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."

  -30-

Green resorting to age-old tactic to gain political backers – free holiday food

‘Twas Willie Wilson, the rich guy with political aspirations (now he wants to be mayor) who got in trouble earlier this year what with his willingness to hand out cash willy-nilly to gain the goodwill of potential voters.

GREEN: Helping Altgeld Gardens

There were those (myself included) who said his actions weren’t all that different from the political people of old who would give away the free turkeys to poor people around holiday season – so as to gain their good-will (and potential votes) on Election Day.

SUCH AS JA’MAL Green, who is one of the dozens who has hinted at running for mayor in the Feb. 26 municipal elections.

It seems that Green reached out to the people who live in the city’ Altgeld Gardens public housing complex (at the city’s far southernmost tip) to help them ensure they’ll have something to eat for a Thanksgiving holiday meal.

Specifically, he helped arrange for Cornish hens to be given away to those residents. It’s not turkey – but it is something that can make for a full meal and I’m sure there are those who will appreciate the idea of being given something they can prepare themselves; rather than being asked to settle for something served on a tray at a “soup kitchen” that is serving up a few turkeys to the needy to appease their own desire to appear helpful to the needy.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported how Green made the arrangements for people to get the food, and also have an event that created something of a festive mood within Altgeld Gardens on Wednesday.

IT SHOULD BE noted that Green isn’t paying for this. Although part of his event will include checking the participants to see if they’re properly registered to vote – and helping those who aren’t to fill out the paperwork so that they will be capable of legally casting a ballot come the February election (and April 2 run-off, if it becomes necessary).

But Green found business interests in and around the 130^th Street area neighborhood who kicked in financial perks to make it possible to stage the event --- including finding a suburban automobile dealership willing to kick in a car for a raffle.

I’m sure there are those who think Green is merely buying the good will of potential voters so that they’ll keep his name in mind when they cast ballots.

WILSON: Created a stink earlier this year

Or I’m sure others will prefer to think of it as Green showing off the kind of organizational skills one would need to have if they’re truly qualified to hold an electoral office such as mayor.

IF ANYTHING, IT’S all too similar to the kind of tactics that political people have always used to try to gain support from the elements of our society who are not as financially well-off as some of us.

It shows just how cheaply a vote can be bought for.

The 2018 going rate is $7.68 each. At least that’s what Wal-mart was charging as of Wednesday for a pair of Cornish hens.

Perhaps Wilson was being overly generous earlier this year when he was handing out cash in increments of up to $100 each to people who came to him saying they had emergency bills that had to be paid off.

FOR GREEN, I’M not sure how much all of this helps. Although it did get his name in the newspaper yet again, and I’m sure his political aspirations of the future will benefit if he can create the impression that he’s a somebody.

The cost of some 21st Century votes?

He lives in the Pullman neighborhood, and I’m sure he thinks he’s merely helping the needy in a neighborhood not far from his own.

There’s nothing unusual about political people trying to publicize themselves, and get their names out. Choosing to spend a little bit of money for the public relations benefit is to be expected.

It’s when people begin to think that it’s all about the Cornish hens, or whatever other products they choose to give away, that we then have to start worrying about whether our politics are becoming too tainted.

  -30-

Sleeping on the job? Now that’s a major offense to our city's political mindset

The Summer of ’86 was the year I was close to finishing college, and also had a job on the Cook County government payroll. A low-level clerical job with the county Recorder of Deeds office.

Officers too fatigued to work in this Facebook-provided photo

I was one of the minions working in the basement who took copies of land transactions and recorded them, by hand, into huge ledger books where one could literally look up who owned every single piece of property in Cook County.

I COULD TELL you horror stories of the people I worked with who didn’t have a clue what they were doing (which means those books that were an official record likely were a mess). There also was the time a batch of us ditched the job for an afternoon to watch an official city parade along LaSalle Street paying a long-overdue tribute to Vietnam War veterans.

But the memory I most have of that job was the very first day – when my supervisor took us around the basement, pointed out all the spots where one could think they could sleep or goof off on the job without being noticed, then told us not to try to do that.

23-year-old Green hopes to gain campaign attention

You might want to think this supervisor was being high-minded and expressing concern that work on behalf of the taxpayers was being performed properly.

But I remember his biggest concern was the idea of public disclosure. Because not long before I started working there, a camera crew managed to get video of workers taking a nap on the job.

THAT VIDEO WOUND up in the hands of Walter Jacobson, the famed broadcaster then still with WBBM-TV, and the county became the subject of one of his "Perspectives." We were warned of the consequences to ourselves if we publicly embarrassed county government in any way with our behavior.

Will Emanuel figure out way to turn issue to his favor?

I couldn’t help but remember that moment on Monday when I learned of Ja’Mal Green, one of the many people with delusions of becoming mayor of Chicago following next year’s election cycle.

He came up with photographs of Chicago Police officers sitting in a squadrol, and from the looks of it catching up on their sleep.

Green, like many other people these days, has a Facebook account. He has to come up with things with which to fill up his page. Which means he posted an item on Sunday with the picture of sleeping police officers.

ALONG WITH AN explanation saying why this is evidence of the failure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s efforts to have police officers working overtime to help patrol streets in hazardous neighborhoods.

“Officers get fatigued, which will prevent them from reacting to crime,” Green wrote. “Militarizing communities does not reduce violence.”

Many people have seen these images (including the one I felt compelled to copy and publish here) and are now passing them along. There’s also news coverage. City workers, cops nonetheless, asleep at the switch – so to speak.

The ultimate sin for those who receive a paycheck at the expense of taxpayers – insofar as the powers that be are concerned.

THE SAD PART is that Green’s intended point is likely to get ignored. The well-being of the officers and their ability to do the job without putting themselves in harm’s way? Not so important.

Sinclair's book had unintended effect

What we’re going to get are a lot of crackpots complaining about goof-off cops, and probably a few wisecracks about how they needed their naps in between coffee-and-donut breaks.

Just like author Upton Sinclair’s famed book “The Jungle” that was meant to warn people of the horrific working conditions inside meatpacking plants, but instead merely grossed people out about the conditions of what it was they were eating.

Just like I think many cops are now going to think of Green as “the enemy” out to make them look bad, instead of someone concerned about their welfare. With the intended target, Emanuel himself, somehow managing to find a way to spin this to his re-election campaign’s benefit.

  -30-