Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Friday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

Thursday was Endorsement Day for several mayoral candidates. While none of the endorsements was hugely significant, each said something about endorser and endorsee. Let’s take a look, in no particular order.


Bobby Rush Endorses Bill Daley
This endorsement is not nearly as strange as one stuck with an ancient image of Rush might think.


Rush (D-AT&T) told the Tribune that “The future of this city is dependent on us to get this election right. I believe that Bill Daley has the national and international connections to drive economic development from the central city to the outlying communities and neighborhoods. We are suffering, and have been suffering, from decades-long disinvestment in our neighborhoods.”
You can believe that if you want, or you could believe Bobby Rush thinks Bill Daley is the candidate most likely to drive economic development to Bobby Rush.
“They both supported Chris Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the Illinois governor’s race. Daley worked as Kennedy’s head of finances, and Rush endorsed the candidate. Later it was reported that Rush’s son and brother were on Kennedy’s payroll.”
Stay tuned!
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Bobby Rush, Hack Panther.
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Dorothy Brown Endorses Amara Enyia
“A beaming Enyia accepted the endorsement, then joined hands with Brown and thrust them in the air as if they were running mates on the same ticket,” the Sun-Times reports.
“She called the endorsement a natural for a woman whose ‘entire career has been based upon a refusal to be absorbed’ by a ‘status-quo of establishment politicians’ now embroiled in a burgeoning corruption scandal.”
Wow, Amara. Really? I’d say Brown’s entire career has been based upon an ability to not be absorbed by the federal investigations constantly swirling around her and her office.
“‘She fought the Democratic machine and won. She recognizes that Chicago needs new, independent leadership that is, as she so often states, unbought and unbossed,’ Enyia said.”
Brown may be unbought, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been for sale.
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“Longtime proven vote-getter Dorothy Brown passed the torch to Amara Enyia on Thursday, endorsing her in the race for Chicago mayor,” Mary Ann Ahern reports for NBC5 Chicago.
Brown may have been a longtime proven vote-getter over the years in her circuit court clerk races, but the fact of the matter is that she wasn’t able to get enough signatures on her petitions to qualify for the mayoral ballot. That doesn’t mean she can’t deliver some votes to Enyia, but it means she can’t deliver as many votes as Ahern seems to suppose.
Furthermore, Enyia is already facing at least a mini-backlash over her appearance with Brown on Thursday. For example:


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Also:


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This is how politicians – which Amara clearly is now – lose themselves. Thread:


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But Amara, who could have quietly said thank you and moved on, is all in.


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Laura Ricketts Endorses Susana Mendoza
“The endorsement comes just days after her brother Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts donated $25,000 to Bill Daley’s campaign,” Fran Spielman reports for the Sun-Times.
Then Spielman goes sideways, as she is wont to do.
First, she spends eight paragraphs of an 18-paragraph story quoting Ricketts and Mendoza’s statements from press releases. Hey, if they don’t pick up the phone and consent to questioning about the news they just manufactured (more on that in a second), just put them down as “No comment!”
Second, she allows Ricketts to propagate the notion that Mendoza has put forth an “outstanding” ethics plan, which prompted chuckling all through the political-media complex on Thursday.
Third, this: “Ricketts noted that Mendoza consulted with former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, who helped to undercover the Operation Greylord judicial corruption scandal, before proposing an Anti-Corruption, Accountability and Ethics Commission patterned after the Solovy Commission that recommended systemic changes in the court system.”
I know Mendoza is trying to cover herself in the patina of credibility that Dan Webb still has (for some strange reason), but use the word “consulting” lightly, if Mark Konkol (I know) can be trusted. “She just called me to run some ideas by me,” Webb apparently told him.
Mendoza has been drowning in the Burke-Solis affair and needed an ethics reform plan stat. It’s as cynical as it gets.
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More from Spielman:
“Mendoza has been dragged down by a burgeoning City Hall corruption scandal that now involves three of her powerful political mentors: Aldermen Edward Burke (14th) and Danny Solis (25th) and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
“The Laura Ricketts endorsement allowed Mendoza to change the subject and reclaim the moral high-ground.”
This is example number kajillion in the I Don’t Get Why Everyone Thinks Fran Spielman Is So Great When I’ve Been Showing For More Than A Decade Now How Bad She Is file.
The endorsement didn’t “allow” Mendoza to do anything except get Fran Spielman to substitute stenography for reporting; it’s not for nothing that I used to call her Steno Spielman. And Mendoza has hardly reclaimed the high-ground – which supposes that she had it in the first place.
Further, this thread:


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Far from reclaiming any high ground, Mendoza’s surprisingly shoddy campaign remains stuck in the mud. Meanwhile, Enyia has a fraction of traction but remains a longshot, and Bill Daley is starting to scare me. Your move, rest of the field!
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The Beachwood McRibTipLine: Slop pop.

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Posted on February 1, 2019