In picking ‘wrong’ opponent, will labor wind up with no one sympathetic?

It was intriguing to see the Illinois Education Association make its “Anybody But Rahm” endorsement for the upcoming mayoral election.


For the labor union that represents adjunct faculty at various colleges in Chicago said it could live with either Robert Fioretti or Jesus “Chuy” Garcia as the city’s new mayor.


WHAT THEY REALLY do NOT want to see is “four more years” of Rahm Emanuel working on the fifth floor of City Hall. They’re perceiving Emanuel as being the city government equivalent of Gov. Bruce Rauner – who in recent days has been making all kinds of statements showing that he really is as hostile to organized labor as he appeared to be back during the primary election cycle last year.


Just as how the Chicago Teachers Union (which is a local within the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and not a part of the IEA) has long had its own quarrels with Emanuel, and earlier this week said it intends to stand up to anything Rauner tries to pull.

We’re getting the reminders of just how close Emanuel and Rauner are, and how I don’t doubt the new governor is hoping for the re-election of a Chicago mayor whom he probably envisions he can do business with on various issues affecting city and state government.

But this latest IEA endorsement doesn’t seem to me to amount to much. I think they really needed to pick somebody and give full support.

A DUAL ENDORSEMENT basically says that the union is for anybody who doesn’t vote for Emanuel – which could mean that there is no consolidation of support for a single challenger to Rahm.

That is what is really needed if there is to be any chance of replacing the incumbent mayor. Otherwise, all the opponents feed off each other – and the majority of people who would just as soon not see any kind of radical change will wind up banding together behind Emanuel.

Particularly since all the various political polls I have seen for the mayoral election cycle seem to indicate that Emanuel is extremely close to having enough support to win the mayoral campaign outright on Feb. 24.

Just a little more backing, and he certainly has the kind of campaign funding that could enable him to get it, and Emanuel will achieve that magical “50 percent plus 1” standard that would turn the April 7 run-off into a series of neighborhood contests to pick various aldermen.

TELLING THE PEOPLE who couldn’t get enough backing to oppose Emanuel back in 2011 that they should continue to split their support makes it seem like the IEA isn’t all that interested in dumping on the mayor.

At least not as much as he’ll likely dump all over them once he gets re-elected without their support.

It’s not like the Chicago Teachers Union, where President Karen Lewis has not let her health impediments interfere with her efforts to support a single challenger (Garcia) and is also making it clear she plans to throw her political muscle behind efforts to oppose Rauner’s desires to create “Right to Work”-like conditions in Illinois.

She may win. She may not. Who’s to say at this point? Other than to say she seems to be putting up a more credible political fight than the counterpart schools union (which gets its political bulk from suburban school districts).

FROM A LABOR perspective, I don’t doubt their worst nightmare is the idea of an Emanuel/Rauner pairing that runs the major local governments. It just seems like their efforts to fight that pairing from becoming reality may have been focused a little too much on City Hall and not on the Statehouse Scene.

Because propping up former Gov. Pat Quinn might have been easier for them than turning any of the four mayoral challengers into a winning candidate!

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EXTRA: Now if Karen Lewis endorsed Dillard, then I’d be swayed something significant was happening here

I feel like I’ve already written this commentary. In fact, I have.


DILLARD: Teachers love him (not really

The fact that the Illinois Federation of Teachers formally decided to back the Republican primary candidacy of Kirk Dillard for governor doesn’t mean much. Certainly no more than when the Illinois Education Association gave Dillard their backing.

THE GOP FRONT-RUNNER for governor, Bruce Rauner, has made it clear that a major focal point of his campaign is to mess with organized labor. He wants to undo the influence they have with government.

So the fact that the teachers’ unions do not want Rauner to become governor next year means they want to undermine him now.

Hence, they’re backing the Rauner primary challenger whom they find least offensive.

It is telling that federation officials made it clear their endorsement – while one of the few times they have ever gotten involved in a GOP governor fight – is purely for the primary.

AFTER MARCH 18, all bets are off. In no way does this mean the teachers’ union would want Dillard to actually be governor. They’re just hoping that some of their influence can help undermine Rauner’s chances of winning the big political prize.

It’s not like this hurts Gov. Pat Quinn within the Democratic primary, because the challenger he has is one so weak that even all the endorsements in the world likely would not give him a credible chance of achieving victory two weeks from Tuesday.

LEWIS: Would Kirk want support?

The federation’s endorsement also isn’t all it could be because of the fact that the most significant local within that union – the Chicago Teachers’ Union – is separate from this action.

I suppose it is possible that union President Karen Lewis could decide to hold her own press conference in coming days to announce that she, too, is backing Dillard and is instructing the teachers of the Chicago Public Schools to do the same.

BUT I JUST don’t think that there will be such an action. Not the least of which because I suspect Lewis' mind is more preoccupied these days with thoughts of teachers boycotting the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests.

RAUNER: The primary favorite?

Because I suspect most Chicago teachers, along with teachers in school districts across the state, will just keep their mouths shut publicly and go into the polling place on March 18 (or sooner, if they use Early Voting) and vote the way they would have even if no endorsement had been made.

I also suspect that the last thing Dillard would want is any kind of public appearance by Lewis – whose gruff persona would probably scare away even more potential voters than it would attract.

Dillard already is having to live down the fact that he regarded Barack Obama as something of a friend when the two served (and occasionally played poker) together (1997-2004) in the Illinois Senate.

DILLARD MAY BE the guy who has gone out of his way to spew some right-wing rhetoric to make it appear he’s not really some sort of liberal-to-moderate guy (in hopes of gaining votes from the socially-conservative elements of our society), but he doesn’t have the campaign cash to try to buy that image amongst the electorate.

2014 is going to go into the books as an election cycle that was able to be bought.

QUINN: Does he have 'dirt' on Bruce?

Past candidates who tried to use their personal wealth wound up having some personal stink about their lives become known to the point where it became impossible for them to continue.

Ultimately, that is going to be what decides whether Rauner has a chance of actually winning. Will the Quinn camp succeed with its finances where the underfunded GOP-types could not in terms of staining the image that Rauner has bought for himself?

IT’S POSSIBLE. THERE will be another eight months to go before this is over. All it takes is one moment that we don’t yet know about.

Which means that in the end, all this babble about teachers’ union endorsements probably won’t factor into the end result one bit!

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