Will South vs. West sides equal NYC?

The great divide amongst Chicago’s African-American population is the rivalry that exists between residents of South Side neighborhoods, and those who live on the West Side of the city.

Sout’ vs. West. I have heard countless diatribes from black people who live in those parts of Chicago who will insist that their part of the city is the reality that tells you what Chicago is truly all about.

IT IS A dispute that can get more intense than the South vs. North arguments that crop up during baseball season. It also is one that has developed its character into the debate over where a future library and museum for President Barack Obama should be located.

Two of the four sites under consideration are in Chicago, although I wonder if the inability of the city to get behind one site is what will make the New York City proposal the ultimate winner.

Will the South and West side interests wind up dumping all over each other and make it easier for Columbia University to achieve its desire of housing the Obama presidential legacy for decades to come?

Now I know some people are convinced there’s no way Obama, an adopted Chicagoan, and first lady Michelle, a South Shore neighborhood native, could possibly consider a place other than Chicago for his legacy. I’d like to believe that’s true.

BUT THERE ARE those who would like the appeal of New York, and would argue the fact that Obama actually attended Columbia (he transferred from Occidental College in Los Angeles to earn his bachelor’s degree) ought to put that school on top of the heap.

Considering that the Obamas have already indicated they’re not going to hustle back to Chicago immediately once his presidential term ends in January 2017, our city may well be just the place they came from.

For the record, it was the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago that put together the competing bids that were submitted Thursday, and that will be studied between now and mid-January, when the Obamas have indicated a site will be chosen.

Illinois-Chicago says a museum sponsored with their assistance could be at either Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue or Harrison and Halsted streets. A CTA “el” stop on Kostner closed decades ago could be reopened, IF the Roosevelt site is chosen.

WHILE CHICAGO (AS in the university) says a museum could go near the South Shore Cultural Center, near Washington Park on King Drive or on Stony Island Avenue in Jackson Park.

Chicago’s sites would be near (as in a short drive away) the University of Chicago campus, where Obama once served as an instructor in the law school. It would be a boost to the neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park, and theoretically would make the university less of a racial island on the black South Side.

While Illinois-Chicago’s sites could help bolster the North Lawndale neighborhood that many outsiders still think of as incurable ghetto. College officials also stress the fact that, as a public university, they are more likely to get the kinds of students who don’t fit into some academic and cultural elite.

As though implying that Flames students are less elitist than the Maroons who hang out around the Midway!

IT’S AS THOUGH people will be asked to recognize Chicago South or Chicago West as being what the Obama legacy is all about. It could make some think that New York is less of a hassle than the Second City. The ultimate neutral site!

Although I honestly think that if it didn’t wind up in Chicago, the best spot for an Obama museum and library might well be the future president’s birthplace in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The University of Hawaii (of which his parents were alumni) could literally wind up having a beachfront site that might make it a place people make the extra trip to attend.

It certainly would be a more appealing destination than Grand Rapids, Mich., which houses the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

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Will Garcia's ‘Washington’ tie mean anything to modern-day voters?

One of the facts being brought up repeatedly by those touting the mayoral candidacy of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is the fact that when he was an alderman, he was aligned with the concerns of then-Mayor Harold Washington.

He was a loyalist to the city’s first black man to become mayor, and throughout the years in various city, state and county government posts has been supportive of issues of concern to African-American voters.

AS THOUGH THE African-American segment of the electorate ought to naturally be gravitating to Garcia in his political battle for votes against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and seven others come the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

Anybody with political sense, however, ought to realize that life is not that simple on Election Day. Garcia is going to have to aggressively seek such votes if he wants to have a chance at winning election – or even forcing Emanuel into a run-off election come April 7.

Evidence of that ought to have been seen this week by the mayoral campaign of Amara Enyia, whose reaction to learning that her nominating petitions were being challenged and that she would have to endure an expensive legal battle to try to stay on the ballot (and likely get only 1 percent of the vote if she succeeded) was to withdraw.

Enyia, whose motivation for running for mayor even though she’s never held elective office before, was her disgust for Emanuel in the position. She wants him out. So to continue her cause of wanting Anybody but Rahm as mayor, she ended her campaign with an endorsement.

ENYIA, HEAD OF the Austin neighborhood Chamber of Commerce and a native of suburban University Park who has chosen to live her adult life in the city proper, is backing 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti’s mayoral campaign.

Fioretti, not Garcia. Even though some had tried to claim that as a daughter of immigrants from Nigeria, Enyia might somewhat comprehend the life story of Garcia, who is an immigrant from Mexico who has lived the bulk of his life in Chicago.

Although race has the tendency to complicate human issues, even when Anglo people aren’t involved.

Enyia, in her public comments, didn’t bad-mouth Garcia. She kept it to praise of Fioretti, saying she thought he “is better positioned” to beat Emanuel. Although various polls I have seen have generally indicated that Fioretti and Garcia are pretty much tied for second place behind Emanuel, with the other candidates struggling for whatever leftover votes will exist.

ALTHOUGH I WONDER if she is in line with much of the trash-talk rhetoric that gets spewed by too many people whenever ethnicity comes up in discussion. And it’s not just black people not liking Latinos; I’ve heard way too much stupid talk from Latino officials who want to maintain distance between themselves and black people.

This kind of nonsense could well be what keeps Garcia from being anything other than the dominant candidate in Spanish-speaking enclaves – and irrelevant in the rest of Chicago.

Now I’m not bad-mouthing African-Americans with this commentary. It is up to the candidate to convince us why we should vote for him. If Garcia ultimately can’t take a significant share of the votes cast on Election Day, then his campaign has nobody to blame but themselves.

Washington won back in ’83 because he was able to sway a share of Latino and white voters to go along with his black voter base. The reason there hasn’t been a black person elected mayor since then is that those candidates couldn’t reach out to anybody who wasn’t just like themselves.

IT WOULD BE nice for the Garcia campaign, if they’re to have a chance at winning election, to learn that lesson from the Harold Washington days and reach out to people. Many black voters will feel just like Enyia if Garcia doesn’t give them a reason to vote for him.

Otherwise, the member of the Cook County Board who just got re-elected last month to a four-year term in office would be better off focusing on his duties there, instead of wasting his time doing a Don Quixote impersonation and jousting at windmills he believes to be Rahm Emanuel!

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Quinn gets chance to create one last political headache for his critics

Pat Quinn has just over one month left in his time as governor, yet he’s going to create such a political firestorm. There’s just no way he could leave on a quiet note.

It is because of the death early Wednesday of Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka – one month before she was to be sworn in for her second term as head of the post that cuts the checks to pay the state’s bills.

BECAUSE OF THE fact that she’s in charge of the office that keeps state government running financially (the state treasurer oversees the state’s investments), there needs to be a comptroller to ensure the government keeps running.

So to those people who, for politically partisan reasons, want Quinn to sit back and do nothing and defer to Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner until he takes office Jan. 12, that ain’t a gonna happen.

Quinn gets to pick a new state comptroller to finish out the remainder of the term to which Topinka was elected to in 2010. None other than the Illinois Constitution gives him that authority.

Although ideologues usually don’t care what some stinkin’ piece of paper has to say – they’re going to rant and rage that Quinn has no right picking anybody because of his electoral loss in last month’s elections.

I ALREADY HAVE read assorted commentary about how, if Quinn does get to sign off on a “Comptroller for a Month” position, he ought to defer to whatever Rauner wants to do. Even though when then-Gov. James R. Thompson had a secretary of state appointment to fill in 1981 when Alan Dixon moved up to the U.S. Senate, he picked fellow Republican Jim Edgar for the post rather than respecting the fact that voters picked a Democrat for the post.

Which means the idea of respect for party politics isn’t going to happen. It’s ridiculous to presume it will happen.

You’d think the fact that Quinn’s appointment will only run through mid-January and that Rauner himself will take office with a major appointment to fill (who gets to be comptroller for the four-year term running through early 2019 that Topinka was just elected to) would please those people.

But it won’t. Some people, particularly those who are trying to rewrite state law to call for a special election, are just way too eager to pick issues to complain about.

I’M NOT ABOUT to predict here who’s going to become the new state comptroller – not for the next month, nor for the next four years.

I’ve heard the political wisecracks about how Quinn likely won’t pick Sheila Simon to fill the post that she ran for, and lost, last month. After all, her refusal to continue to serve as Quinn’s lieutenant governor was a fairly prominent snub – perhaps the biggest of the now-complete campaign season.

I’ve also heard the names of “Tom Cross,” “Dan Rutherford” and “Evelyn Sanguinetti” all tossed about as possible picks by Rauner, along with the possibility of putting Topinka's chief of staff in the constitutional post.

The idea being that Cross came so close to winning state election (running for treasurer) that he ought to get some sort of post, while Rutherford serving as state treasurer has some sense of what the state’s financial situation truly is.

THE IDEA OF Lt. Gov.-elect Sanguinetti as comptroller is the most amusing to me – one person suggests that it would save the state some money in salary because Rauner could then go without a lieutenant governor during his gubernatorial term.

Of course, if that happened and Rauner wound up being unable to finish his term in office, that would make state Attorney General Lisa Madigan next in line to become governor without having to be elected. A thought that I’m sure would make the ideologues wretch in disgust.

Personally, I'd rather have someone as inexperienced as Sanguinetti in a do-nothing position like lieutenant governor, than being in charge of making sure bills get paid close to being on time. But maybe that's just me.

It will be intriguing to see who Quinn picks for the “Comptroller for a Month” post. Somebody will get to be a state constitutional officer for 31 (or so) days.

SIMILAR TO THOSE people who remember the week-long stint that David Orr once served as Chicago mayor in between the death of Harold Washington and the appointment of Eugene Sawyer.

Which was only significant in that it makes him the answer to a trivia question for political geeks.

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EXTRA: No more jokes on Judy

I woke up Wednesday to a slew of e-mail messages consisting of the various statements sent to me by assorted government officials, all eager to see who could be the first to eulogize Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka.

She was 70 and suffered a stroke Tuesday. After being taken to a suburban Berwyn hospital, she was pronounced dead early Wednesday.

THERE ARE THE endless reminisces about her ability to work in a bipartisan political manner, which is a rare commodity these days amongst elected officials.

There also are the “crazy aunt” Judy type stories being shared about her outgoing personality with a quirky sense of behavior.

Personally, I can recall her walking around the state Capitol building in Springfield wearing slippers designed to look like the feet of a gorilla. Topinka justified them by saying they were comfortable.

I also recall the 1995 inaugural ceremonies when she was first sworn in as state Treasurer when she shared a campaign anecdote that basically was a fart joke – which left many of the Republican-types eager to celebrate their overwhelming victory in that electoral cycle completely stunned.

WHEN IT COMES to bipartisanship, I recall a Republican campaign event where she offended some of her GOP colleagues because she invited then-Cook County Board President John Stroger – who showed up!

But I also recall this was a woman who back in 1996 seriously believed her GOP colleagues should nominate Phil Gramm to be president – and she was one of the few Illinois Republicans with enough of an independent streak not to “follow the leader” and think that Bob Dole was the key to defeating Bill Clinton in that election cycle.

Personally, I recall when I got laid off from my then-job at the Statehouse with United Press International in 1999. Topinka was the one public official who came to see me and offer condolences, including a kiss on the cheek. Most political people would have given me a "smack" with their fists.

A day later, her aides told me a job was open on her staff, if I was interested.

I WOUND UP not taking it, and in fact came back to Chicago in coming months. But it was nice to know that the offer was there and that somebody had noticed me in a favorable way.

There also was the fact that Topinka in the 1990s got hit with a so-called scandal when she tried to resolve a debt owed to the state by a company that built a luxury (by Springfield standards) hotel.

The company owed some $40 million and was likely to default. Topinka was willing to write off the debt in exchange for a $10 million payment – which turned out to be better than the miniscule amount of repayment the state ultimately got.

Topinka wound up getting dinged with repeated jokes about her love of luxury and hotels – which was about as far removed as possible from the reality of a woman who often shopped at consignment stores.

I EVEN REMEMBER once being on the brunt of a Topinka diatribe who was convinced I was going to find another excuse to write about that long-ago issue.

But if there’s one plus to the fact that Topinka’s spirit is no longer with us, it is this – she won’t have to endure any more stupid hotel jokes at her expense.

Rest in Peace, Madam Comptroller (and Treasurer). And condolences to son Joseph, daughter-in-law Christina and grand-daughter Alexandra.

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Waiting for the ‘el’ or a bus, the quintessential Chicago experience

We’ve all endured it, getting drenched by the rain or pelted by snowfall while standing at a street corner waiting for the damned bus that just doesn’t seem to ever want to arrive.

The concept of mass transit in Chicago is a wonderful way to get around the city. It makes it possible to avoid owning an automobile (and dealing with the expense) without being reduced to the life of a shut-in.

BUT WE ALL know how unreliable those Chicago Transit Authority buses and elevated trains are when it comes to showing up on time. The great uncertain is figuring out how much time to allot for the actual commute because you don’t know how long it will take to complete – particularly if a bus or train transfer is involved.

I know I have read those alleged schedules that claim buses on many lines run every 15 minutes, and that there are times of the day when ‘el’ trains are supposed to come along every seven minutes.

It’s supposed to be the endless system where one can just show up at the street corner or ‘el’ station whenever and catch the next train or bus. It is the reason many city residents claim they could never live in the Chicago suburbs, where the trains and buses run on set schedules once an hour (or sometimes even more infrequently).

Yet those suburban Pace buses and Metra trains at least have set schedules, and people know when the train or bus is late. City residents are expected to just cope with the delays, and hope they don’t work for the kind of boss who looks for reasons to rant against his employees.

WHICH IS WHY I found it amusing to learn of a new survey by a mass transit app called Moovit that says the amount of time people spend waiting for their bus or train is less in Chicago than it is in other cities.

Thirty-one minutes is supposedly the amount of time we spend each day waiting at the street corner or train platform, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

By comparison, New Yorkers wait an average of 38 minutes a day, 39 minutes a day in Boston and 36 minutes in San Francisco.

Supposedly, Los Angeles residents wait an average of 41 minutes per day. Although my understanding of LA mass transit is that it isn’t as extensive as what other cities try to do, which means many people avoid it and turn to the freeways where they cause those daily traffic backups that can be just as frustrating as getting drenched by rain while waiting for a bus.

I’M SURE CHICAGOANS don’t feel comforted in the least by learning their average commute is less than other U.S. cities – particularly since we all have memories of incidents where we waited at least an hour for the bus to show up.

And whenever there’s a mechanical problem or a heavy weather-related storm, all bets are off in terms of getting to work on time – or even at all if things get particularly bad.

If anything, it is memories like this that make me remember fondly the summer some 30 years ago when I lived in an apartment on Damen Avenue just three doors south of the Brown Line ‘el’ station, which also was a bus stop.

Living in such proximity (I could see the ‘el’ platform out my bedroom window), I developed an inner sense of knowing when the trains and buses would arrive so I could avoid the waits – a sense I haven’t had at any other point in my life and one that I (along with many other Chicagoans) wish I could get back.

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Quinn determined to have one last political power play while in office

There was some intense politicking taking place Monday in San Diego, where Baseball Hall of Fame officials ultimately decided that none of four former Chicago White Sox ballplayers – Dick Allen, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Billy Pierce – were worthy of recognition.

Yet that might not have been as intense as the hard-ball that was played Monday at U.S. Cellular Field, where the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority met and decided to hire a new executive director.

WHICH ISN’T A big deal, except for the fact that the authority’s board is controlled now by people chosen by the Illinois governor, which means it is Pat Quinn who got to decide who got the executive director’s post.

Not Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also has appointees on the authority’s board. And most certainly not Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner, who would have got his chance to get involved with the agency that runs the White Sox’ ballpark and which paid for the renovation of Soldier Field for the Chicago Bears.

It would seem that Quinn, who wasn’t able to get the General Assembly to approve a measure providing for a statewide increase in the minimum wage so he could have a “last hurrah” of sorts signing it into law, will have to claim this appointment as one of his final acts of significance.

As it turns out, he gave the executive director’s post to Lou Bertuca, who was the campaign manager who led Quinn to his 50-46 percent defeat in the November general election for governor.

SO AT LEAST Lou is taken care of, from Quinn’s perspective. He has a job for the next two years, even though Rauner on Monday spewed a bit of cheap rhetoric about how he’d like to undo the appointment.

It’s not going to be a pleasant job, however. For I expect Rauner will replace all of the gubernatorial nominees on the authority’s governing board with people loyal to him.

I also expect that Emanuel’s people on the authority will not look too kindly to their new director. Bertuca could easily wind up having to deal with a governing board openly hostile toward anything he wants to do – along with a pair of chief executives who likely will dig for any dirt they can find for use as grounds to try to remove him!

I don’t know that I’d want to take a job under those circumstances – even if it does pay just over $175,000 per year.

OF COURSE, THIS isn’t the first time Quinn has had controversy related to the executive director’s post of the sports authority.

Bertuca replaces Kelly Kraft, the former television news broadcaster who got Quinn’s appointment in 2012 despite the belief of many authority board members that she wasn’t qualified.

That was when Quinn orchestrated the appointment by removing one of his appointees on the board who was opposed to Kelly, and replaced him with someone who would vote exactly the way the governor wanted.

It had a backlash, of course. For the person who got removed was Manny Sanchez, a high-profile attorney who wound up signing on early to the Rauner gubernatorial campaign and being one of the “prominent” Democrats who did what he could to undermine Quinn’s chances of re-election.

WHICH MAKES ME perceive this move as being more a gesture of hostility toward the political establishment that is preparing to cast him off in coming weeks.

It might not be as hostile as the one when former-Gov. Rod Blagojevich went out of his way to name Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate despite the desires of many others that he butt out of the matter. But it definitely comes across as a final cry for attention.

It’s not like there’s any activity coming before the sports authority in the near future that an executive director appointment couldn’t wait a couple of months. But it does entertain the political geeks amongst us who always enjoy the mechanizations behind political maneuvers.

Just as much as White Sox fans will spend the next few months complaining about how the Hall of Fame could be so stupid as to exclude (once again) such stars as one-time MVP Allen and the “Cuban Comet” himself in Miñoso.

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EXTRA: Imagine it was just a dream

The death of John Lennon on this date 34 years ago still has a touch of unreality in my mind, emphasized by the fact that when it happened, my initial reaction was to think it was all just a dream.

I recall being back in high school at the time that Lennon died at age 40 by a deranged fan, of sorts, who shot him outside the luxury apartment in New York City where he lived with wife Yoko Ono.

WHAT I RECALL was getting home from school that day feeling particularly sluggish, to the point where I laid down on the bed and wound up drifting off to sleep.

Later in the evening, I woke up briefly and saw a television set turned to the news, where the announcer told that Lennon had been shot just an hour earlier.

I was feeling so groggy that I quickly drifted off to sleep again – this time for the night. I woke up again the next morning. In my mind, I thought I had dreamed that the news was reporting Lennon’s death.

So when I started telling other people about my “dream,” they quickly corrected me to let me know that at least part of my night was reality.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder at times what kind of “career” Lennon would have had if he had lived through the ‘80s and beyond?

His “Double Fantasy” album sold well, but we have to admit that most of the people who bought it only did so because of his death – he was shot three weeks after it was released.

Would he have come up with anything on his own that would top his 1971 hit “Imagine?” We can only imagine what would have come about from the man who gave us such songs as a Beatle as “I’m A Loser” and “Nowhere Man.”

It’s just too bad that I can’t wake up from my “dream” of several decades and find out that it wasn’t reality at all. At the very least, maybe it would have spared us "Wham" or "Oingo Boingo."

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