Bob Shaw is back in Chicago; is he bored with political suburbia? Will anybody want him to replace Rahm?

SHAW: Will Chicago fall for Bob?

Bob Shaw, the one-time alderman and Cook County Board member, is throwing himself into the mix as a challenger to Mayor Rahm Emanuel in next year's election cycle.

Which on the surface doesn't sound like a big deal. There was bound to be someone who's ego was bloated enough that they would feel the need to be the token opposition to Emanuel come February of 2015.

BUT WHAT CATCHES my attention about this move is the fact that Shaw, along with brother William, were the political people who a couple of decades ago left Chicago and the South Side (the Roseland neighborhood, to be exact) for suburbia.

The intent for them was to become political powerbrokers in a new turf, rather than having to share control with other Chicago South Side government officials.

William Shaw went from being a state legislator from the South Side to being mayor of Dolton, along with a suburban state legislator -- until his death in 2008.

While Bob Shaw went from being 9th Ward Alderman to being a county board member from the south suburbs, and to having a home in suburban South Holland. Even though he's no longer in office, he maintains a political tie by showing up at assorted events and serving as an advisor to several government officials.

IT WOULD SEEM that Shaw's suburban aspirations are over. Probably part of the reason he's kicking off a mayoral campaign now is that he has to re-establish himself as a Chicago resident. He says he moved back to the city in December.

Although wouldn't it be ironic if the 2015 campaign cycle included an effort by Emanuel to boot Shaw off the ballot based on residency requirements -- after Emanuel himself was the guy who endured a lengthy court battle to contend he was really a Chicagoan even all those years he was working in Washington, D.C.

What was notable about the attempt by the Shaws to become the political bosses of the south suburbs was that it put the brothers into constant battles with the Jackson family, which usually managed to prevail.

But if one looks closely at the village boards of many predominantly-African-American south suburbs, you'll find officials whose loyalties are to the Shaws.

BUT THAT BATTLE is over (Bill is deceased, and Jesse, Jr., is incarcerated).

So the idea of running for mayor could easily be a way for Bob Shaw to keep himself amused and busy for the upcoming year. What else does he have to do with himself? Even at age 77, he's not ready for a real retirement!

Although Shaw on Thursday made a point of touting his political connections, as though it would only be natural for him to be the challenger to Emanuel.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported how he pointed out he and his brother's Arkansas connections, and claimed that his family knew the family that produced President Bill Clinton back in the old days.

IT'S POSSIBLE, I suppose. Bob and Bill Shaw were among the many millions of black people who fled the south during the 20th Century for hopes of a better life in the north -- which is what boosted the African-American population of Chicago from about 10,000 at the beginning of the century to more than 1 million by 1950.

Although I doubt the two families were best of buds back in the old home. Emanuel being on Clinton's White House staff gives him a much closer tie than any Shaw has with the former president.

So what should we make of Bob Shaw as a mayoral candidate?

It makes as much sense as anyone else. He won't hesitate to speak out. He will be critical of Emanuel's policies. And he may be capable of playing off the discontent felt by many African-American would-be voters toward the incumbent mayor.

HE'LL CERTAINLY DO better than Carol Moseley-Braun did back when she ran for mayor in 2009.

But I suspect he'll go into the Chicago history books alongside people such as Timothy Evans, Bobby Rush, Danny Davis and R. Eugene Pincham.

Those were all black men who took on Richard M. Daley, and lost! Even though they picked up the bulk of the black vote in their respective election cycles.

My guess is that Bob Shaw will come across as equally alien to the rest of Chicago as those men did. But he will be interesting to watch and lsiten to for the next year.

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Shaws used local government to build allies, amass their political influence

One-time House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill is remembered among political geeks for the saying, “All politics is local.” And if ever there was anyone who took that saying to heart, it was the brothers Shaw of the far South Side and, later, its surrounding suburbs.

There was once a time when Bob and Bill Shaw threatened to be some of the most politically powerful twins anywhere in this country. Bob was an alderman from the Roseland neighborhood, while Bill represented the neighborhood in Springfield – both in the Illinois House and later the state Senate (until 2002).

THAT ERA IS definitely over, now that Bill has succumbed to colon cancer earlier this week. He was 71, and is survived by, among others, brother Bob.

But in my mind, what made the Shaws unique was that they sensed the changing demographics of the Chicago area, particularly in the early 1990s when many south suburban towns that once were lower-middle class white changed to majority African-American populations.

Rather than feeling hemmed in by their existing neighborhoods and the need to continue to live within their respective wards or legislative districts, they moved. They left city life in a decaying Roseland neighborhood for the suburbs.

Bob Shaw accommodated no longer being a city resident by giving up a City Council seat for a post on the Cook County Board.

HIS TWIN BROTHER merely shifted over from a city-based Illinois House seat to a state Senate seat covering both city and suburban territory. He paired that post with his election in 1997 as mayor of Dolton – a position he continued to hold to the present day.

When the Shaws went suburban, they had hopes of bringing their Chicago political skills to the suburbs to organize local officials into a series of allies who would make them the two big political powerbrokers of south suburban Cook County.

They definitely saw themselves as a political pair. I remember Bob once telling me during a visit to the Statehouse Springfield to help his brother gain support for education-related legislation, “I’m watching his back, the way he’d watch mine.”

They never became the county-wide powerbrokers that they dreamed of being, in large part because around the same time that the Shaws went suburban, the Rev. Jesse Jackson had his son, Jesse Jr., get elected to a seat in Congress that represented the far South Side and surrounding suburbs.

BASICALLY, POLITICAL POWER in southern Cook County during the 1990s became a squabble between the Shaws and the Jacksons. There were many local elections that had their significance in that they were between candidates who were allies with Shaw and allies of Jackson.

One of Jackson’s perennial opponents for his seat in Congress in recent elections has been the Rev. Anthony Williams – a Shaw brothers protégé from Robbins who usually campaigns on the theme that Jesse Jr. has “lost touch” with the reality of inner-city and suburban black life. If one had asked the Shaws, they would have given the same answer.

Insofar as a lasting legacy, many will argue the Jacksons won.

With Bill Shaw now gone and Bob’s political glory in the past, it falls short of Jesse Jr., who has a semi-legitimate chance of moving up to the U.S. Senate (even though Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday verbally touted the chances of another member of Congress – Danny Davis – for the post).

WHEN IT CAME to the public perception among local voters, the Jacksons always came out ahead based on the national glamour/notoriety of the reverend’s lengthy record as a civil rights leader. Jesse Jr. was the guy who would get the glory in the national press, with the Shaws usually coming off as petty, small-minded people who couldn’t see beyond their own immediate neighborhood concerns.

But that would be an inaccurate way of looking at the Shaws, who if anything were guilty of taking Tip O’Neill’s advice literally.

They built up influence by using their skills to get local trustees elected to village boards throughout the area surrounding Dolton. And within Dolton, Bill Shaw was a political boss with the same control that some people like to remember Dick Daley as having in the old days in Chicago proper.

I still remember when Dolton politics got its moment in the Chicago-area mindset, when critics claimed that Dolton police department credentials (including those stinkin’ badges) were given out to Shaw allies with criminal records and to family members and other friends.

BUT DESPITE THE people who want to believe that Bill Shaw was running some sort of criminal operation in Dolton, nothing illegal was ever proven. In fact, much of the criticism tended to come from people who remembered the old days of Dolton as a white-majority town (rather than its current population of 82.4 percent African-American people).

And in the Legislature (where Bill Shaw did double duty for six years), he is remembered for measures to require increased attention to the contributions of African-American people in the teaching of history in public schools.

So in figuring the legacy of the Shaw brothers (and one has to consider them as a team, watching each others’ backs), it will live on because there are still officials on village boards and park districts and school boards who control local concerns of interest to many people who owe their initial election to Bill and Bob.

Jackson may have gotten the national glory, but the Shaws for a time had the actual Chicago-style political power.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here’s hoping the Shaw family and friends have a happier Christmas holiday than (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1302875,shaw-dies112608.article) they did for Thanksgiving.

Both Bob and Bill Shaw were ultimately replaced on the Cook County Board and in the (http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2008/11/27/updates/breaking_news/doc492e42499d872233123279.txt) Illinois Senate respectively by challengers allied with the Jackson family.

Clues as to just what the Shaws and Jacksons thought of each other can be found in this newspaper account (http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/query/creadpr.cgi?id=6295) that Jesse Jackson Jr. made a point of distributing on the Internet.