“If you have a giant fucking pile of money and a bunch of dumb fucks running against you, DREAMS DO COME TRUE.” -- @MayorEmanuel
Two years after he admitted publicly that he’d like to be mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel’s fantasy became reality in the Windy City. Last night, the former White House chief of staff creamed the rest of Chicago’s mayoral field in a low-turnout race to replace retiring Mayor Richard Daley, netting 55 percent of the vote en route to victory. As expected, Emanuel did well along the city’s wealthy lakefront and in white ethnic wards in his old congressional district but also wracked up huge numbers in majority-black districts; Carol Moseley Braun, an awful campaigner who was anointed the “consensus black candidate” by a small bloc of aging African American polls, did not win a single ward in a city that boasts a plurality of black residents -- a rather stunning data point.
Now that his seat in City Hall is secured, what types of policies can Chicagoans expect the Emanuel administration to pursue when it takes over the nation’s third-largest city in May? It’s still hard to say definitively: Emanuel himself has no experience in municipal government, his camp did not go out of its way to be specific on the trail, and the campaign coverage focused disproportionately on the horse race (and particularly the challenge to Emanuel’s residency). Still, we have hints on a few key topics that we can parse briefly:
Budget cuts and pensions payments. Emanuel will inherit a city that just closed a $655 million budget deficit with a series of onetime revenue tricks; Chicago still faces both a structural imbalance and rising pension costs. Few programs, in other words, are likely to be expanded anytime soon. He’s identified $500 million in potential savings he’d pursue right away, a plan that includes both vague changes (“streamlining bureaucracy”) and concrete steps that hold some promise (a comprehensive wellness plan focused on the sickest members of the city workforce). He’s also indicated that he would push for cuts in pension benefits for current public employees, a move most legal experts consider unconstitutional.
Taxes. Though he oversold the benefits, and a real fix would require legislative action in Springfield, Emanuel deserves credit for backing sales-tax reform. Essentially, he wants Chicago to lower its overall levy (one of the highest in the nation) but broaden the number of transactions subject to the tax to include discretionary services that wealthy people disproportionally use. It’s smart and progressive, which means it probably doesn’t have a shot in hell at becoming law. He’s also called for more transparency in the city’s tax increment financing system, a development tool intended to eradicate blight that Mayor Daley used as his own mayoral slush fund. Don’t expect fundamental alterations to that system, though; the same developers and corporate execs who the current administration showered with unnecessary TIF subsidies firmly supported Emanuel’s bid.
Education: If you like the Obama administration’s approach to education reform, you’ll like Rahm’s, too. The Democrat has called for a local, privately funded version of a “Race to the Top” fund, wants to expand the number of charter schools and teacher-training academies (possibly to allow for a more school “turnarounds”), and supports efforts to extend Chicago’s school day as well as overhaul Illinois’ flawed teacher-evaluation system. Emanuel solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from contributors to Stand for Children, a new and powerful education advocacy organization in the Michelle Rhee mold.
Environment: Endorsed by the Sierra Club, Rahm’s energy and transit platform is pretty solid. He wants to target the city’s least efficient neighborhoods for (modest) energy efficiency upgrades, bolster the city’s bike infrastructure, set guidelines for transit-oriented development projects, and devote more resources to inter-city rail and burgeoning bus rapid transit routes. The one blind spot is his lukewarm support for an ordinance that would force two aging (and dangerous) coal-fired power plants to shut down quickly or convert to natural gas.
The major test for Emanuel will be whether or not he can foster sustainable development in the city's outlying neighborhoods, areas that missed the wave of growth the Daley administration helped foster in Chicago's business district and adjacent wards. If he can, voters might keep him in this “dream job” for several more terms.
