3/24/19
Anyone who is even remotely interested in the ongoing
saga of the race for the Fifth Floor
of City Hall has to see Scott Stantis’s
cartoon on page 22 of today’s (i.e., Sunday, 3/24/19’s) Chicago Tribune. If, by the
time you’ve read this, you’ve already disposed of your Sunday Tribune, I’m confident you can find it
on the Trib’s website. Words don’t do this masterwork justice, but
the point of the cartoon is that Toni Preckwinkle’s
ill-fated attempts at shooting arrows into Lori
Lightfoot’s campaign have resulted in Ms. Preckwinkle doing more damage to
her own efforts in the Big Election. Mr. Stantis has outdone even his own estimable
self with this one.
In the immediate aftermath of Lori Lightfoot’s stunning
victory in the first round of the Chicago
mayoral election, yours truly persisted
in my early prediction that Toni Preckwinkle would become Chicago’s next mayor
despite Ms. Lightfoot’s seemingly irresistible momentum. (See 2/28/19’s QUINN
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE ELECTION: THAT
WHICH I SHOULD HAVE DONE I DID NOT DO, BUT THE FUN CONTINUES and 9/22/18’s TONI
PRECKWINKLE IS THE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO, UNLESS…) The basis of my argument was that the first
round was characterized by an historically low
turnout of about a third of the eligible voters and an increase in turnout
to even normal levels for a mayoral election of about half the eligible
electorate would make it a different election, an election in which Ms. Preckwinkle’s
support among unions and the few remaining tatters of the old Machine could push her over the top.
My confidence in Ms. Preckwinkle’s ability to become next
mayor was tempered by one huge caveat of two parts. First, I thought her efforts to attack Ms. Lightfoot
as not sufficiently “progressive” could make Ms. Lightfoot more acceptable to the
rather amorphous groups perhaps too glibly labelled the “establishment” and the “business
community,” to wit…
By continually
suggesting that Ms. Lightfoot is not the type to join in a rousing chorus of “The
Internationale,” but, rather, has spent much of her life palling around with
CEOs as a corporate lawyer and accepting appointments from Rahm Emanuel and
Rich Daley, Ms. Preckwinkle and the political braintrust that surrounds her may
cause those of a more conservative, or at least business-oriented, bent to warm
to Ms. Lightfoot.
The second part of that caveat was more general, that the
generally incompetent Ms. Preckwinkle and her braintrust, who would appear to
have trouble, as my late
brother would have put it, organizing a two car funeral (though that is not
exactly how Dick would have phrased it), would somehow manage to blow the
run-off as they had blown the first round, to wit…
…Ms. Preckwinkle’s
efforts at getting out the vote, like her efforts to portray Ms. Lightfoot as
not being a true believer in the dogma of “progressivism,”
may backfire on Ms. Preckwinkle and redound to Ms. Lightfoot’s benefit.
Given the tin-ear and
manifest obtuseness of Ms. Preckwinkle’s campaign machinery in the first round,
she and her braintrust may not be capable of effectively using all the
advantages she has in money and manpower; she nearly blew it the first time
around and could easily blow it the second time around, especially given how
impressive her opponent is.
This is precisely what has happened. Every attempt by Ms. Preckwinkle’s inept
staff to inflict damage on Ms. Lightfoot has inflicted more on Ms. Preckwinkle. Her
attempts to attack Ms. Lightfoot for being successful make the typical voter,
who is not immersed in the rabbit hole philosophies that seem to permeate the modern
day “progressive” movement, shake his head and say “Why is overcoming one’s
disadvantages, working hard, going to school, and becoming a success such a bad
thing?” Ms. Preckwinkle’s campaign to paint
Ms. Lightfoot as a card-carrying establishmentarian has only made Ms.
Lightfoot, formerly dismissed as vaguely, and perhaps dangerously, radical,
acceptable to the aforementioned “business community.”
Ms. Lightfoot’s rally last night in Bronzeville, which was
little more than a race-baiting session, served to make what an especially insightful
friend of mine calls the “non-lakefront white vote” more comfortable with Ms.
Lightfoot, whom Ms. Preckwinkle’s more prominent boosters at the rally portrayed
as, among other things, insufficiently tough on the cops. You can almost see what happened here. Some arithmetically challenged genius in Ms.
Preckwinkle’s braintrust told her that if she only got at least a plurality of
the black vote that went to Willie
Wilson in the first round, she’d overcome Ms. Lightfoot’s dominance among
the lakefront/north side crowd. That strategy
could have a chance of success if the turnout in the run-off doesn’t vary much
from the turnout in the preliminary. However,
if the turnout in the run-off approaches its historic 50% level, carrying a group
that composes, at best, 40% of the vote won’t win the election, especially if it
solidifies one’s opponent’s lead among another group, in this case whites, who also
comprise 40% of the vote. So it looks
like Ms. Preckwinkle’s inner circle has clearly further alienated a large block
of voters in a murky gamble on a similarly sized group of votes, large numbers
of which are already in her opponent’s column.
Maybe this is what one does when one is desperate.
It looks like Mr. Stantis
has nailed it; Ms. Preckwinkle has
been defeated by Ms. Preckwinkle.
When yours truly has been asked lately what I think will
happen in the election, I’ve been telling people that it surely looks like Ms.
Lightfoot is on her way to victory. But
I’ve quickly been adding the caveat that this election is not over, a lot can
happen in the next week or so, and Ms. Preckwinkle may have more support than
Ms. Lightfoot’s hosanna chorus in the media supposes. That admonition looks less necessary with
every passing day, especially with Ms. Preckwinkle seemingly insisting on
self-immolation.
See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel
of Big City Politics,
for further illumination on how things work, or used to work, in Chicago and
Illinois politics.
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