2/19/19
At the end of January,
Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown
(See DOROTHY
BROWN MAY BE IN THE MONEY, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS, 8/28/18), after
being tossed off the mayoral ballot for lack of valid petition signatures,
endorsed Amara Enyia for mayor of
Chicago. Immediately, those supposedly
in the know regarding Chicago politics started making some not well considered
predictions. One was that Ms. Brown’s endorsement
would energize Ms. Enyias then sleepy campaign, thrusting her into the upper
echelons of the contest for the two spots in the April run-off that is
virtually guaranteed this year given that there are fourteen contenders in the
2/26 first round. This line of thinking
proceeded to the supposition that Ms. Brown’s endorsement would hurt
front-runner Toni Preckwinkle
because Ms. Brown and Ms. Preckwinkle shared certain constituencies that would
gravitate toward Ms. Enyia in the wake of Ms. Brown’s endorsement. Some went so far as to suppose that this
tempest in a then becalmed teapot might somehow deny Ms. Preckwinkle her spot
in the run-off.
The logic behind the
aforementioned argument was somewhat strained.
First, if Ms. Preckwinkle looked like a lock for the run-off while Ms.
Brown and Ms. Enyia were both on the ballot, why would combining their two
rather pitiable vote totals threaten that lock? Ms. Preckwinkle was the front-runner
without the votes that went to either woman.
Second, besides their race and gender, Ms. Brown and Ms. Enyia have just
about nothing in common. Ms. Enyia is
supposed to be one of the newcomers who is out to slay the dragons in City Hall, to take a stand against the “Machine” and the way things have been
done in this town for ages, and there
are few people more emblematic of the way things have always been done around
here than Dorothy Brown. Ms. Brown can
say she fought the “Machine”, but that’s only because her shenanigans were too
much even for the Cook County Regular
Democratic Organization, which thus decided to endorse her primary opponent
in her last re-election campaign. She
won overwhelmingly; so much for the “Machine.” Incidentally, if anyone can find
this “Machine” that everyone seems to be talking about, please let me
know. Maybe the best place to look for
it would be Holy Sepulcher Cemetery and it won’t do any of its supposed
denizens much good there. But I
digress.
Simply put, it’s difficult to
imagine Ms. Brown’s supporters flocking to someone who bases her campaign on
getting rid of the likes of Ms. Brown. It
is easier to imagine Ms. Brown’s supporters, primarily older black women voters
whose most salient common characteristic, beyond their race and gender, may be
their regular attendance at, and devotion to, their church, flocking to another
candidate, Willie Wilson. Mr. Wilson is of Ms. Brown’s generation, is
well liked among the churched constituencies, has been around awhile, and is
not endowed with Ms. Enyia’s presupposition that he has the answer to every
question by virtue of having been in “public service” for an entire brief
career. Ms. Brown’s constituencies would clearly
feel more comfortable with Mr. Wilson than they would with Ms. Enyia.
Those
of us who didn’t jump on the wobbly from the start “Toni Preckwinkle is in
trouble now that Dorothy Brown has endorsed Amara Enyia” bandwagon seem to have
had the better of the argument. Toni
Preckwinkle remains a lock, to the extent anything is a lock in this crazy
election, for the run-off and, if you had to bet 1-1 on any one candidate to
grab the ultimate prize, you would be taking a huge risk betting against Ms.
Preckwinkle. (See TONI
PRECKWINKLE IS THE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO, UNLESS…, 9/22/18, and the last few paragraphs of SO
WHAT IS JERRY JOYCE REALLY UP TO? AND
WHO WILL BE THE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO?, 12/28/18) Ms. Enyia has indeed moved up in the polls;
she has moved from the low single digits to the mid-single digits in at least
one poll. If you allow for the margins
of error, the crowded field, and no one currently reaching the 20% level, you
could conceivably contend that Ms. Enyia is in the race to make the
run-off. This is, however, akin to a
real estate agent telling you that if you stand on the very edge of your
balcony and the sun sets just right and there is no further construction in the
relevant sight line sliver and you crane your neck just so, you have a beach
view. That Ms. Enyia has, since the big
endorsement, not covered herself in glory in the area of financial acumen has
probably contributed to her not being able to take full advantage of the Brown
endorsement, but that point is probably moot; there wasn’t that much to pick up
in the first place.
More intriguingly, Mr. Wilson is making a
move up in the polls. While just about
any poll is to be taken cum grano salis
in a race with such a crowded and disjointed field, just about every poll has
Mr. Wilson in the top five candidates and a few have him knocking on the door
of second place, which would put him in the run-off. What Ms. Brown’s being taken out of the
race has to do with Mr. Wilson’s recently becoming more relevant is a subject
of debate, but it can’t have hurt his chances.
More importantly, Mr. Wilson got the endorsement
of Congressman Danny Davis last weekend.
While an endorsement by such a high-profile politician is important
enough in itself in a crowded field, there is something more significant at
work here. The endorsement by west
sider Danny Davis of Mr. Wilson
signals to west siders that Mr. Wilson is a candidate they can support. The west side/south side divide among black
Chicago voters is an old, but largely ignored, story in the city’s
politics. (This topic is treated rather
entertainingly in my second book, The
Chairman’s Challenge.) In order to win the mayor’s office, any
black candidate has to bridge that divide, and Mr. Davis’s endorsement of Mr.
Wilson surely helps Mr. Wilson in that regard.
It also doesn’t help Ms. Enyia, a west-sider, when the most prominent
black politician in her area is endorsing Mr. Wilson, who currently lives downtown but has a strong south side base.
Anecdotally, on our trip to church on
Saturday, yours truly traversed the far eastern stretches of the 19th Ward and the far
western stretches of the 34th
Ward and was amazed at the proliferation of Willie Wilson yard signs in
those area, far too many signs for a mere fringe candidate. This might be inconsequential and local, but
maybe not.
There
are a lot of reasons to dismiss Mr. Wilson’s chances of joining Toni
Preckwinkle in the run-off. Bill Daley is enjoying a similar surge
and has financial resources that exceed those of the next two most prodigious
fundraisers (Gery Chico and Toni
Preckwinkle) combined. Mr. Chico is
running a very effective campaign and seems to be siphoning Hispanic votes from
Susana Mendoza. Ms. Mendoza, while running a heretofore
clumsy campaign and probably being the most hurt by the corruption charges and
allegations against Aldermen Ed Burke
(See NO
DOUBT ED BURKE’S IN TROUBLE, BUT…, 1/3/19) and Danny Solis (See CHICAGO
POLS BEHAVING BADLY: THUS IT IS, HAS
BEEN, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE?, 1/31/19), still runs as high as third
in some polls and in the top five in most.
Mr. Wilson’s lack of facility with the English language has,
unfortunately, made him something of an object of ridicule among the “better”
types of people who tend to be educated, live on the near north side, and,
sadly, will have a disproportionate influence in this election. But lacking mastery of the King’s English
has never been a hindrance to ascending to the Fifth Floor. Our greatest mayor was such a poor speaker
that his press secretary told the press not to write what the mayor says but,
rather, what the mayor means. His son’s
complete unfamiliarity with anything resembling eloquence did not stop him from
being elected mayor six times. Even our
current mayor, for all his education and worldly sophistication, didn’t achieve
his level of success by being accomplished in forensics, though one suspects at
times that his “gonna”s,“wanna”s, and lack of ending “g”s have their origin more
in politics than in background.
The
real hindrance to Mr. Wilson’s making the run-off might be that such an outcome
would, in all likelihood, result in two black candidates being the finalists in
a city in which blacks constitute less than a third of the population and about
40% of the electorate. While race is
not as big an issue in our politics as it used to be and as some still imagine
it to be, it’s not nothing, either. Hence,
the idea that the two finalists for mayor would both be black seems unfathomable
given the city’s demographics.
While
a number of factors mentioned and unmentioned in this piece make this an
especially hard election to predict, it seems all but certain that Toni
Preckwinkle will be in the run-off. But
the other position in the run-off is up for grabs. While the smart money is talking about Bill
Daley, Susanna Mendoza, or Gery Chico occupying that spot, don’t count out
Willie Wilson, especially if one believes that Chicagoans are yearning to
change the “culture of corruptions,” or however it is being currently put, that
has prevailed in this town since about, oh, 1833 or so. Mr. Wilson, though he has his quirks, is not
beholden to the power brokers, financial or political, that have run Chicago
forever. That he has a habit of handing
out cash to people who are down on their luck should neither disabuse one of
that notion nor hurt his chances next Tuesday.
Finally, one suspects the near condescension Mr. Wilson received from
his fellow first team candidates on last night’s Chicago Tonight debate
may have arisen from fear of Mr. Wilson’s candidacy and/or his growing constituency.
Whatever
the outcome, this election for mayor of Chicago, only the fourth in the last
hundred years that did not include an incumbent, has been, other than the 1983
election that brought Harold Washington to the Fifth Floor, the most entertaining of
my lifetime.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment