Hillary Clinton carried Illinois, swept through three other states, and kept Bernie Sanders at bay in a too-close-to-call race in Missouri. But Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who endorsed Clinton, cannot revel in the presumptive Democratic nominee's home state victory anytime soon. Instead, he will face questions about the blowout defeat of the incumbent Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. The county prosecutor and ally of the mayor became the target of Chicagoans' fury after a video of the death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer, was released to the public late last year, more than a year after the shooting occurred.
The state's attorney race turned into a referendum on Emanuel himself, exposing the political vulnerabilities of a man who was once a key Democratic Party operative. Alvarez lost to challenger Kim Foxx in the Democratic primary by nearly 20 percentage points. Voters did not take kindly to the mayor's defense of Alvarez, who charged the officer with murder only after the local outrage attracted national attention. After he was forced to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for footage of McDonald's death residents accused Alvarez and Emanuel of a cover-up. In the months following the video's release, the city's police superintendent stepped down and a series of protests calling for Alvarez's and Emanuel's resignations engulfed the city.
Sanders seized on this political turmoil to close Tuesday's gap to two points in a state where Clinton led by a two-to-one margin as recently as last week. In a series of relentless attacks on the mayor, Sanders made clear that Clinton's former surrogate's brand was toxic. "Hillary Clinton proudly lists Mayor Rahm Emanuel as one of her leading mayoral endorsers," Sanders told reporters at a news conference in the city. "Well, let me be as clear as I can be: Based on his disastrous record as mayor of the city of Chicago, I do not want Mayor Emanuel's endorsement if I win the Democratic nomination."
That aggressive strategy worked: Barack Obama's first chief of staff and a former senior advisor to Bill Clinton (who was even rumored to be a potential running mate for Hillary) couldn't even get face time with the Democratic frontrunner when she campaigned in the city.
Sanders's attacks were part of a shrewd strategy to score points with the city's African American voters, after the mayor's February approval ratings dropped to 20 percent among blacks. Sanders has struggled with black voters, especially in Southern states where he has experienced deep losses.
Sanders lost the Prairie State by only two percentage points, and Chicago by eight. These margins were much smaller than those in other large minority-majority cities in the Midwest. Last week in Detroit, Sanders lost by nearly 60 percentage points and in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) he lost by nearly 30 percentage points.
Emanuel's fall from grace in the Democratic Party also underscores the growing clout of the Black Lives Matter movement. With Alvarez out of the county prosecutor's office, local youth activists will undoubtedly focus their attention on a weakened Emanuel as they set their sights on the 2019 mayor's race.