EXTRA: History WAS made; with a pathetically-low vote turnout for mayor

There are going to be the people who will spew about the term “historic” to describe Tuesday’s mayoral run-off election – the one that saw a black woman (who also happens to be openly gay) get elected mayor of Chicago.

LIGHTFOOT: Now Herhonor-elect

Which does make us the largest U.S. city to have a chief executive who falls into those categories.

THERE ALSO ARE those who are going to see the roughly 3-1 voter ratio by which Lori Lightfoot defeated Toni Preckwinkle and they’re going to spew out the term “mandate”—as in implying her voter margin is so large that her election reflects the mood of the people. Such as the sentiment that Donald Trump fantasizes he has amongst a majority of the American people at-large.

As in people ought to feel an obligation to go along with Lightfoot’s political desires. As in going against Lightfoot somehow shows one just can’t get with the program. They need to accept her.

It is true that, with some two-thirds of the votes tallied Tuesday, Lightfoot had 74 percent of the mayoral vote – compared to 26 percent of people voting for Preckwinkle; the woman who once was considered the mayoral frontrunner.

But I’m going to admit that while some people are eager to toss out the terms “historic” and “mandate” on the Election Night, the term that keeps coming to my mind is “pathetic.”

PRECKWINKLE: Remains at County Bldg.

AS IN THE voter turnout was less than stellar.

The 2007 mayoral election that was Richard M. Daley’s last campaign may be the record low at 33 percent. But Tuesday saw a 34 percent voter turnout – which as late as 5 p.m. was as low as 29 percent. It took a last-minute surge of voters in the final hours the polling places were open to prevent this so-called “historic” election from being a record-low in terms of voter apathy.

EMANUEL: One more month as mayor

Which, by the way, was the same percentage we saw for the Feb. 26 election that reduced the 14 mayoral candidates down to the two finalists. Basically, two of every three people who were registered to vote decided they couldn’t be bothered.

Which really is odd because of the fact that the reason Rahm Emanuel chose not to seek a third term in office was because he supposedly sensed that the electorate wanted him gone. Could it really be that they likely would have been too apathetic to do much of anything to remove him from office?

  -30-

History? Maybe not

I know some people are giving the spin that Tuesday will be a historic day for Chicago. What with all that first black woman as mayor jazz, and some even stoked up by the possibility of Lori Lightfoot’s orientation being another “first.”

Will polling places be anywhere near this packed on Tuesday?

But what does it say that the first phase of this year’s election cycle was dreadful, and the evidence exists that Tuesday will give us equally pathetic results?

I’M TALKING ABOUT the voter turnout – which back in February reached only 34 percent (only 1 percent higher than the all-time record-low turnout for a mayoral election in Chicago – back in 2007).

Guess what? The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners says that the number of people who have turned out to cast their ballots early for the city municipal elections is low.

So low that we’re not likely to match the voter totals from Feb. 26. Seriously, just under 110,000 votes have already been cast for Tuesday – compared to the 125,000 who voted early before the first part of this year’s election cycle.

Basically, unless we have some record-setting voter turnout of people who actually wait until Election Day proper to cast their ballots, what we’re going to get is a pathetic voter total.

NOT EXACTLY WHAT you’d expect to see for a moment of Chicago history – an event that people will want to think was a significant shift in the way things were done in the Second City.

So this is what 'history' feels like?

More like just the beginning of a four-year period in which many of us are going to gripe about the way things are done here, because – after all – that’s what happens when people don’t bother to vote.

Their views tend to get ignored, and they think it’s their “right” as an American to gripe and grouse about it. Rather than do something to actually express their attitudes that impact the election’s outcome.

Of course, what is particularly appalling about all of this talk of pathetic voter turnout is that it falls into the political strategies of the candidates themselves. Rather than try to win over voters, they’re counting on it to be pathetic.

Will Preckwinkle need to update her headshot?

TONI PRECKWINKLE, IN particular, talks openly about how poor she expects voter turnout to be for Tuesday.

Which means her focus is going to be on getting the “right” people to show up at the polling places. As in the kinds of people who are inclined to view her as the “good government” Preckwinkle and not the “political hack” Preckwinkle that is the image that has arisen about Toni in recent months.

Preckwinkle does have the endorsements of people like Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and the unions for school teachers and some municipal government employees.

Get those kinds of people to turn out en masse while the masses feel a sense of apathy toward this mayoral election – and, who’s to say. Tuesday could turn out to be an Election Night victory for the Preckwinkle campaign.

BASICALLY, IT COULD turn out to be similar to the Feb. 26 election for aldermen when Edward M. Burke of the 14^th Ward managed to get select precincts of voters to cast their votes for him – thereby enabling him to prevail over the strong sentiment of the Latino majority population that Burke’s time has passed.

Can Preckwinkle play hardball electoral politics just like Eddie Burke? Or is there too much of that Hyde Park “goo goo” spirit in her to overcome the strong sentiment amongst some voters who think Lori Lightfoot represents change and reform – and who are more than willing to take it out on Toni the fact that Burke (who faces criminal corruption charges) got himself re-elected last month?

Will you bother to vote?

Who’s to say just what Tuesday’s voter outcome will be. Other than that it likely will reflect the views of a minority of the Chicago electorate, with many other people likely to complain about the results – which came about because they couldn’t be bothered to cast ballots.

Not quite how “history” is supposed to feel when it’s in the making!

  -30-

So sad if would-be voters have already tossed this election cycle out w/ trash

I had reason to be wandering through the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday and couldn’t help but notice the dearth of political signs set up on front yards.

Election sentiments of certain voters?

While just a month ago prior to the initial election, Beverly seemed flooded with signs touting the mayoral merits of Jerry Joyce – who got barely 40,000 votes and whose 7 percent support even ranked below that of Amara Enyia’s mayoral campaign.

ON SUNDAY, WITH the run-off election being just over two weeks away and so many people eagerly trying to convince us that history is taking place, I just don’t see the enthusiasm.

I managed to find one lone lawn sign touting the mayoral bid of hopeful Lori Lightfoot – erected by a homeowner along 103^rd Street.

By comparison, I actually found more signs touting Joyce’s campaign – although admittedly one was stuffed in a trash can along with, I wonder, the hopes of whatever individual has already done their house cleaning of sorts.

This shouldn’t be shocking. What with all the candidates who managed to get on the ballot, the reality of the Feb. 26 vote is that two of every three who bothered to vote (and most registered voters didn’t even bother) cast their votes for someone other than Lightfoot of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

I HAVE NO doubt there are many people across the country who are viewing the act of voting again as pure drudgery – after all, they already cast a ballot for the person they think “should have” won.

Is it their fault that everybody else screwed up and didn’t pick their person?

All I know is that this is a depressing sentiment for would-be voters to have at a time when they’re being asked to pick a new mayor for the first time in eight years. The departure of Rahm Emanuel come mid-May is not going to create a great abundance of joy.

Sign looks so depressed and droopy now that it's for a defunct campaign

If anything, there is one sentiment I have heard oft-expressed. It’s that in a run-off election in which there’s really not a whole heck of a lot of ideological difference between Lightfoot and Preckwinkle are those who say they’re willing to cast a ballot for Lightfoot – the candidate who is a Lesbian married to another woman, with the couple raising a daughter.

BUT THE PEOPLE expressing such thoughts say they’re mostly doing so as a way of “pissing off” all the right-wing ideologues who will be grossly offended by Lightfoot’s holding a position of such authority.

Almost as thought they view a vote for her as a great big “f--- you” to all of those types who are enjoying this Age of Trump our society is now entangled in.

As for the rest of the politicians, six of the failed mayoral candidates have since endorsed Lightfoot’s bid – including that of Joyce. It probably would be a significant pickup for her if the people of places like Beverly, Mount Greenwood and Sauganash (the historic enclaves where Chicago cops and firefighters live to comply with residency requirements) were to swing over to her.

In fact, it may well turn out that Lightfoot has a certain level of momentum – with far too many people voting against Preckwinkle solely because she actually has experience on the job and with the kinds of issues that city government would face.

I KNOW IN my case, that level of experience is the reason I’d be inclined to cast a ballot for Toni – which I’m sure will offend all the nitwits who are determined to say they’re using this election cycle to punish her for that “pop” tax she fought for as Cook County Board president.

I suspect many such as this bungalow resident were more concerned Sunday with St. Patrick's Day. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

But I’ve also accepted some two weeks out that Lori has the momentum over Toni – although I also encountered someone Sunday who said that reading the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement of Lightfoot seemed like more of a backhanded bit of praise in that it acknowledged Preckwinkle’s merits for the mayor’s post.

The real key to comprehending this election may well be in remembering that old axiom – talk is cheap. Forget all the rhetoric about first African-American woman as Chicago mayor.

I suspect most people will either hold their noses while voting, or find reasons not to bother. The end result will be Chicago suffering from their ambivalence.

  -30-

Latino vote could decide mayor, but will enough care to cast run-off ballots?

For voters who wanted to see either Mendoza … 

I remember the sight some several decades ago of a man at City Hall, clad in a gaudy sarape and sombrero, creating the stereotypical image of a Mexican, who was chanting over and over, “We break the tie.”

As in white voters and black voters in Chicago potentially equaling each other out, and the Latino segment of the city being the factor that would decide who would win political election in Chicago.

… or Chico as alcalde/mayor, … 

ARE WE DESTINED to see repeats of such images in coming weeks, as Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle fight it out in an April 2 run-off election to determine who gets to take over as mayor for Rahm Emanuel?

Because some political observers are pointing out that the parts of Chicago that didn’t really favor either Lightfoot or Preckwinkle in Tuesday’s elections are the precincts in the Latino-oriented neighborhoods.

Where the mayoral election was perceived as a brawl by Susana Mendoza and Gery Chico – and the other dozen candidates were perceived as after-thoughts.

… will either Toni … 

Meaning it is a significant segment of Chicago (where the Latino population comprises about 30 percent of the city) that could decide the run-off election outcome.

BUT WILL IT be a decision because one of the two mayoral hopefuls is able to sway the sentiment of Latino voters? Or will it be a decision made because many Latino voters will simply decide the run-off isn’t worth their time and trouble to go out and cast a ballot?

A study by the Center for Illinois Politics pointed out how Tuesday’s turnout wasn’t that great anywhere in Chicago, but was even worse in the Spanish-speaking enclaves of the city.

The city had a 34 percent voter turnout on Tuesday, which was barely larger than the record low of 33 percent back in the mayoral election of 2007 (which was an election that sent Richard M. Daley back to the mayor’s post for like the millionth time).

… or Lori hold political appeal?

In the Latino-oriented wards of Chicago (won mostly by Mendoza, although Chico took the 10^th Ward), there was 27 percent voter turnout this time around.

IT WOULD SEEM that Latino voters just couldn’t get themselves all excited about voting in this mess of an electoral cycle. Which hurt any chance that Susana would be giving up her Illinois comptroller post to become mayor anytime soon.

Will there suddenly be a sense of enthusiasm developing amongst Latino voters for either candidate? Will Latinos suddenly gain the long-ago expressed sense of enthusiasm that the new mayor (whether Lightfoot or Preckwinkle) will feel indebted to Latino interests because “we” gave them the majority of votes?

Or will it merely turn into apathy, which further creates the impression that the deciding factor will be all those people who voted for William Daley’s mayoral campaign?

Will we see the bandito image, … 

The ones who probably cast their votes that way out of a sentiment of NOT wanting to see either Lightfoot or Preckwinkle prevail. The thought of having to “pick one” could be repellant-enough to make them not want to vote at all.

DESPITE THE THOUGHTS being expressed by some that Preckwinkle could prevail because many will perceive Toni – the two-term Cook County Board president and former Hyde Park neighborhood alderman – as someone who has been a part of the political establishment.

… or hear we're finally ready for reform

Meaning she’s someone they could “work with.” As opposed to Lightfoot, the former federal prosecutor who might still carry a prosecutorial attitude toward government about her. Which I’m sure is what some potential voters think is exactly what is needed in Chicago.

So what is going to be the prevailing theme of the April 2 run-off; are we going to get a guy in a sarape, sombrero y huaraches, looking like a Frito Bandito reject while trying to tell Latinos that it’s all up to us to decide whether we’re destined to have Toni or Lori as our next alcalde.

Or is Chicago finally going think it’s ready for the reform that one-time bar-keep alderman Paddy Bauler said we weren’t ready for more than a half-century ago?

  -30-

EXTRA: Illinois’ political high point? It seems to be Cook County!

The highest elevation in Illinois is the Charles Mound not far from Galena, but when it comes to a political sense I’m wondering if the high point is right here in Cook County.
 

ORR: Oversaw record-high voter turnout

It might even be somewhere around suburban Oak Park. That is, if we look at the statistics available for voter turnout and electoral support for the Nov. 8 elections that are becoming a more distant memory with each passing day – albeit one that we’re never likely to forget entirely.

THE COOK COUNTY clerk’s office released its analysis of the election turnout that showed this was an election cycle in which the people cared. If Hillary Clinton wants to find a “fall guy” for her Election Day defeat, she had better not look to the county of her birth.

We turned out, and we backed her presidential aspirations big-time!

For the record, Hillary Clinton got the highest number of votes ever (699,003) by a presidential candidate. Even more than Barack Obama did in that 2008 election cycle that captured the nation’s imagination (or contempt, for the kind of people who are inclined to believe that Donald Trump’s victory was their revenge for having to endure eight years of an Obama presidency).

Oak Park Township in the western suburbs had an 83.4 percent voter turnout.

BUT TURNOUT WAS high all over the county. There were 1.51 million people registered to vote before Election Day, and another 24,000-plus showed up at polling places and registered to vote that very day.

With Cook County Clerk David Orr justifying that by saying, “More than 24,000 residents who wouldn’t have been able to cast a ballot were able to vote as a direct result of Election Day Registration.”

Those figures are records for Cook County voter turnout, although it will be interesting to see if they can be topped come the 2020 election cycle. Or was this phenomenon truly a product of the freakish nature of the ’16 Clinton/Trump brawl that I’m pretty sure no one has recovered from as of yet.

Voter turnout was high all the way around, but as one ventured outside of the Chicago metro area the more that the high turnout produced political support for Trump, rather than Hillary.

BUT COOK’S HIGH population (about 45 percent of the whole state) is why Hillary won Illinois with ease, while the bulk of the Great Lakes states was swayed over to Camp Trump.

So perhaps it is all the more appropriate that the low elevation point of Illinois is the point where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge – down by Cairo.

A low-point, in so many ways, for Democrats

That’s the part where Trump support was so strong that it helped translate into the few Republican electoral victories this state experienced this time around.

  -30-

¿Did Donald do himself in politically with his habla on Mexicaños?

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been one of hitting hard and often several groups of people he figures were never going to support him anyway; but it was notable that his political trash talk began with Mexicans.
 

Will Latinos turn Trump into electoral piñata?

You remember? His spiel that Mexicans were rapists and drug dealers, and that erecting that barricade along the U.S./Mexico border would be a significant boost to the national security?

TRUMP AND HIS operatives always figured it couldn’t hurt them to talk like that because there just wouldn’t be enough Mexican-Americans to cast ballots. And such talk likely would inspire the nativist element of society that Trump is counting on to prevent him from electoral embarrassment come Tuesday night.

Now I don’t doubt that the xenophobes amongst us will be motivated to turn out and vote. Heck, I don’t doubt that in the isolated parts of the country, they will be dominant and will create political maps with large swaths of red.

Tainted, in the ideologues’ minds, by those pimples of blue that represent the urban areas where people (including voters) actually live.

But the complicating factor from the Trump perspective is the Latino vote – which has been on the rise but also shows signs of significant numbers of Latino voters can be apathetic.

WHICH IS WHAT makes the Miami-based Latino Decisions group intriguing. It shows an anticipated record-high Latino vote for the 2016 election cycle. As many as 14.7 million Latinos casting ballots in the Tuesday elections.

With some 79 percent of those anticipated to vote for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Another 3 percent are expected to be amongst the contrarians voting for Libertarian or Green candidates.

Trump may well have motivated people with their ethnic origins in the rest of the Americas to think of Hillary as their friend. We laughed sarcastically when she tried comparing herself to a friendly abuelita, but we clearly see Trump as that Yankee imperialist whose view of Latinos is one of how he can exploit us by building his garish hotels in our neighborhoods, and get some of us to work for as close to minimum wage as he can get away with.

Kind of like the way our organized crime interests tried turning Havana into their hotel/casino paradise – which motivated certain people to give power to a tyrant like Fidel Castro.

IT DOES SEEM like Trump will have no one else to blame but himself if he does not prevail. If he had kept his mouth shut and been the least bit respectful, perhaps he wouldn’t have people already turning out at early voting centers to ensure they cast their ballots against him.

Then again, a Trump that is respectful would not really be Donald Trump. His brash bluster and arrogance is what makes him (and he alone) think he is fit to be president.

Of course, if a strong Latino vote really does turn out to block Trump’s presidential aspirations, THAT is what will be perceived by the ideologues as the “rigged” element of this year’s election cycle.

Because as they probably see it, only people like themselves ought to be allowed to vote – just like in the old days, which weren’t nearly as great as some would like to believe they were.

PERSONALLY, I’LL BE watching for all the bits of evidence that crop up to indicate just how strong a Latino vote will turn out to be – because it could be the evidence of the growing strength of the Latino electorate.

As in Trump may have opened up the can of worms, so to speak, that his ideologue-types would have preferred remained sealed shut.

Because as the Latino vote (which back in 1992 when Bill Clinton became president only accounted for some 4.3 million votes) continues to grow (a record-high 11.2 million in 2012 that will be shattered again this time around), it will only be more difficult for the xenophobes amongst us to prevail.

Which means that in the end, those of us with an interest in growing Latino political empowerment may wind up thanking Trump for being the guy who made the masses realize how stupid his attitudes truly are!

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: A website for those who want to view pictures of people smashing piñatas in the image of Donald Trump. Or, you can just wait until Election Day and see how severely we vote against him.

We in Illinois out-voted New York but did anybody really notice turnout?

An interesting point has been brought up on various politically-oriented websites – some 2.6 million people turned out to polling places this week in the New York primaries.

Much is being made of the fact that locals Hillary Clinton (once the state’s U.S. senator) and  Donald Trump (for many years, the state’s garish rube who generates so much copy with his life's gaudiness) got such large vote margins that the Empire State has practically ensured it will be a Clinton/Trump brawl for president come the November general elections.

YET IN ILLINOIS’ primary back in March, some 3.45 million people took the time to vote. Both Clinton and Trump had more people from Illinois cast ballots for them than there were New Yorkers who supported them.

Did anybody get all worked up, excited or bent out of shape over the notion that Illinois had somehow put the two candidates over the top, or clinched their ultimate victories?

Heck no.

Probably because it would have been ridiculous to make such a claim.

STILL, FOR ALL the claim that New Yorkers will try to give you these days that they’re somehow politically savvy and that it will be their New York “values” that somehow sets the tone of the 2016 general election for president, I have to wonder if it is Illinois – with its overtones of good ol’ Chicago politicking – that ought to be considered dominant?

It is kind of odd that New York’s population of 19.7 million people got voter out-turned by Illinois’ 12.7 million.

Particularly since the common perception in Illinois was that our turnout wasn’t all that spectacular. Not record-setting low, but certainly not as intriguing as back in 2008 when Barack Obama’s ballot presence inspired people to turn out in large numbers.

Yet more of our residents felt inspired to cast ballots this time around than the New Yorkers did.

OF COURSE, IT probably wasn’t any real interest in the president that inspired people from Illinois to want to cast ballots. It may well have been our overly-local sense of what is politically important that drove our turnout.

You know, the old sense of “up and out” that federal government is less important than the local crackpots who hang out at City Hall.

We had a state’s attorney election in Cook County where the Democratic primary amounted to the real thing – nobody really thinks Republican Christopher E.K. Pfannkuche is going to win come November.

We had that intriguing primary for Senate where Tammy Duckworth had to battle a bit to win the Democratic nomination to take on Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., come November.

THERE ALSO WERE assorted electoral posts that took on overtones of expressing one’s displeasure either with Mayor Rahm Emanuel or Gov. Bruce Rauner (and the fact that Emanuel prevailed more than Rauner doesn’t really mean we like him all that much).

In New York, people may have been motivated by the desire to pick a presidential candidate right now. In Illinois, we had higher priorities. I wonder how many people figured their presidential pick was an afterthought.

Then again, I also wonder how many New Yorkers are eager to have an all-New York presidential fight – since the potential for one actually existed back in 2008, but fell short.

Remember that could have been the Democrat Hillary versus Republican Rudy Giuliani election, with the potential of Michael Bloomberg running a third-party independent bid for election.

A NEW YORK trio – all of which got washed away by the Chicago influence that swept Obama into the White House for the past eight years.

Which I’ll admit as a political writer will be something I will miss – the idea that White House activity has a Chicago tinge to it.

  -30-

EXTRA: A 20-vote lead, will it hold?

Tuesday was the final day by which Chicago Elections Board officials had to validate and count provisional ballots from the April 7 elections, while also processing absentee ballots that were put in the mail (and post-marked accordingly) by Election Day.

The final day of the canvass and the announcement of results for those municipal elections is April 28.

FOR MOST POLITICAL people, it doesn’t matter. There was no way Jesus Garcia would close a 75,000 vote gap to overtake Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But in the 10^th Ward (the land where Indiana is the nearby reality that gives us a Whiting-based oil refinery that really stinks up the air), there was always the chance of a last-minute shift in votes that could alter the aldermanic election results.

Challenger Susan Sadlowski Garza went from a seven-vote lead over Alderman John Pope on Election Night, to an 89-vote lead once all the precincts were counted to a 33-vote lead once the first rounds of absentee ballots were counted.

As of Tuesday, she was down to a 20-vote lead. That’s 5,825 votes for Garza to 5,805 for Pope. As in Garza, a Chicago Teachers Union official who got in the race originally thinking she’d be a running-mate of sorts to Karen Lewis’ mayoral aspirations, has 50.09 percent voter support.

THAT’S CLOSE! THAT’S got to hurt for Pope – a 16-year member of the City Council – if he comes that close to winning re-election, but doesn’t. It would take something of historic proportions for him to prevail now!

By this point, it would seem that Garza is going into the history books along with Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 victory for the U.S. Senate – an 87-vote victory margin, albeit with over 1 million votes cast to the 11,600-plus for the 10th Ward election.

Someone may wind up tagging her with a nickname as memorable as “Landslide Lyndon.” Right now, my mind is a blank. Although I’m sure Garza will settle for the label that ultimately is the only one that matters.

“Winner.”

  -30-

So much for “La Revolucion,” we’re getting “four more years” instead

A part of me would have liked to have seen the concept of “Mayor Jesus Garcia.” It even might have been worth all the stupid Star Wars-related gags about a “Mayor Chewy” if Tuesday were to have been a major point in the political evolution of Chicago’s Latino population with a victory for Chuy.

But we’re not going to get that, it seems. The election results were so clear that Garcia made his concession call to Mayor Rahm Emanuel at about 8:30 p.m. – a quick end to what some wanted to believe would be historic election results!

THERE WAS MUCH rhetoric being spewed about how all those polls showing a blow-out election result for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election fantasies were a lot of trash. Political geeks without a clue as to real people, is what they were saying.

But the apparent 56-44 percent results we saw Tuesday night were about what those polls were showing. Although the key figure to comprehending the Election Day results was 40 – as in the percent of registered voters who bothered to show up to cast a ballot.

It may not be a record low (that would be the 2007 mayoral election where only 33.2 percent of registered voters cared enough to take a stance in what was Richard M. Daley’s last electoral campaign). It may be better than the 33.8 percent from the Feb. 24 municipal election.

But it still stinks!

THERE WAS LOUD, obnoxious rhetoric from those people who wanted to see a Mayor Garcia because he would have made a priority of a segment of the Chicago population that often feels ignored, if not outright neglected.

But the real mood of Chicago is that three of every five people who actually are registered and capable of voting didn’t care enough to take a stance. Let alone the other half of Chicago’s population that, for whatever reason, isn’t registered to vote at all.


The Latino Victory Fund (a national group that tries to bolster Latino political empowerment) can claim that Garcia, "energized the Latino community not only in Chicago, but across the country." But the bulk of us (some 80 percent) didn't care; and probably looked astray at those of us who did get all worked up. I can try to justify this in my mind by claiming that the people who voted earned their right to complain about government’s actions for the next four years.

I’m sure those who didn’t vote are still going to rant and rage on those occasions when some government action grabs their attention. We’re not going to be able to shut them up.

OF COURSE, THAT is something the Emanuel camp ought to keep in mind as they go through the next four years – they may want to think they won Tuesday’s elections by a large majority. But the bulk of Chicago didn’t support him.

The loud-mouthed ones turned out to vote for Garcia, who now gets to go back to the Cook County Board and serve out his term through 2018 as a commissioner from the Little Village neighborhood.

The rest couldn’t be bothered to cast ballots for anybody. Their apathy prevails.

Will Garcia be able to take his sudden burst of public attention from the past few weeks of campaigning and turn it into a higher profile? Could he become one of the people who actually sets public policy – instead of being a county commissioner who merely casts votes in favor of what the real powerbrokers decide ought to be done?

I WILL BE watching to see what becomes of Garcia; whose political career was once thought to be in tatters some 17 years ago when he lost his state Senate seat to a Latino official more willing to cow-tow to the desires of Daley.

Although perhaps we ought to keep out eyes on Emanuel as well; particularly to see if he really becomes a “kinder and gentler” version of the ogre that so many of us detest.

I found it amusing to see the Chicago Sun-Times reporting the possibility of Emanuel being considered as a potential Cabinet member should Hillary R. Clinton actually become president in the 2016 election cycle.

That seems a bit fantastical to think a one-time White House chief of staff would be willing to give up City Hall to take a lesser presidential post.

BUT COULD IT take conditions so extreme and outrageous for the mayor’s office to open up in a way that a “second coming” of Garcia could be coming if we have to pick someone to finish off the remainder (through 2019) of an Emanuel term?

Chuy may have a political future, at least in our dreams!

  -30-

You don’t know how pleased I am that we’re just one day away from Tuesday

This may have been a holy weekend of sorts (with both Easter and Passover holidays being celebrated). Yet my prayers are for Tuesday to come, and go, as quickly as possible.

Because that will mean the passing of Election Day and an end to the ranting and raging from the mayoral candidates about which of them is less incompetent/buffoonish/corrupt than the other.

THERE ARE TIMES when I wonder what we Chicagoans did to deserve any of these political people!

I want a return to a certain level of sanity in our society – except that we already have various congressional candidates declaring their candidacy for 2016. Real peace would have come if Raja Krishnamoorthi, Brad Schneider and company could have waited a bit before kicking off yet another campaign cycle.

But we’re at the final day of campaigning. One last round of cheap shots to see who could get in the final blow, before we go off to the polling places to cast our ballots.

Although if the figures from the Chicago Board of Elections are any indication, we had a record-high number of voters (142,344 people) use early voting centers to cast their ballots, with another 55,626 people requesting absentee ballots.

DOES THIS MEAN there will be record-high interest and intensity about whether or not we dump Rahm Emanuel as mayor and replace him with a political official whom some (such as Cheech Marin in his “Santa Claus and his Old Lady” sketch) would say was named after one of Santa Claus’ reindeer?

Or does it mean that the people who really care about the Emanuel/Jesus Garcia fight of the 2015 election cycle have already voted?

Could we wind up getting very early Election Night results on Tuesday because there weren’t a heck of a lot of ballots to count up?

Could the real intrigue for political geeks come in the aldermanic races, or perhaps in some of the suburbs where there are races for local political domination that could be settled by just a couple hundred votes difference?

SO LOW BECAUSE those suburban races tend to have pitiful voter turnout – probably less than the interest in the Chicago municipal races, which based off the February round of elections wasn’t all that high and nearly set a new standard for record low.

Remember the two-thirds of registered voters who couldn’t be bothered to show up to vote for a campaign that supposedly has the interest of all “real” Chicagoans?!?

As we stand on the verge of Election Day, my own focus is on trying to get evidence of how strong voter turnout is. In an election cycle where some people are convinced to believe our collective revulsion for Rahm is so strong, why does it feel like the true masses just don’t care?

Emanuel is the candidate for those people whose sense of the status quo in Chicago is that things could be a lot worse. While Garcia is the guy for those people who feel their concerns have long been ignored by the political establishment.

ALTHOUGH I FIND it almost amusing that various polls show that Emanuel gets political support from some Latinos, a majority of black voters and the bulk of the white vote in Chicago.

Not exactly the type of “coalition” building that Garcia’s followers want to believe he learned from the 1983 election cycle that gave us “Mayor Harold Washington” and the outburst of negativity from his opposition that has left its lasting scars on Chicago. No wonder Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., has been critical of Garcia for trying to assume the “Washington legacy” label for his own campaigning.

It won’t surprise me if Emanuel comes out with a slim majority of voter support, regardless of how strong an effort the Chicago Teachers Union and other Garcia backers put into their voter turnout efforts on Tuesday.

Because if Garcia were able to pull off an electoral victory, it would be a bigger shock to the system of Chicago than Washington in the ’83 primary – and I wonder if Washington’s aging backers would go all out on Tuesday to do whatever they deemed necessary to prevent such an event from occurring.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: How many people were more intrigued by Sunday’s national broadcast of the 2015 baseball season opener at Wrigley Field, or by the Monday afternoon first game of the season for the Chicago White Sox, than they will be by Tuesday’s municipal elections?

Are we being teased by all these early ballots being cast in upcoming election?

With the exception of Monday’s snowfall, the weather this week has been fairly mild – which could make it less unpleasant for people to actually go out and cast ballots for the upcoming municipal elections.

That may account for the fact that the early voting centers open this week in Chicago have seen significant numbers of people show up.

THE CHICAGO BOARD of Elections indicated that through Thursday, there had been 44,291 people who had showed up to vote – more than the 21,557 people who cast ballots in the first four days of early voting prior to the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

Now I know some are going to point out that the early voting for that February election wound up being higher than any other early voting for city government posts – so it must be a sign that there is intense interest in the upcoming mayoral election.

Which I’d like to believe, but I’m not sure I do.

The fact I remember is that most of the early voting for those elections came in the final days of the two-week period in which people could cast ballots prior to Election Day. So being ahead of the pace for now isn’t that difficult.

THERE ALSO IS the fact that in the November 2014 elections for state and county government posts, there were a high number of early voters who participated.

Yet let’s point out that the overall percentage of people who voted for governor and the other posts last year wasn’t all that high. And the total number of people who bothered to cast ballots for mayor back in February stunk – it came within a few hundredths of a percent of being the lowest mayoral voter turnout ever.

What we’re seeing are the hard-core types who – for whatever reason – are capable of taking a day off during the week, and include a trip to the polling place amongst their daily errands.

These are the people who have that Rahm “hatred” that is getting them all worked up so they feel the fire in their bellies to partake in this political crusade – which has the potential to disappoint them come April 8 when they realize that perhaps the bulk of Chicago doesn’t care.

NEARLY TWO-THIRDS OF registered voters didn’t bother to vote back in February. It may turn out that the overall percentage of voters who bother to vote come 10 days from now won’t be any higher.

Which is a shame, since I really think people ought to express themselves politically – it is their government and they have every right to let it be known what they want, and expect.

It is this kind of apathy that ultimately makes political people think they can do what it is they want, without having to pay much regard to “We, the People” (remember that blasted U.S. constitution?), for whom the political people supposedly work for.

It also is the reason why I bothered to take the time Friday to get my “I voted!” sticker, which means I cast my actual ballot.

IN MY PARTICULAR part of the Chicago area, the elections aren’t that thrilling. Most of the votes I cast were for unopposed candidates. There were a couple of picks, but I was able to work my way through the whole ballot in a matter of a few minutes!

In fact, it took more time for the election judge to find my name in the voter rolls and program the card so I could use a touch-screen to cast my ballot than it did to actually vote.

Although the sun was shining and it wasn’t extremely freezing outside. Because I went in mid-day, there was no line. I was able to walk right up, cast my vote, then go back home within minutes.

Thereby reclaiming my Constitutionally-given right to complain about my elected officials and their actions; which are, after all, known to many political operatives as, “the People’s business.”

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Why should we bother to vote if there isn’t much (if any) of a choice?

I have written many a commentary at this weblog whose purpose was to tell people to get up off their bulbous buttocks and show up on Election Day to cast a ballot.

Yet I have to admit that the political people who offer themselves up as our choices for electoral office often give us little reason to want to vote for them. In many cases, they give us absolutely no choice to the point where casting a vote seems like a waste of time.

A CONCEPT THAT I find to be abhorrent, because I really do believe that casting a vote is a civic duty and that people who can’t be bothered to vote deserve to be ignored by their government officials.

Many of those officials are going to do that regardless. But should we really give them the reason that justifies their inaction in their own minds?

Part of what has me thinking about this “to vote, or not to vote” issue is the fact that early voting for the April 7 run-off elections in Chicago and the actual municipal elections out in the suburbs begins Monday.

Next week and the week after will be when the city Board of Elections and the Cook County clerk’s office will maintain the early voting centers for those people who don’t want to wait until the actual Election Day to cast their ballots.

RECENT ELECTION CYCLES show that many people who care enough about an election actually use them. It may well be that the actual voter turnout on April 7 will be ridiculously low.

I suspect that many of the 66 percent of registered voters in Chicago who didn’t bother to cast a ballot back on the Feb. 24 municipal election date still won’t be motivated to act.

All I know is that if Rahm Emanuel gets re-elected mayor with a City Council consisting of a majority of sympathetic aldermen, there is bound to be some sort of clown who argues that the current mayor has a “mandate” to pursue his policies.

That’s nuts!

IT JUST MEANS that apathy prevails because people didn’t feel the opposition was vocal enough to justify much of a vote against the establishment. It doesn’t mean we love Rahm by any means. If Jesus Garcia can’t fully take advantage of that, then he doesn’t deserve a mayoral win by default.

There are also the suburbs, where the county clerk’s office issued a statement this week pointing out that 63 percent of the positions up for election in the suburbs have candidates running unopposed. That includes nine of 19 suburban mayors/village presidents.

Although in many cases, it should be noted that the suburban mayors were up for re-election in 2013 along with a portion of their city councils/village boards. This election is mostly for the remaining portions of aldermen/trustees.

Meaning you really have to be a political junkie of a respective municipality in order to get all worked up over who is running. I suspect many suburban residents won’t be.

THIS GOT REINFORCED in my mind last week when I got a long-overdue haircut and found out that the woman who cuts my hair (she conveniently works about one block from where I live) also is the regular hairstylist for a municipal candidate in my area.

She told me stories about how she had been cutting his hair since he was 7 years old (he’s now 30) and knew him very well, yet doubted she would be voting for him on Election Day.

“All I want to do is cut hair,” she told me, explaining she had never bothered to vote in her life and didn’t feel any need to start doing so now. The part of me who writes these commentaries here could come up with many theoretical reasons why she ought to be concerned.

Yet I have to admit her attitude probably is prevalent in our society because way too many of these candidates can’t give us a legitimate reason why we ought to support them. They ought to have to earn our support, rather than thinking they’re entitled to it!

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