A “Battle of the Mayoral Rejects?” Or is Bob Fioretti that desperate for a job?

Believe it or not, the residents of the Illinois Senate 5^th District (based on the city’s West Side) has the potential to be a battle between candidates who once tried – and failed – to become Chicago’s mayor.

FIORETTI: He needs a job!

Robert Fioretti, the one-time 2^nd Ward alderman, got his share of city-wide attention when he was one of the dreamers who tried to depose Rahm Emanuel as mayor in last year’s election cycle.

BECAUSE HE DOESN’T like the idea of being just a former alderman with no current political post, Fioretti has decided to run for a seat in the Illinois Legislature.

VAN PELT-WATKINS: Wants to keep hers

I guess he figures serving in Springfield is better than being a political nobody – even though most people view the Statehouse Scene as the place where you go to get some training and experience before running for higher office in Chicago proper.

In Fioretti’s case, he’s decided to run in this year’s election cycle for an Illinois Senate seat – making him one of the people who votes “aye” to the idea of keeping John Cullerton in his position of authority by supporting him for another bid as Senate president.

To do that, he has to take on the incumbent legislator, who happens to be state Sen. Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins, D-Chicago, a woman who got elected to that post in 2012 – one year after losing her own bid for Chicago mayor in the 2011 election cycle.

YES, SHE WAS one of the half-dozen people who had dreams of replacing Richard M. Daley when he decided not to seek re-election to a seventh term in the post.

Yes, she got her clock cleaned in that election cycle. Then again, Fioretti didn’t exactly inspire voters when he decided to take on Emanuel last year.

He may have had fantasies of capturing the support of those people whose passion was aroused into anger against Emanuel. But he couldn’t even qualify for a run-off election. Jesus Garcia was the legitimate opposition candidate to Rahm. Fioretti was barely more credible than Willie Wilson.

Actually, that’s probably an insult to the reputation of Wilson, for which I owe HIM an apology – not Fioretti.

FIORETTI IS TRYING to make an issue out of what appears to be a Van Pelt-Watkins gaffe – one in which she implied she supports the idea of “right to work” laws being enacted in Illinois. She now says she mis-spoke, and I’m actually inclined to believe her.

Because there have been many instances in my time as a reporter-type person writing about government when I suspected the public officials themselves didn’t truly comprehend what it was they were doing while passing or rejecting new laws.

There’s also the fact that my own memories of Fioretti as an alderman consist of a public official who liked the sound of his own voice.

I really wonder if much of the rants he used to go on about Daley, then Emanuel, were more inspired by the fact that he liked to hear himself talk. Many of his opposition tirades seemed a little too knee-jerk, as in he knew his answer was “no” but wasn’t always sure about why he was in opposition.

THE ONE-TIME LEGISLATIVE correspondent in me thinks the absolute last thing the General Assembly needs is another political blowhard.

It actually reminds me of Rickey Hendon, the one-time West Side alderman who later served several terms in the Illinois Senate. He developed a reputation as an outspoken goof, and we’d jokingly wonder how long it would be until then-Senate Democrat leader Emil Jones would try to have him whacked for his many outbursts.

Is that really the fate that Fioretti aspires to? Because he really comes across as one who is eager to have a government post – any post – to run, just so he can think of himself as a public servant and have a place to go during the day.

Either that, or perhaps his spouse Nicki, wants him out of the house more often.

  -30-

Quinn ought not be quiet in coming day

It will be interesting to see just how Gov. Pat Quinn chooses to go on the attack against his opposition; now that he has a real opponent and not just the token “Anybody But Pat” option that passed for the name “Tio Hardiman” on Tuesday’s Democratic ballots.

QUINN: Hard-hitting, or wimpy?

If I were a part of the incumbent governor’s campaign staff, I’d already be striking back as hard now as though it were late October.

THE POINT OF doing something now, perhaps starting right as the early vote tallies came in Tuesday night, is to do something to inflate the momentum of the newly-appointed Republican nominee. Which is what justified the airtime the Quinn camp purchased in the Chicago and Champaign-to-Springfield television markets for last night.

Because momentum is what the GOP challenger to Quinn has right now. In these early hours of the general election cycle, it is a case where the Republican nominee has been in full campaign mode for months.

The adrenaline is still flowing, even as the winner goes about Wednesday morning making the traditional appearances at commuter stations and restaurants to shake the hands of people who voted and thank them for their support.

While also making an early plea to “Vote for Me!” again, one more time come Nov. 4.

LET THIS MOMENTUM continue to flow, and it builds strength. It builds the candidate’s character. It lets him think that he’s a “Winner!!!!!” It makes him think he’s invincible.

This really is a case where perception will become reality, if Quinn and his campaign is inept enough to allow it to happen.

Which is why I’m wondering if all these months of silence by the Quinn campaign were really just that campaign prepping itself to come out with (I apologize for the cliché) guns ablazin’ with a takedown attempt on the new GOP nominee for governor.

Hit him hard and point out something flawed to the degree that by week’s end, the sense of invincibility is shattered. The GOP nominee becomes nothing but a mortal. Heck, if truly successful, you’d have the Republican primary voters wondering by Friday what they could have been thinking when they cast their votes on Tuesday!

VAN PELT: Did early blast help?

A PART OF me still remembers Patricia Van Pelt Watkins. She’s a state legislator now, but I remember Election Night of 2010 when she was one of the fringe candidates with fantasies of running for mayor in 2011.

She came out with a string of Election Night ads (when most people were wondering if William Brady could actually overcome Pat Quinn and if Alexi Gianoulias had a political future) that made her name so prominent I honestly believe it is the reason she got serious consideration for a legislative post in the future – rather than just becoming yet another of the perennial names who get their names on the ballot to keep getting 1 percent of the vote every time they run.

Hitting hard now reinforces the idea that Quinn is serious (the Democratic Governors Association issued a statement Tuesday citing his political strengths) and that his opposition is not invincible. If he doesn’t act now, I’d argue he’s bringing his defeat eight months from now upon himself.

This could be an election cycle that has a serious momentum shift by Friday.

IT ALSO HELPS that Quinn has had so much time, and didn’t need to focus any attention on a primary opponent (what’s the difference between losing 64-36 percent, or 98-2 percent, which could have happened if Quinn had thought Hardiman opposition was essential).

He’s had time to prepare. There’s also the fact that he’s put together a campaign team of experienced operatives. These guys aren’t going to play nice. They’re going to go for the victory.

I’m waiting to see what they have dug up. Let’s only hope it’s not a better-funded take on the organized labor attacks of recent months against Bruce Rauner.

RAUNER: What will we think on Friday?

Those wound up doing little more than making Rauner look like an all-powerful pol out to crush a scared, whimpering weasel of labor union interests. I suspect those broadcast spots  made the unions look ridiculous, while inadvertently bolstering Rauner – like the yellow sun for Superman. Does Quinn have some Kryptonite??!?

NOW I REALIZE it’s a long campaign season. There are nearly eight full months of time to campaign before Nov. 4. Any specifics spouted out now will be long forgotten by then.

But this is more about perception. Either Quinn does something now to show us that his challenger is just a political dreg. Or that he’s just a doofus who sat around all these months during the primary because he had nothing worthwhile to say.

In which case, it will be a long eight months while he sinks lower and lower until he winds up getting consigned to political retirement.

  -30-

Dirty tricks on campaign not unusual, but candidates telling drug tales are odd

MOSELEY-BRAUN: Telling stories

Every campaign cycle includes tales of dirty tricks meant to screw up a campaign’s momentum. Invariably, somebody even goes and tells an ugly story about one of the candidates, meant to muddy them up to the benefit of the opposition.

Yet I can’t help but think there is something unusual going on with the way that former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun in recent days has made mention of the fact that one of her five opponents, Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins, once used certain drugs that – had she been caught – would have gotten her a criminal record.

SPECIFICALLY, WE’RE TALKING about cocaine, although on at least one occasion, Moseley-Braun made a comment saying that Watkins used the stronger (and more deadly) version known as “crack” cocaine.

Watkins admits that in her late teens, she used certain drugs, but says she gave them up decades ago. The Chicago Tribune on Tuesday reported that Watkins said she hasn’t touched any such illegal narcotic in 32 years (she’s now 53).

I think this reaches a new high (or should I say, low) point for campaign activity in Chicago.

Because when these stories usually come out, what happens is that some murky and anonymous source is the one who spews the tale. Or in cases where we do find out who it is that is resorting to telling drug or sex stories about a candidate, it turns out to be some fringe character whose credibility is questionable.

THAT THEN ALLOWS the candidate to put some distance between themselves and the story. In some cases, the candidate issues a non-apology, saying they wish the election cycle had not sunk to such a sordid level. Of course, they allow the story to remain out there – because on a certain level they enjoy the fact that their opposition has to squirm in addressing a story that is ugly and ultimately cannot be absolutely denied.

Somebody is always going to fail to hear the denial or the apology and will take the details into account when casting a ballot on Election Day. The damage is done.

WATKINS: She's clean

Yet that is not what has happened here.

We have the candidate herself, Carol Moseley-Braun, the former U.S. senator from Illinois who also has been an ambassador, the county’s recorder of deeds and one of our city’s legislators at the Statehouse in Springfield, spreading the rhetoric for which she felt compelled Tuesday to issue a formal apology.

THE PART OF this that I find particularly odd (and based on what I’m reading at various places around the Internet, I’m not alone) is why Moseley-Braun would feel the need at all to take a ding at Watkins – who has never held electoral office in her life. She is a political neophyte, albeit one with some original ideas. Moseley-Braun says she feared looking like a "wimp" if she didn't attack Watkins. Instead, she looks like a bully whose "I'm sorry" feels forced.

Various polls that show Moseley-Braun having a serious chance at finishing second on Feb. 22 (thereby qualifying for a potential runoff election to be held April 5) also usually show that Watkins is stumbling about at about 1 or 2 percent of the vote, usually just barely ahead of perennial candidate William “Dock” Walls.

Now I realize Watkins, in an attempt to gain some attention for her campaign, took a cheap shot at the former senator, saying she had been so low-profile in recent years that Watkins didn’t even realize Moseley-Braun still lived in Chicago.

But this overkill, and bringing crack cocaine into the mix, is a gross over-reaction. All it does is ensure that Watkins’ campaign gets elevated to the level of Moseley-Braun. Or perhaps it means her campaign that is supposed to be the “consensus candidate” of Chicago’s African-American population took a dive.

BECAUSE MOSELEY-BRAUN IS now tied in to the dirt; there’s no separating her from it. She’s going to be smeared by it just as much as Watkins will be. It may well be a first for Chicago politics.

The “Machine hacks” of old always had that skill of deniability when it came to the dirty tricks they would pull to discourage people from casting votes for the opposition.

I guess this means Carol Moseley-Braun is NOT a “Chicago Machine” political hack. She’s not competent enough to be one.

But on a certain level, Rahm Emanuel is showing himself capable of being part of the political breed.

EMANUEL: I didn't call nobody



IN RECENT DAYS, mayoral hopeful Gery Chico held a press conference at a neighborhood gym, which he wanted to be the background setting for an event where he would attack the “Rahm Tax.” His campaign rhetoric claims that tax increases Emanuel says he wants the General Assembly to consider would harm small businesses – including those neighborhood gyms.

It seems that Chico had to search long and hard for a willing gym. Because at least one gym changed its mind about letting him have an event there, after receiving telephone calls from people who are supportive of the Emanuel campaign. Those calls let the gym owner know of the potential problems his business could incur in the future, if a “Mayor Emanuel” chooses to remember the people who wanted Chico instead.

Such a tactic, which Emanuel can now officially claim he NEVER would have approved of (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), is classic Chicago campaign strategy when it comes to dirty tricks. If anything, such an attitude is also evidence of the classic “Rahm-bo,” that political operative who isn’t afraid to use some muscle and tough talk to accomplish things, rearing its head.

So for all those people who have been getting all worked up in recent months, claiming that Emanuel isn’t a real Chicagoan and doesn’t comprehend the feel of the city and its politics, I’d respond by saying he may comprehend it all too well.

  -30-

Somebody didn’t learn from own history

I couldn’t help but reminisce back to 1992 after seeing the formal debate between the mayoral candidates that took place just hours after Rahm Emanuel got the Illinois Supreme Court seal of approval to be on the ballot for the Feb. 22 municipal elections.

MOSELEY-BRAUN: Where has the old Carol gone?



Thursday night was the time when Carol Moseley-Braun chose to go on the attack against Rahm Emanuel, doing what she could to try to take him down in the eyes of would-be voters. She also took her share of pot-shots at Gery Chico, the guy who has headed the public schools, the city colleges and the park district – along with being an early chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley.

SO WHAT IS memorable about that? Aren’t political people invariably going to take pot shots at each other during an election season debate?

That is true. Yet I couldn’t help but remember when Moseley-Braun was a fresh-faced former legislator and county office holder (recorder of deeds) who was running in the ’92 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Then-Sen. Alan Dixon had managed to tick off women’s activists by joining in the efforts to denounce Anita Hill when she testified about her past contact with then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

But those women weren’t particularly organized behind any candidate. Certainly not Moseley-Braun. If anything, the Carol Moseley-Braun of 1992 was reminiscent of the Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins of today – a candidate on the ballot with some interesting ideas, but not enough campaign cash to run a credible effort.

UNTIL, THAT IS, the debates came along. For there were three major candidates wishing to run for U.S. Senate from Illinois as a Democrat. Besides Dixon and Moseley-Braun, there was also Al Hofeld, an attorney of some personal financial means who had never held elective office.

EMANUEL: As though he needed a boost



I still remember the debates that resulted between the three. Hofeld had run a negative campaign, trying to make Dixon appear to be someone old and out-of-touch. Dixon tried responding by making the political neophyte appear to be politically clueless.

Dixon and Hofeld beat up on each other. They largely ignored Moseley-Braun, who when she did speak came across as the one concerned about issues. In fact, she came across as the only logical person among the three candidates.

This time, Moseley-Braun went on the attack to the point where she appeared to be the one who was clueless. She managed to make Rahm Emanuel, the Mighty Rahm-bo with the foul mouth and crass temperament, appear to be the calm, collected, intelligent candidate.

MOSELEY-BRAUN SEEMS TO have lost touch with her inner-self, or at least the things she had going for her 19 years ago. She almost seemed to be the equivalent of a female version of Hofeld from all those years ago.

Considering that Emanuel was able to follow up his debate appearance with campaign advertisements on Friday touting the fact that he once worked for Barack Obama (and comes as close to a presidential endorsement as Obama can give Rahm), he winds up looking like the august, imperial official who will raise the level of Chicago government to new heights – compared to the other candidates who come across as local rubes who may have strong backing in their home neighborhoods, but have never ventured beyond their home block in their lives.

It’s not like Emanuel needed any more advantages than he already has – the largest campaign fund and solid backing from the corporate types who can easily help him come up with more cash if needed! But Moseley-Braun gave it to him.

Now I understand why Moseley-Braun feels the need to get aggressive.

HER CAMPAIGN IS lagging. Financially, she isn’t attracting much money. Watkins actually raised just slightly more than she did.

She also has minimal appeal to anyone outside of those activists who are so determined to have an African-American person elected as mayor that they’ll settle for Moseley-Braun.

I noticed in mid-week a poll conducted by We Ask America (and paid for by the Chicago Retail Merchants Association) that showed Carol running third with 11.04 percent IF Rahm remained on the mayoral ballot. When asked who they would support if he had been knocked off, her support only went up to 17.32 percent.

By comparison, Chico’s backing went from 14.41 percent with Emanuel on the ballot way up to 32.99 percent and the new front-runner – had the Supreme Court given Rahm the boot.

THAT SAME POLL claimed 71.53 percent of people questioned wanted Emanuel to remain on the ballot.

WATKINS: Give her Carol's slot?



All of which means that Moseley-Braun, the darling of the Democratic set who brought pride to Chicago back in ’92 with her sudden rise to national politics, is feeling the pressure brought on by the anonymity she has experienced in recent years. On a side note, I got my chuckle from a Watkins quip that she didn’t even realize until the campaign season that Moseley-Braun still lived in Chicago.

I’m sure the idea of falling back into anonymity come Feb. 23 (or April 6, if she manages to turn this into a run-off election) is enough to make her try desperation measures – which is how she came across in that first debate.

Perhaps future debates will give us glimpses of the “old Carol.” Either that, or perhaps we ought to give her slot come Valentine's Day on WTTW-TV to Watkins – who might just come up with some real ideas for the opposition candidates to ponder.

  -30-

Are we really moving past racial factors?

EMANUEL: The front-runner?

On the surface, the Chicago Tribune gave us positive news this weekend. The newspaper commissioned yet another poll related to the upcoming municipal elections, this time trying to get a sense of how much racial and ethnic factors will play in terms of how local voters pick whom they will vote for.

That poll gave numbers that are being interpreted as saying that people are not as hung up on racial factors as we were some three decades ago. The number of people who will vote for anybody but Carol Moseley-Braun would appear to be on the decline.

MOSELEY-BRAUN: The consensus?

YET I’M SKEPTICAL, and not just because of the reality of political polls that some people will say what they think they’re supposed to, but will act very differently.

In short, I wonder how many people who said they won’t take race into account when they cast their ballots will react very differently, either at an early voting center beginning next week, or at a polling place on Feb. 22.

Anybody who has read my other commentary published at this weblog knows I believe these Election Day results are going to tell us how much we truly have advanced when it comes to matters of race and electoral politics.

CHICO: The multi-ethnic candidate?

We may have elected a couple of African-American senators, a state attorney general and secretary of state, and sent one of our own African-American politicos to Washington to be president since the days of Harold Washington.

YET I STILL wonder how many local voters view those offices as being less important than those of city government, particularly that of mayor?

The reality of our city government in recent decades is that while there have been African-American and Latino people who have held citywide office, it has always been on a slate of candidates with a white guy, Richard M. Daley, at the top.



DEL VALLE: ¿El candidato tranquillo?

I wonder how many people are going to let this be an issue because it gets at their gut feelings about what they think our society should stand for. Some people have their hang-ups that no amount of rhetoric will overcome.

Which is why I plan to look at the voter breakdown from the Feb. 22 elections (and the April 5 run-offs, if they become necessary) to see how people have actually voted.

AS MUCH AS I want to believe the theme that we’re not as hung up on race in electoral politics as we were back in 1983 (I was a high school senior back when Washington got elected mayor, and can still remember the very real, and intense, resentment felt toward the idea that African-American people could comprise a voter bloc large enough to win an election), I’ll believe it when I see it with actual voter turnouts – not the results of a poll commissioned a month before the election!

For the record, 75 percent of people questioned for the poll commissioned by the Tribune said that a candidate’s race will have “little or no influence” on their vote. Another 70 percent said they do not think a mayoral candidate would show favoritism toward people of their racial or ethnic background.



WATKINS: Worthy of more attention?

That sounds nice. But all it may really mean is that racial and ethnic bias in the 21^st Century is more subtle than back in the Days of Reagan. We won’t hear any stupid jokes about Moseley-Braun resembling “Weezie Jefferson” or many attempts to make us think Rahm Emanuel was once in the Israeli army – and therefore not a “real American.”

Part of the reason I am skeptical is that I acknowledge that our city is still significantly divided when it comes to race – with the downtown area often being the only place where one can find anything resembling co-existence on a regular basis.

WE ALL GO to work together during the day, 9-5, Monday through Friday. Afterward, we go back to our home neighborhoods, which may well be shifting in terms of ethnic and racial breakdowns in recent years, but still remain heavily separated.

WALLS: The perennial dreamer



That same Tribune-commissioned poll said that 57 percent of white people surveyed thought their neighborhoods were safer than the rest of the city, compared to only 42 percent of Latinos who thought that or 26 percent of African-American people – who by the way also had 70 percent say the neighborhoods they live in are NOT very diverse.

Which means that even in the new century, we have certain people living in certain sections, and certain non-Anglo individuals living in places where they’re not all that exposed to other people. It’s like they’re living in an alternate Chicago – one that other people would prefer not to have to think much about.

That is why I think some voters will have that gut feeling come Election Day, no matter what they say now or what they know on an intellectual level is the “proper” thing to do.

WE’RE NOT GOING to get the ugly bluntness of the past. But anybody who thinks we have put this factor behind us for good is being delusional.

Then again, they’re probably the same kind of people who can’t comprehend how the Chicago Cubs have gone so many years without a championship.

  -30-



We’re in the Silly Season, alright

Where do things stand in the mayoral campaign as we enter the first full week of the new year? With the same nonsense talking points that created ridiculous campaign rhetoric during the old year!

EMANUEL: A Tuesday court date



Tuesday is the day that a Cook County judge is expected to issue a ruling as to whether a Board of Election Commissioners ruling that says Rahm Emanuel can be on the Feb. 22 mayoral election ballot was right or wrong.

NOT THAT THE ruling will bring any finality to the issue. The people who are determined to dump Emanuel are determined to take this on Wednesday to an Illinois Appellate Courts panel if they lose, while Emanuel’s campaign will have their attorneys go to the appeals court – if by chance the judge rules that the elections officials screwed up and he should NOT be regarded as a legitimate Chicago resident for purposes of this election cycle.

Now don’t take this as a prediction as to what the judge will do. But I won’t be surprised if the next step to the appeals court (located at LaSalle and Randolph streets across from the Thompson Center state government building) is taken by Burt Odelson and the people who want Rahm gone.

Keep in mind that at one time, the rulings of elections boards were considered sacrosanct. No one could appeal them in any court of law.

While the latter part has changed, the courts still tend to respect the rulings that these panels make. So the obligation is fully on the people who are challenging Emanuel to show exactly where the Chicago elections board screwed up, and how that screw-up would have resulted in Emanuel clearly not being fit to be on the ballot.

A MERE TECHNICAL screw-up, in and of itself, isn’t enough to boot Rahm.

I actually found a Chicago News Cooperative report about a legal brief filed Friday by attorneys on Emanuel’s behalf to be interesting. They argued that the elections board spent so much time on the Emanuel case compared to typical ballot challenges that that factor alone shows how careful they were in reaching their decision about Emanuel.

Will those three days of testimony, including nearly 11 hours of Emanuel himself on the stand, make the process legitimate in the eyes of the court? It might.

So even if there’s a lot of back and forth in coming weeks due to court rulings (he’s on, then he’s off, then he’s on again, then off again), I won’t be surprised if in the end, he winds up on again, and any votes cast for him on Feb. 22 being legitimate ballots that count.

NOW IF THIS were another candidate, he’d probably have right to be concerned that all his time was being spent in court – instead of out campaigning and trying to sway voters. Yet Emanuel has the advantages of name recognition and a head-start on fundraising that he’s probably the one person who can get away with spending so much time hanging around courthouses for word of his campaign’s fate.

If anything, being in court so much may save him from saying something stupid (or showing that famous temper) on the campaign trail.

That’s not the case for his opposition, where Gery Chico on Monday made a point of boasting of the $2.5 million his campaign has already raised (which could make him competitive with Emanuel). He also has another 47 fundraising events scheduled during the upcoming month.

He also boasts of the fact that 97 percent of all his contributions came from people who live in the Chicago area (including suburbs), which lets him take his own dig along the lines of Carol Moseley-Braun’s less-subtle charge that Emanuel is an “outsider” being helped by “outsider” Bill Clinton.

AND WHAT OF Moseley-Braun? That fundraising factor makes it clear why she was eager to be the lone “major” African-American candidate in this campaign. It seems that seeking donations from people to whom that factor is important means that in a large field, no one candidate will get that much money.

Even Moseley-Braun herself estimates a $5 million fund in total to get through the Feb. 22 election and an April 5 runoff against Emanuel. And no, she hasn’t raised it yet.

Chico already is half-way to Moseley-Braun’s desired goal and is likely to exceed her, as will Rahm.

So making an appearance with Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., at Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition on Saturday and with Rev. James Meeks at his Roseland neighborhood church on Sunday may have helped with unity. Although her initial insistence on Monday on following the lead of Jason Plummer and making an issue out of refusing to make public her tax returns brought back the memories of "haughty Carol" who thinks she is better than the rest of us.



VAN PELT-WATKINS: A year wiser?

WILL HER FLAKINESS (she ultimately said she woudl release the returns) cause so much negative attention that it will cause some hesitation among black people with a willingness to make campaign contributions to write out those checks to the former U.S. senator? Who knows. What option is there? Unless they plan to suddenly shift their allegiance to the campaign of Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins – who actually had a birthday anniversary on Sunday.

So Patricia, if you ever read this, Happy Belated Birthday. A part of me hopes you get a delayed gift of many thousands of votes cast for you on Feb. 22.

Because in some ways, I think that would be the perfect screwy ending to what is shaping up to be a twisted election cycle for ’11.

  -30-

92 days, and counting, until Election Day

To me, the final day of the time period for filing nominating petitions is always more interesting than the first day.

Admittedly, that first day always sees a mad rush of potential candidates or their aides (the would-be politicos wouldn’t want to risk catching a cold) waiting at the Elections Board office when it first opens that Monday morning – all in hopes of getting that first spot on the ballot.

THE DAYS IN between (which this time consisted of all of last week) usually attract the fringe candidates who didn’t get their nominating petitions in order by Monday morning.

So the fact that fringe mayoral candidates Tyrone Carter and Jay Stone filed on Tuesday and Thursday of last week ought to be reason enough to discount their chances (that, and the fact that Stone's petitions didn't even come close to the minimal support required to survive an electoral challenge). Even fringe candidate M. Tricia Lee managed to be ready to file for her spot on the Feb. 22 ballot by first thing Monday morning.

But it is that last day, which this year occurs today, that has the potential for intrigue.

Because there is always a serious candidate who decides to play the game of wanting to have his name appear last on the list of candidates running for a particular office. This year, it is the mayoral bid of Rev./state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, who is trying that gambit.

THE REVEREND COULD make a big splash IF he were to show up just before the Chicago Board of Elections offices were to close, and file his nominating petitions at the last possible second. But what if someone were to get stuck in traffic, and the reverend’s people were to show up just seconds after the office door were locked?

The death of a credible campaign on a fluke? It could happen.

Monday is the final day to file the nominating petitions that let someone run for the right to be the Big Man (or Woman) who walks these halls.



Or what if the reverend’s people show up late in the day and file, only to have someone else manage to slip in at the (literal) last minute to file their own nominating petitions for a ballot slot to run for mayor?

When I look at the list of nine people who as of the weekend had filed their nominating petitions to get on the mayoral ballot, I first notice the absence of the name Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins. She’s the woman who caught my Election Night attention earlier this month by having her radio campaign spots run over and over and over again on WBBM-AM radio, making themselves prominent among all the reports of Mark Kirk’s narrow victory for U.S. Senate, or Pat Quinn’s even closer win for Illinois governor.

I DON’T KNOW definitively what Van Pelt-Watkins is planning to do. Maybe she has given up. Or she may file those petitions and get herself a ballot slot. Could this be a race between the CEO and the pastor to see who can come in last?

And what about that guy who’s living in mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel’s house, is refusing to move out, and a couple of weeks ago tossed out hints that he may run his own campaign for mayor?

If he’s serious about that notion, he has to get those petitions in today – or else he’s as full of hot air as any other political dreamer.

I’m sure some people will be doing a body-watch for him to show up with nominating petitions, although I have to admit to not having too much interest in whether or not he runs.

IF HE DOES manage to get on the ballot, it would be just another fringe candidate on the mayoral ballot. We have enough of those (I’m sorry that I can’t take Stone’s mayoral bid more seriously, because not even his alderman father plans to support him), and I don’t think we need many more.

If there is a real story to that guy’s presence (I’m deliberately not naming him because I don’t want to publicize his ego any more than necessary), it would be to find out who put the idea of a mayoral bid into his head to begin with.

Just as I believe one story we reporter-types should be pursuing related to this mayoral campaign is to find out who is paying the bills that are accumulating related to the attempt to get the courts to knock Emanuel off the ballot on the grounds that he has not (according to the letter of the law) been a Chicago resident for a current-enough period to qualify for a political campaign this election cycle.

Thus far, we have heard about how attorney Burt Odelson and his legal colleague James Nally are handling this particular effort (claiming Emanuel gave up his Chicago residency when he went off to Washington to be President Barack Obama’s chief of staff for 20 months).

PROFESSIONALLY, I RESPECT the legal skills and the work of Odelson – who I have watched for just over two decades. He is an expert at election law, and he is good at getting things done for his clients.

But whose client is he in handling this particular case? I can’t envision he’s taking on this case pro bono just for his own curiosity, although I have heard him identified in recent weeks as being an “adviser” to Meeks’ campaign.

Who is paying the legal expenses for Odelson to work his hardest to knock off Emanuel, and what are the partisan leanings of those particular individuals?

In my mind, I can’t figure if it is just some conservative partisan who dreads the idea of Rahm-bo continuing to be politically relevant (the ideologues would want Emanuel to be unemployed and living on food stamps, so they could then label him a welfare cheat)?

OR ARE WE talking about someone who wants to clear the path for another of the mayoral hopefuls? Does the reverend want Emanuel out of the way so that this becomes the all-African-American political battle?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. I must admit to being more curious about learning those facts, rather than listening to the rhetorical nonsense that we’re going to hear in coming weeks from all the candidates as they try to convince us they deserve the chance to be the person who has to take the blame for being unable to resolve the fiscal mess that confronts city government these days.

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Where’s the mayoral consensus?

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., is now the officially designated African-American candidate in the running for mayor of Chicago. Not that the “honor” is going to amount to much come Election Day.



DAVIS: Does his 'endorsement' matter?

A coalition of activists, ministers and political people who all have an interest in seeing a black person become the successor to Mayor Richard M. Daley has been spending its time in recent weeks interviewing candidates – trying to pick who they think would be the best bet to win in 2011.

THEIR HOPE WAS to pick an African-American mayoral hopeful, get the bulk of the African-American electorate to back their choice, and by coordinating such unity could have a chance of actually defeating anyone else who decides to run for what could become a free-for-all.

So they wound  up picking Davis – who back in 1991 tried challenging Daley himself, only to become one of the masses of people who got their electoral butts whomped in a Chicago mayoral campaign by Daley.

I’m not sure what is more ridiculous; the fact that Davis is going to be far from the only African-American candidate following a process that was supposed to give him a sense of exclusivity? Or is it the process itself that initially rejected Davis, but then reconsidered him when it became apparent how foolish they were behaving?

On the latter point, it is because that coalition let it be known at one point that they had their process narrowed down to two candidates – former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun and Cook County Board of Review member Larry Rogers.

CONSIDERING THAT ANY campaign by Moseley-Braun is going to get tied up in all the baggage of her personal story (her ex-boyfriend, her mother’s receipt of Medicaid, etc.), there was a very real chance that this lengthy, detailed process to put up a united front by African-American voters  would have wound up making the announcement that “Larry Rogers” would be their preference for mayor.

To which, Chicago would have responded, “Who?” Then, it would have yawned and moved on to other candidates.

Hence, Davis got the pick. He is a former alderman and county board commissioner, before moving “up and out” to Congress following the 1996 elections. He is the big politico from the West Side. He sounds as credible a candidate as anybody else will in this free-for-all of a mayoral election to take place.

And maybe he’d like to have an option beyond Congress. Because the reality of reapportionment in Illinois is that the Latino population has risen to the point where there probably should be two congressional districts designed for such representation – and the easiest way to achieve that “goal” is to do away with Davis’ district (which will run into significant opposition).

SO DAVIS IS now the “official” black candidate, as chosen by the coalition, which has failed. Not that it ever had a chance to succeed. The reality of political ego means that some of the people who appeared before the coalition made it clear they’re running for mayor, regardless of what that activist body had to say.

Moseley-Braun, who lost out on getting the coalition’s endorsement, went so far this weekend as to open her campaign office – picking out a space in the Bronzeville neighborhood that gives her both cheaper rent than a downtown location AND a symbolic tie to the African-American Chicago of old.

We also have soon-to-be former Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., making it clear he is very interested in running for mayor (if we could only get Circuit Court Chief Judge Tim Evans and Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., into the mix, we’d have the bulk of Daley’s challengers trying to be his successor).

Davis is also going to have to take on Rev./state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, saying he plans to be a candidate, hoping that his far South Side mega-church with its 20,000-member congregation gives him a solid base of supporters from which to begin a campaign for city-wide political office.

THERE’S EVEN PATRICIA Van Pelt Watkins, who may be a political unknown but claims to have already raised some $400,000 for her mayoral campaign, and seems to be playing off the theme of being a “new voice” for our city.

There may well be other African-American officials who decide to get into the mix – perhaps even Larry Rogers, who won’t let the fact that the coalition didn’t pick him stop him from filing nominating petitions with his name on them.

That is the one good part of this political process. The time to actually file those petitions is next week. From Nov. 15 through Nov. 22, candidates will have to either “put up or shut up” when it comes to being a candidate for mayor.

Which means that after next week, there won’t be any more speculation about IF a person will be a candidate. They either are or aren’t, then we can move on to the part of the process by which the candidates have their followers challenge the legitimacy of their opposition – in hopes of knocking a person or two off the ballot to try to bolster their own chances of winning.

THERE IS ONE aspect that strikes me as bizarre.

Since it is obvious there will be several African-American candidates in this campaign, it is ironic that things are shaping up thus far for there to be only one significant white candidate in this campaign – former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

There still is time for someone else to get into the mix. But how ironic would it be if the candidate choice for mayor next year becomes Emanuel and a slew of African-American candidates?

In short, the exact opposite of what that coalition had hoped would occur to begin with.

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