By Ezra Klein I've said often on this blog that my favorite political book is an elegiac ode to labor called Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back
. . The writer of that book is a tall, polite guy with a soft voice and an understated manner named Tom Geoghegan. And he wants to replace Rahm Emanuel in the United State Congress. A Chicago labor lawyer and author, Geoghegan is best known for his books on, well, law and labor, most notably the aforementioned Which Side Are You On, which Rick Perlstein called not only "the best political book of the last 15 years," but "also the best book of the last 15 years." Geoghegan has also been penning a column for The American Prospect for some time, and his writings for us are wonderfully impassioned and quirky. Page through the pieces here, and marvel. What makes Geoghegan different than your ordinary liberal intellectual running for office that he never left Chicago to become a liberal intellectual. He could have. He could have retired to book contracts and column gigs. He could have gotten a fellowship or a teaching slot. He could have moved to DC and had people applaud him at panels. Instead, he's remained in the gritty world of labor law in Chicago, trying an unending series of sad and hard cases, most of them on behalf of individuals, and a fair number against corrupt elements of organized labor. For a period, the Teamsters would send heavy, angry looking enforcers to Geoghegan's readings and talks. They'd sit and glower, a warning to cease his work on behalf of reformist elements in the union. The upshot is that one of Labor's most prominent national advocates will likely be denied their support in the upcoming election. All of which makes him a fairly odd entrant in a Chicago dominated by politicians like Richard Daley and Rod Blagojevich. But given the mood of the electorate, it also might render him a potent one: He's a reformer, and he's clean in the most obvious and almost ostentatious of ways. He's a liberal intellectual in a town where there's a well-funded network of such people. He has support from the progressive community, which should give him some access to fundraising (and it's a short election, which means it's a cheap one). Plus, it's just a weird election: 17 candidates running in Emanuel's district in Daley's Chicago in Blagojevich's Illinois in Obama's America. Why shouldn't the literary labor lawyer emerge on top? For more, read James Fallows, Rick Hertzberg, and Digby. For much more, read Kathy G., who's sort of acting as the campaign's official blogger.
