Chicago Election Results Confirm Referendum On Emanuel's Failure

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been such an abysmal political failure that the Chicago Democratic Machine couldn’t even get a Daley into the mayoral run-off.

Tuesday’s election was a referendum on Rahm. He let Chicago down, and helped loosen the status-quo's formerly iron grip on the City Council. The proof is in the vote totals.

About 54 percent of voters cast ballots for anybody but the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — Toni Preckwinkle, Bill Daley, Susana Mendoza and Gery Chico, that is.

Think about that: Four status-quo candidates connected to the Democratic Machine — with its access to big-money donors, union backing and campaign foot soldiers on the public payroll — didn’t win the popular vote.

[ Commentary ]

Preckwinkle, Daley, Mendoza and Chico, each in their own way, represented a de facto endorsement of Chicago’s failed boss because they had no interest in running for mayor until Emanuel decided not to seek a third term that he couldn’t win anyway.

Outsider Lori Lightfoot — the former federal prosecutor who spoke out against Emanuel while she worked for him, and quit her post to run against him — topped a crowded field of 14 candidates, winning about 18 percent of the vote.

Emanuel deserves a little credit for inspiring Lightfoot's unlikely rise to become the machine-busting front-runner poised to replace him as mayor.

She might not have entered the race if not for Emanuel’s biggest failure — that $5 million hush-money settlement the Emanuel administration pushed through City Council to keep a lid on video of Laquan McDonald’s murder until after he won re-election in 2015.

Emanuel tapped Lightfoot to help save him from the McDonald murder fallout. She served as the Chicago Police Board president and ran the city’s police accountability task force, which turned out to be such a joke that Lightfoot eventually couldn’t take it anymore and called out the mayor for stalling attempts at reform.

In March 2018, long before announcing a ballot challenge against Emanuel, Lightfoot warned the mayor and City Council to get on board with proposals to allow a civilian oversight group to fire the city’s top cop, or face “extreme, extreme hostility” that will be “taken out on them in February 2019.”

She was talking about Tuesday’s election.

And, boy, was she was right.

“Like the end of Richard M. Daley’s administration, voters have an increasing negative view of Emanuel particularly when it comes to city finances, police, crime, schools and so on,” political expert and former alderman Dick Simpson said. “This was a pretty big defeat.”

The Emanuel-inspired voter backlash extended beyond the mayor’s race. Voters ousted three sitting aldermen. And 15 ward bosses, the second most in Chicago history, were forced into April run-off elections.

The most obvious evidence of the anti-Rahm referendum came in the crowded race to replace outgoing Ald. Ameya Pawar in the 47th Ward, which Emanuel calls home.

Emanuel’s former policy chief, Michael Negron, who spent five years in City Hall, barely squeaked into a run-off despite a heavily funded campaign that included $10,200 — a combined maximum donation — from top Emanuel fundraiser Michael Sacks and his wife.

A political insider explained the significance: “Look, Negron is Rahm’s guy. He only got 21 percent of the vote in Rahm’s home ward. That’s a referendum on the mayor’s political failure. Election Day wasn’t a good day for Rahm.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Emanuel broke his silence about the election results with patented non-answer answers that reporters have come to expect from the outgoing boss in times of trouble.

Rahm’s big takeaway wasn’t very insightful, or honest: Every candidate has different views but they all love Chicago, a great city.

When asked if he thought the election was a referendum that revealed voters had a negative view of his tenure, Emanuel stammered a bit.

“That’s not how I …” he said, “I think it’s a question about the future. It’s not about me.”

Emanuel rattled of a short list of aldermen who he said asked for his support in the final days of the campaign — Carrie Austin, Pat Dowd, Walter Burnett, Michelle Harris, Howard Brookins, Greg Mitchell and Susan Garza.

Then, he changed the subject by quoting Fleetwood Mac lyrics from a song President Bill Clinton co-opted as his campaign theme: “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

That made me smile, and do a little math.

Only 79 tomorrows until Rahm’s last day.