Hmm, Mayor Candidate Bill Daley Doesn't Want To Dis Rahm Anymore?

Most people don’t know much about Bill Daley. I’ve written about Chicago for 20 years and had never talked to the guy. All I only know about the son and brother of two Chicago mayors is the stuff that makes the news.

Bill Daley has had some big jobs — U.S. Commerce Secretary under President Clinton, White House chief of staff under President Obama, and a big-money executive for SBC and JP Morgan Chase, to name a few. In the '90s, reporters called him a “born schmoozer,” political “svengoolie,” and the “phantom brain” of his older brother, former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

When I chatted with him last week, I hoped to learn something new. I planned to write about how Bill Daley might govern from the 5th Floor City Hall office that once belonged to his father and older brother. After all, when Bill Daley left the Obama White House, some Democrats celebrated the end of his boss-like, closed-door management style and penchant for deal-making in anonymous whispers to Politico.

As things turned out, the most interesting tidbit happened after our interview. Campaign spokesman Peter Cunningham called to ask me not to repeat Bill Daley’s rather bland description of Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

“I’m trying to be pretty direct, pretty upfront about the seriousness of our problems, our opportunities. Set goals. I’m not in-your-face style like Rahm. He’s pretty aggressive. That’s worked for him and that’s a strength for him over the years,” Bill Daley said. “Rich was in some ways the style of not a lot of rhetoric, to not attack people or blast people. I’d replicate some of that.”

That’s a pretty weak dis compared to the headlines Bill Daley made earlier this year when he told the Sun-Times Emanuel should “put on the big boy pants” and quit blaming his brother for the city’s financial troubles.

When I asked for Daley’s take on how Emanuel’s obvious failures as mayor — from shootings and murders to historic property tax increases and the ever-looming pension crisis — continue to hurt the city, the candidate demurred.

“Am I gonna go in there to blow up the building and say everything Mayor Emanuel did was bad? No, I’m not going to do that because he has done some good things. … Our pension problem is worse than when he came in. Is that his fault? Is it not? People can judge that. He didn’t solve it. Rich Daley didn’t solve it. Nobody in Springfield solved it. OK,” Daley said. “But are you gonna put that on him and say that’s his fault? I don’t think that. OK. … I’m not going to spend my time trying to blame anybody for the state we’re in.”

I asked Cunningham if his request for me to leave out a quote –something campaign spokespeople do all the time, by the way — might mean Emanuel was quietly backing Bill Daley for mayor. After all, that the two of them recently had been spotted at a fundraiser for 11th Ward Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson — Daley’s nephew and one of two dozen ward bosses who received a $20,000 campaign check from Emanuel.

Cunningham said his request did not have a secret meaning. He’d just prefer if I didn’t use the quote, is all. Cunningham said Bill Daley and Emanuel are “friendly” and as far as he knew the mayor had not made an official endorsement of any candidate running to replace him.

It’s the kind of non-answer answer that makes a cynical guy wonder: Could it be that Emanuel was talking about Bill Daley back in September when he told WGN Radio host Steve Cochran that the next mayor hadn’t entered the race to replace him yet?

After all, Bill Daley announced his mayoral campaign 10 days later. And the last time Emanuel quit a job, Bill Daley replaced him as President Obama’s chief of staff. And if you think about it, Bill Daley has some Rahm-esque campaign tactics.

For one, the normally dapper Daley — who columnist Roger Simon said dresses “carefully, expensively, properly, above any hint that he is unworthy of the high position he holds” — has stripped himself of formal garments in favor of an open collar under a zip-up fleece on his neighborhood “get-to-know-me” tour.

The change to casual attire seems a bit like Emanuel’s infamous V-neck sweater campaign commercial. But Bill Daley says that’s not the case.

“There’s a certain formality that I have, but I have gotten out of wearing a tie every day, not for the campaign but the business I was doing for the last seven years. I stopped wearing a tie every day when I joined the hedge fund,“ he said. “It’s a lot easier.”

His no-reporters-allowed campaign stops seem to have a lot in common with the “listening tours” often ordered up by Emanuel’s administration. Daley, like Emanuel, grabs headlines via press release. So far, he has avoided most candidate forums — a decision he explained by saying, "My joy isn’t getting to know the other 17 people running for mayor and spend time with them."

Pundits — including ballot rival Paul Vallas — have called out Daley’s tactics as a “rose garden” campaign. That’s a political strategy typically used by an incumbent politician to project an image of power to stay in office. In this case, it’s a thinly veiled accusation that Bill Daley is running as Emanuel’s ballot surrogate.

People in the know say Bill Daley is “getting the band back together” — the clout army left without a leader when Mayor Richard M. Daley decided not to seek another term after 22 years in office.

They say Bill Daley’s campaign war chest shows that he’s backed by big business, downtown interests and out-of-towners helped him raise more cash than any other candidate — just like Rahm.

Chicago political expert Dick Simpson, himself a former alderman, says a vote for Bill Daley is a vote for Rahm Emanuel’s third term.

When I asked Emanuel’s spokeswoman Shannon Breymaier if the mayor backs Bill Daley she gave a non-answer answer, "The mayor has made it clear he isn’t going to referee the race.”

Sometimes in politics, it’s what they don’t say that matters most.