforces the idea of an ethnic/racial split of the city’s governmental power. Although I can’t help but chuckle at the confusion the old-school Irish of Chicago’s political culture feel about the notion of the “white” person (Emanuel as mayor) being represented by someone who is Jewish. And I also remember when the treasurer’s office was the one used by Miriam Santos, who was the first Latina official in Chicago city government back in the 1990s.

Insofar as Valencia is concerned, she was a city lobbyist, and also worked as a campaign manager for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and for Reps. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and Gary Peters, D-Mich. (now a senator, and NOT the one-time White Sox pitcher) with the Illinois Senate Democratic Victory Fund and for state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago.

She has worked in various posts at city, state and federal government, which is impressive. Particularly since she’s only 31 – the fact that truly catches my attention. She was a mere baby back in the days when I roamed around the city looking for news stories for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

EMANUEL: Playing by rules to keep power

BUT TIME DOES pass, and as Emanuel said himself, her youth means she’s the next generation of Chicago leadership rising through the ranks. Personally, I’m not quite ready to proclaim proclaim Valencia as the first Latina to become mayor (maybe around the 2035 election cycle?).

But it does amuse me to see how times change, while managing to incorporate some of the basic principles of maintaining political power to keep the peace.

Or else run the risk of having some trouble-making person with Republican political leanings from the Sauganash or Mount Greenwood neighborhoods from coming in and taking advantage of the resulting political dissent that could end the nearly 90-year streak of Democrats holding control of the mayor’s office.

  -30-