Mayoral election in Chicago shows game change

Tuesday’s mayoral election in Chicago was a game change for the city, both a change in gender and race for the top job, for a city long segregated by race, and dominated by machine politics that governed, say its critics, by fiat.

The two front leads, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and attorney and former police review board chief, Lori Lightfoot are poised to return, the spirit of the late Harold Washington, Chicago’s only previously elected black mayor, and one in who many residents felt was going to change the way government was run, but sadly ended in his death in 1987.

For Lightfoot, who lacked both a large campaign chest, and a troop of foot soldiers, the front lead was an affirmation of her self-identification of not being part of the machine, but also said that Chicago was ready for, and deserved, a change of leadership more associated with a grass roots style that focused on the world outside of the downtown Loop business center, and towards the hundreds of working families, and individuals, who want a more equitable local government.

Chicago has been tainted by scandal, for some time, with the revelation of aldermanic misdeeds, and that of others like former Chicago Public School head, Barbara Byrd Bennett, jailed for bribe acceptance, and falsified teacher training program with a former employer.

The recent raid on the City Hall office of the longtime head of finance on the city council, Ed Burke, has also given notice to most observers, that the end of machine politics may be nearer than previously many would have thought possible.

Reaching even further back there was former U.S. Federal Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald who, “As the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, Fitzgerald took down two former Illinois governors, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, sending them both to prison for corruption charges.”

For political observers who are sensing a pattern, they might be wise to begin with Fitzgerald.

Preckwinkle was given a surprising second place, as many had thought she should be the first, but her aborted sweetened beverage tax, and her association with a “funded” study by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, earned her the sobriquet of “boss”, just as she was ready to assume the mantle of a crusader for social justice reform: battling the unequal sentencing guidelines for black and white prisoners, and especially for those convicted of marijuana possession.

Then add to that, her denial of knowing Burke, until the Chicago Tribune revealed that she was the beneficiary of a fundraiser at his home, and then the hiring of his son.

Lightfoot on the other hand, untainted by Burke, campaign “donations”, and nepotism began to emerge as a crusader. And, getting added support from the LGBT community for being an openly gay woman, she began to emerge from the field of lesser known candidates.

With the aftermath of the Laquan McDonald shooting, and cries for the resignation of Emanuel, who was accused of hiding the police body cam tape of the shooting by officer Jason Van Dyke, many began to take an earnest look at her work on police accountability boards as a future mayoral candidate.

Some are scrambling, like the business community, for how to approach either woman, since they supported Bill Daley, as Crain's Chicago reported.

There may be a menu of long-neglected items forthcoming, and especially if Lightfoot wins the April runoff election: much needed work in the infrastructure outside of downtown, a sustaining need for Chicago Public Schools, especially in black neighborhoods, and the continued growth, sought by some with the end of moratoriums on charter schools, seen by the Chicago Teachers Union as siphoning off money from neighborhood schools.

Change also came for definite changes in the aldermanic races when a distinct left turn -- notably with the Democratic Socialists of America, where the lead was taken by a DSA veteran, Carlos Ramirez Rosa, and others; a total of five after the April election>

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that “If their success on Tuesday carries over to the April runoff election, as many as five members of the Democratic Socialists of America could be on the Chicago City Council — the most in more than a century.

“Shadowing the Congressional elections and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, prompted Ramirez-Rosa to state: “The oligarchs are shaking in their boots tonight,” Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) told supporters Tuesday at Puebla Restaurant celebrating his re-election over challenger Amanda Yu Dieterich,” reported The Chicago Sun-Times.

“Our continued organizing and movement-building over the last four years is paying dividends. And it appears to be a total transformation of political power at City Hall from the bottom up.”

This is not hubris say supporters, but a reflection of a new political reality.

The other, Daniel La Spata, upset Ald. Proco “Joe” Moreno in the Near Northwest Side’s 1st Ward, but this may also be a reflection of personal scandals on the part of the latter, and some questionable assertions by other, now ill-reputed aldermen.

“Socialist Rosanna Rodríguez-Sánchez will be in April’s runoff against incumbent Ald. Deb Mell (33rd). Rodríguez-Sánchez broke into tears at her election-night party at Chief O’Neils in Avondale after hearing she’d gotten the most votes in a three-way race.

“Chicago had a way of doing politics, and I feel like that died tonight,” Rodríguez-Sánchez said. “I’m very very confident that I’m going to win” in April.”

Mell whose father Dick Mell, for those with long memories, is not only part of Chicago’s dynastic political families but also had him famously jumping on his desk with a colorful style to make a point in establishing the successor to Washington.

“Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who heads the Pilsen Alliance, credited the socialist organization — which says it’s not a party but instead a “political and activist organization” — with helping him in the race for the seat vacated by retiring Ald. Danny Solis (25th).”

“DSA members were instrumental, and I’m thankful to the volunteers who spent hundreds — thousands — of hours campaigning,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We’ve had a rubber-stamp City Council beholden to corporate interests, and that’s why the DSA candidates resonated with people.”

Andre Vazquez, who joined the socialists in June, will be in the runoff against 35-year incumbent Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th). O’Connor took over the powerful finance committee after Ald. Edward Burke was charged in January with trying to extort a Burger King owner.

As The Economist noted, “Looking past the label, however, American socialists are more progressive Democrats than Castros in waiting—and their rise poses more of a challenge to the Democratic Party than to capitalism.”

While a recent poll suggests growing support for the DSA, “the poll never defined “socialism”, so precisely what people were expressing support for remains unclear. For decades, the cold war defined it, at least for most Americans. They were capitalist and free, while socialism was a step removed, at best, from Soviet communism. Americans under 30 have no memory of the cold war. To them, socialism may be little more than a slur they have heard Republicans hurl at Democrats—particularly Barack Obama. They may well have reckoned that if supporting universal health care, more money for public education and policies to combat climate change are all socialist, then they are happy to be socialist too.”

“The platform of Bernie Sanders, the socialist who gave Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic primaries, left capitalism fundamentally intact, calling instead for a broader and more redistributive social safety-net. His supporters seem enamoured of Nordic-style social-welfare policies. But those countries are not socialist; they are free-market economies with high rates of taxation that finance generous public services. Indeed, the “socialist” part of those countries that Mr Sanders’s fans like would be unaffordable without the dynamic capitalist part they dislike.”

Maurice Isserman, a professor at Hamilton College and charter DSA member, “contends that DSA members “are not utopian, and we certainly don’t believe in Bolshevik-style revolution”. He approvingly cites Michael Harrington, the DSA’s founder, who said that the group should represent “the left wing of the possible”.

A surprise for some might be this: Sara Innamorato, a DSA member who won her election to the state house, from a heavily Democratic district of south-western Pennsylvania, says that “capitalism isn’t working…but I don’t think that capitalism and socialism are necessarily opposites. There are good lessons to be gained from both.”

Circling back to Chicago: historic change in the mayor’s office, and socialist wins in the aldermanic races, may mean that Chicago is truly ready for reform.