Soon after Mayor Rahm announced he wasn’t running for reelection, I got a text from my old friend Ken Davis, host of CAN TV’s Chicago Newsroom, asking how long it would be before I wrote a sentence that began: “Say what you will about Rahm, but . . . ”
People who didn’t depend on city services. People whose neighborhoods weren’t boiling over with crime. And the message was that Rahm was the kind of Democratic mayor who was unafraid to inflict damage on the city’s most vulnerable residents—as though that were the true sign of political greatness.
Rahm seems to think so. In interviews over the last few days, he’s bragged that he definitely would have won had he run. Well, on the one hand, yes, Rahm had the most money of any candidate in the race—about $7.5 million, with the ability to raise millions more from the fat cats who figured to make out big in his third term. And he also had the undying loyalty of north-side lakefront voters from Wards 42, 43, and 44, who act as though Willis Tower would jump into the lake should their beloved mayor not return to office and fork over even more money for real estate deals like Lincoln Yards.
