Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Tuesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Three top-tier candidates in the crowded race to become Chicago’s next mayor sought to differentiate themselves in a final televised debate Monday night before the Feb. 26 election, but much of the political sparring occurred on familiar terrain,” the Tribune reports.
Well, it was a little more exciting than that, but this is still a pretty good account of the evening’s doings. Recommended.


*
“The debate, which aired on WTTW-Ch. 11 and was sponsored by the City Club of Chicago, marked a rare occasion where Daley has found himself on the defensive as he has skipped most of the dozens of community forums while leaning on a multimillion-dollar fundraising advantage to flood the airwaves with TV ads.”
One might surmise that Daley would govern in a similar manner – eschewing the community while consorting with big money – and one would be right.
To wit:
“Bill Daley is a moderate with deep connections to Chamber of Commerce types and Wall Street titans,” Politico wrote in “Why Daley Had To Go,” an exploration of his failed chief-of-staffship in the Obama administration.
His formal, top-down style did not mesh well with his colleagues or Congress. He’s not exactly a man of the people.
*
“Moderator Phil Ponce asked Daley about a Chicago Tribune story [link provided by Beachwood, not Tribune] published earlier this month that detailed a 1970s scandal in which testimony and court records showed Daley’s licensing test to sell insurance was tampered with so he could pass an exam he already had flunked once. Daley backed out of a televised debate on the day it was published, leading to a round of attacks from his opponents.

“Did you cheat?” Ponce asked Daley.
“No,” Daley responded. “If you read the article, there was no allegation that I did anything in that event 46 years ago.”
The Tribune story detailed how a recently fired state worker in 1973 filled in the answers to six questions that Daley had left blank and changed a wrong answer to the correct one on his second attempt to pass the exam, according to court testimony and a handwriting expert’s report. Daley was never accused of any wrongdoing himself, but Mendoza focused on how his status as a member of a famous political family placed him in that situation.
“He says he didn’t cheat on his test. He had someone else cheat on his test,” Mendoza said. “This is how it works when you have the privilege and the name of a Daley. You don’t have to do things yourself. Other people do them for you.”

She’s not wrong.
*
“Mendoza also hit Daley over an op-ed he wrote last May [an Op-Ed he wrote for the Tribune; link mine] defending his brother’s privatization of the city’s parking meters as ‘good business.’

“It was good business for your family,” Mendoza said to Daley. “It was terrible business for Chicagoans.”
An incredulous Daley countered that wasn’t the case, said he had no role in advising his brother on the decision and noted the difficult political climate surrounding the former Mayor Daley when he made the decision, with thousands of layoffs or a massive property tax increase on the table.
“He made a judgement, in hindsight 10 years later, we can all pick it apart,” Daley said, before taking aim at Mendoza and her time as a city planner. “For Susana to say this, who worked for Rich, while she was also a state rep, I never heard her complain.”
“I worked very hard,” Mendoza retorted. “I had to earn my way actually.”
Preckwinkle also chimed in, noting she was one of just five aldermen to vote against the parking meter deal: “I thought it was a terrible deal then, I think it’s a terrible deal now.”

Bill Daley, who gloried in two decades of being known as his brother Rich’s brain, now saying he was off doing his own thing reminds me of Barack Obama once claiming his self-designated political mentor Tony Rezko was just a guy who lived down the block.
Then again, I don’t recall Mendoza complaining about any of this stuff in real time. That wasn’t her bag.
*
“As she did in the last debate, Mendoza again attacked Preckwinkle for her long-standing support of Berrios, the former assessor who lost his bid for re-election last year after a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois investigation [link theirs!] showed property valuations during his tenure favored the wealthy over the poor.”
Preckwinkle continues to have no good defense for this – because there is no good defense. She could at least pretend she’s sorry or admit being wrong, but she’s not sorry and she doesn’t think she was wrong.
*
Also from the debate, and from elsewhere on the trail . . .
All Ken Griffin needs from Bill Daley is for Bill Daley to be Bill Daley.


*
Toni Preckwinkle does not have a good track record with the media. This is what you’ll be getting.


+


*


*
No one seems to want to say it – almost assuredly because they are afraid of being accused of racism – but Willie Wilson is not an exceptionally bright person. He must’ve really had a knack for running McDonald’s restaurants, which is how he got so rich, because he’s a woefully ignorant individual beyond that. I understand the tough background he came from, but he’s an old man now. And, as evidenced by this tweet but loads of other examples, it’s not about being inarticulate. It’s about not having a working knowledge of how much of anything works, including the city.


+
That said . . .


*
My theory is that Wilson’s support comes from the church folk, which makes him the new Dorothy Brown.
*


*


*
I guess this is a swipe at Preckwinkle.


*
This doesn’t make sense. Maybe Willie Wilson said it?


*
It was a good night for Mendoza, if disingenuous.


+


*
Chris Kennedy, Bob Fioretti, Dorothy Brown . . . Amara sure can pick ’em. Hell, Kanye!


Then again, Bill Daley was the Kennedy campaign’s finance chair, so what more did anyone need to know?
–
ChicagoReddit

Salary negotiation from r/chicago


–
ChicagoGram


–
ChicagoTube
Ay Chicago.

–
BeachBook
Black Students’ Disproportionate And Unequal College Debt Should Cause Alarm.

*
Tidying Up Is Not Joyful But Another Misuse Of Eastern Ideas.

–
TweetWood
A non-campaign sampling.


*


*


*


*


–
The Beachwood McRibTipLine: Tales of our time.

Permalink

Posted on February 19, 2019