When Chicago Mayoral Candidates Control The News Everybody Loses

Election coverage wasn’t always such a pony show. Back in the day, journalists followed candidates around every day. They listened in as candidates interacted with voters and asked questions about issues that matter. And, get this, journalists decided what election news mattered enough to print.

These days, eh, not so much.

“We had a lot more influence on what’s going on. Now the candidates control the news,” Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said in an online chat about how political coverage has changed. “They control everything. … We have no idea where they are. … Most of the time, we don’t know what they’re telling people. And that’s where they want it. They don’t want us mucking up the works.”

Ol’ Brownie got me thinking about the crowded race to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel. So far, candidates with clout have skillfully controlled the election news of the day, distancing themselves from reporters and avoiding tough questions at all costs.

For instance, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, whose father and brother are Chicago’s longest serving mayors with 42 years in office between them, has set off on a series of neighborhood chats that so-far have been off limits to reporters.

One way to look at Daley's closed-door listening tour is that if regular folks get the opportunity to ask Daley tough questions they might not feel comfortable asking with a nosy journalist in the room. On the other hand, as Brown said, without a reporter in the room there’s no telling what Daley’s out there saying in hopes of winning over voters.

“Frankly, the media is doing a piss-poor job of getting into substance that differentiates candidates.”

Lori Lightfoot, Chicago mayoral candidate

Illinois Comptroller Susan Mendoza has dodged questions about her political ties to the corrupt, and now-defunct, Hispanic Democratic Organization and the FBI’s raid on the powerbroker who helped win her first election, Ald. Ed Burke.

And no mayoral candidate has wagged the dog better than Toni Preckwinkle. The Cook County board president has worked the media like a boss from the moment she declared the reason she decided to run for mayor was “because I can … because it’s necessary.”

Reporters put that soundbite out on Twitter but never got an answer about what forces may have been stopping Preckwinkle from running for mayor before Emanuel bowed out. Or an explanation on why, and to whom, her candidacy became “necessary.” She still hasn’t explained herself. And like Mendoza, Preckwinkle also refused to answer questions about Ald. Ed Burke, who hosted fundraisers for the Cook County board president.

After she caught some flack for pulling an old-school ward boss move — filing nominating petitions in attempt to clear the field of minority women candidates (except Amara Enyia who’s backed by the her campaign chairman’s son, Chance The Rapper) — Preckwinkle seized control of the election news cycle.

It started with the release of her “education plan,” which frankly read like Chicago Teachers Union talking points. The result was that Preckwinkle swiftly picked up the CTU’s endorsement the next day. Soon after, the Service Employees International Union pledged a million bucks to Preckwinkle’s campaign war chest.

It’s true that SEIU has backed Preckwinkle over the years, but their support wasn’t always well timed and may have limited the labor union’s influence over the fate of county jobs. Preckwinkle offered reporter Alex Parker some insight on why she demanded union workers accept furloughs and layoffs in 2011 despite the union’s $700,000 donation to her 2010 campaign — the union didn’t pony up the cash until after polls showed her winning the race.

"While I'm grateful for the unions' support, I haven't forgotten when it came, either," Preckwinkle said in the 2011 interview.

Well, SEIU didn’t make the same mistake this time. And the back-to-back union endorsements played out in the news like Preckwinkle campaign ads. A “beaming” Preckwinkle took home the union grand prize — at least a million bucks and the promise that government workers will hit the street as campaign foot soldiers.

Chicago’s former top cop Garry McCarthy, the first candidate to launch a mayoral bid, made an unsuccessful attempt to weigh in on what he called the “rigged endorsement process” that aims to “secure the power of career politicians.”

“It cannot be stressed enough, that if Toni Preckwinkle becomes mayor, her influence over city jobs and contracts, as it relates to these unions, grows even more. We essentially would have said goodbye to one boss, in Rahm Emanuel and said hello to another, in Toni Preckwinkle,” McCarthy said in press release that not a single news outlet quoted.

There wasn’t much reporting on the content of the CTU’s closed-door talks with other candidates before the endorsement vote.

Lori Lightfoot, the former federal prosecutor running for mayor, told me she left her CTU endorsement interview with the feeling that the teachers’ union was interested in backing a candidate that could be influenced. Contract negotiations start next year.

“That’s just how it is. Nobody’s calling it out,” Lightfoot said. The former police board president, who resigned to challenge Emanuel before he bowed out, says reporters have been too focused on "calling the horse race" and chasing "shiny new objects" that pop up on the campaign trail.

“Frankly, the media is doing a piss-poor job of getting into substance that differentiates candidates,” she said.

What’s interesting is that news outlets continue to cover the election like a clout contest even though that’s the stuff that inspires folks to lose interest in election stories.

That’s according to the results of an American Press Institute study of 2016 election news that suggest stories that cover elections like horse races, and focus on campaign donations and poll results lead to significant decreases in online page views and social media referrals.

Down at O’Hara’s in the East Side Wednesday, a neighborhood guy told me he’s already tuned out the political noise dominating reports on the mayor’s race.

“The news is about who’s got the money, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wanna know what I wanna know? Who’s gonna bring business down here so all the money stops going to Indiana?” the city worker said in between sips of Bud Light. “They’re bringing business downtown, right? What about here? Why ain’t the news talking about that, huh?”

Well, that would muck things up for the candidates who control the news.