Rahm Emanuel, the incumbent Mayor of Chicago who claims to be a Democrat but is Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner's vacation buddy, publicly railed against a non-binding referendum on whether or not voters support proposed directly-elected Chicago school board at a public forum for Chicago mayoral candidates by bizarrely claiming that democracy is nothing more than way of tricking voters:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Saturday that nonbinding referendums calling for an elected school board on next month's mayoral ballot are a politically inspired effort to "trick" voters at the polls because the concept is going nowhere in Springfield.
Speaking at a mayoral campaign forum with his four Feb. 24 election challengers — although each appeared on stage separately — Emanuel said elected school board referendum proposals appearing on ballots in 37 of the city's 50 wards aren't backed by new Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner or state lawmakers.
"You know, the governor said he's not for it. The legislature said that they're not for it and I don't think we should actually convince (or) trick people by having a political campaign issue as a way to fixing our schools," Emanuel told an audience at a Loop forum hosted by the Chicago Women Take Action Alliance, a coalition of several groups.
Every single one of Rahm's opponents who appeared at the forum, including Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who has been endorsed by this website, the Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU), and me, publicly supported a directly-elected Chicago school board.
The last time that Republicans had total control of the legislative and executive branches here in Illinois was for a two year period in the mid-1990's, and they took that opportunity an enacted a state law that mandated that Chicago's school board consist of political appointees by the mayor while still allowing small communities in downstate Illinois like Westville, a community in the east central part of the state with less than 3,000 residents, to continue to have directly-elected school boards serving them and nearby areas. In fact, Chicago is the only area of Illinois that is not served by a directly-elected school board.
The appointed Chicago school board is rife with conflicts of interest. One example of this is venture capitalist and Rahm-appointed Chicago school board member Deborah Quazzo financially benefiting from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) contracts:
Companies that Chicago Board of Education member Deborah Quazzo has an interest in have seen the business they get from the city’s schools system triple since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to the board last year, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
From 2010 until her June 2013 appointment, the total payout to companies that Quazzo invested in has come to about $930,000, the records show.
Quazzo’s companies have gotten an additional $2.9 million in Chicago Public Schools business in the year and a half since the millionaire venture capitalist joined the board to fill a vacancy left by Penny Pritzker when President Barack Obama named Pritzker commerce secretary.
In all, five companies in which Quazzo has an ownership stake have been paid more than $3.8 million by CPS for ACT prep or online help with reading, writing and math. One of them stands to collect an additional $1.6 million this year from a district contract.
For Rahm Emanuel to publicly call democracy (in this specific case, voters being able to send a message to state legislators that they want them to pass a bill to allow them to elect who they want to serve on their city's school board), a way of tricking people is absolutely absurd. Maybe it's because I'm a downstater, but I find it hypocritical that I'm able to elect people to my school district's board, while people in our state's largest city can't elect anyone to their city's school board. To those who don't like the idea of non-binding referendums, I'll say this: I view non-binding referendums as the pressure relief valves of politics, because they allow voters an opportunity to vent their frustration toward the political status quo.
In 37 of Chicago's 50 wards (Wards 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 45, 46, 47, 49, and 50), non-binding referendums asking voters whether or not they support a proposed directly-elected Chicago school board will be on the ballot. While a "yes" majority will not automatically replace the Chicago school board with a directly-elected school board, I strongly encourage a "yes" vote to send a message to Bruce Rauner, Rahm Emanuel, and the Republicans and Raunercrats in the Illinois General Assembly that Chicagoans are sick and tired of not being able to vote for who they want to serve on their school board, while voters in every other part of Illinois are able to choose who they want to serve on their school boards.
Chicago Directly-Elected School Board Ward Map (Green Wards: Advisory Referendum on ballot, Red Wards: No Referendum on Ballot, Black Areas: Not in City of Chicago)