Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Sour grapes? Or just downright truthful!

Mayoral hopeful Ja’Mal Green is one of the fringe candidates in next year’s municipal cycle – in fact, there’s a good chance he won’t even be on the ballot come Feb. 26.
Will people believe Wilson really a Republican?

So perhaps it only makes sense that Green is bitter about the person who is supporting work to get him kicked off the ballot – which would be mayoral hopeful Willie Wilson.

KEEP IN MIND that Wilson himself did not file challenges to anybody. In fact, Wilson is good about spewing rhetoric saying he does not believe in the concept of ballot challenges – he thinks everybody should be permitted a ballot slot, if they’re interested in running for office.

Which is why it was Rickey Hendon, a one-time alderman and state senator who now regards himself as a political operative who supports Wilson’s mayoral dreams, who actually filed the challenges on Wilson’s behalf.

It allows Wilson to claim some high-minded principle, while also having political dirty work done on his behalf.

Of course, this is the way all political challenges are done – the candidates are allowed to remain above the fray of such nasty business, while still benefitting from it.

THE POINT OF all this is that Green is now in a process where he has to be prepared to fight for his political existence – and he may not be capable of surviving the process.

He definitely isn’t going to be capable of campaigning seriously for office. All of his time and money will be spent on fighting the process by which electoral officials will kick him off the ballot.
Green fighting back against challenge ...

Even if he somehow survives the ballot challenge process, he isn’t going to have a lot of time or campaign funds left to campaign. Attorneys fighting on his behalf will manage to eat up any campaign money he ever had.

Which is also the strategy being employed against Susana Mendoza’s mayoral campaign. She’d be capable of running a serious campaign, except she’s going to have to fight just to stay on the ballot.

BUT BACK TO Green, who seems to have engaged in his own unique tactic for fighting back against Wilson – a campaign ad trashing Wilson. Since Green doesn’t have a lot of campaign cash, he’s putting the spot on YouTube and other sites on the Internet.
by Hendon on Wilson's behalf

Hoping that people interested in casting ballots for the mayoral race manage to stumble across it while searching the Internet for whatever sports scores, cutesy video snippets of puppy dogs and (when they think nobody’s paying attention) pornography they are interested in viewing.

Green seems determined to take down Wilson’s reputation by reminding us that he viewed soon-to-be-former Gov. Bruce Rauner as a political friend – even though Rauner is a Republican.

It goes so far as to imply that Wilson is a closet Republican – which may as well be the kiss of death for a Chicago municipal election. Seeing we haven’t had a Republican as mayor since the late 1920s days of William Hale Thompson, and even Bernard Epton’s political ties were too much for him to overcome in that 1983 race he ran against Harold Washington.
MENDOZA: Also fighting for political life

IT MAY NOT help Green fight off the ballot challenge he faces. But it may well stir up enough hostility to Wilson that Willie will have next to no chance of being eligible to appear in a run-off election come April 2.

Which would be the real goal – political payback for not putting a leash on Wilson’s operatives to keep them from playing hardball politics.

This may actually be typical of this electoral cycle – with no incumbent and so many dreamers, nobody is going to get a large share of the Feb. 26 vote. It also may turn out that the two run-off qualifiers will have built up so many enemies amongst the people who get kicked off that the idea of unifying behind anybody will be hard to achieve.
Will Daley prevail by default?

It’s why I wonder if we’re destined to get another “Mayor Daley” (as in William) because the vast majority of voters who would be appalled by such an idea won’t be able to get behind any other candidate in large-enough numbers to top the kind of people who'd be totally pleased by the idea of "Daley III."

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