 |
| DALEY: The 'big bucks' guy of '19 |
The
Chicago Tribune reported that Daley’s fund now exceeds $3 million – more than
any of the other people with dreams of serving as mayor of the city of Chicago.
Daley’s list of donors even includes a Kennedy – it seems that one-time Rep.
Joe Kennedy II, D-Mass., wrote out a check for $10,000.
BUT
CONSIDERING THAT in the last mayoral election, Rahm Emanuel managed to raise
some $24.4 million for his own benefit (much of which paid for all those
television spots that asked voters to give Rahm a “second chance” as mayor back in 2015), it
would seem that Daley is lagging behind.
Then
again, we just finished a gubernatorial race that saw the two candidates – incumbent
Bruce Rauner and ultimate victor J.B. Pritzker – come up with in excess of just
over $200 million to pay for their campaigns.
By
those standards, Bill Daley and his $3.1 million is nothing but a political pauper.
Then
again, it is evidence of just how ridiculously wealthy the two governor
candidates were, and how both probably suffer from delusional personality
characteristics that they were able to spend so much of their own personal wealth
in order to try to get elected to office.
 |
| KENNEDY: Kicked in cash to help elect a Daley |
SO
MUCH SO that the Illinois governor race of 2018 is a record-setter – at least
until someone in 2020 decides to waste away their own fortune to try to buy a
political office for themselves.
Neither
Daley, nor any of the other candidates running for mayor in 2019 seem capable
of doing quite that. Instead, they seem intent on funding their campaigns the
old-fashioned way.
 |
| PRITZKER: Used to be Dem donor |
As
in soliciting donations from politically-motivated people who may, or may not,
be hoping to buy political goodwill from the people they are giving money to.
If
anything, it hurts that Rauner and Pritzker spent so much on themselves. Since
in the case of Rauner, he had become the most significant financier of Republican
candidates for office.
 |
| RAUNER: Would anybody take his money now? |
WHILE
PRITZKER HAS a personal history of being THE wealthy guy that Democrats turn to
for checks of significant dollar amounts to pay for all those expenses that
campaigns incur to try to sway voters to cast their ballots for them.
I
suspect both men are now tapped out, financially and emotionally, from wanting
to think about donating any funds to someone else. Plus, the fact that there
are so many people tossing their names into the hat – so to speak – to run for
mayor.
It’s
going to be hard for any one candidate to build up a significant fund. This
could wind up being a pauper’s election cycle – by comparison to recent years.
So
maybe it makes sense that Daley, the son and brother of past Chicago mayors and
a former White House chief of staff and cabinet member in his own right, is the
one with significant political contacts that he’s going to have more money than
anyone else at this stage of the mayoral game.
I
CERTAINLY DON’T see someone like Lori Lightfoot, or even Susana Mendoza, being
capable of making trips (as Daley did) to Boston and Washington, D.C., where he
participated in fundraisers for his campaign for Chicago mayor and got donations
from assorted Kennedy clan types and one-time Bill Clinton allies.
 |
| EMANUEL: Could have outspent everybody, IF he ran again |
The
trick is to figure whether this financial edge is an advantage or a millstone
for Daley.
Because
it could be that Daley will appear to be too far removed from the nitty-gritty
of Chicago problems by associating with so many out-of-towners – the kind of
voters who think city politics is the most important type of government because
they pick up your trash or clear the streets of snow during the winter.
The
kind of governing that his father, Richard J., so excelled at over all other
issues, and which is the reason anybody bothers to pay attention to the Daley
name when it runs for any other political post.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment