I voted for Rahm a week ago. Thought he showed leadership in the school strike. Presented a known and firm face to the world - bringing corporations into the city and keeping our profile high to attract capital and talent to Chicago. Oversaw innovation in our municipal workforce in areas such as trash collection and reduced corrupt patronage. So instead of cancelling my spouse's vote, I thought I would vote to reelect the mayor to avoid a runoff election and get on with business. I did not understand why my friends at DFA were so determined to make Chicago ground zero in furthering progressive government in our great nation; thinking instead we Democrats need skilled political operators and administrators with links to big money on our side. I am not sure about my vote for Rahm now that the votes are in and Chuy Garcia ran such an excellent race that Chicago will hold a runoff election in April. It is time to reexamine the assumptions that led to my vote - to see whether I should vote with my heart, keeping with the progressive values I hold dear, or view Chicago as the corporatist exception to these values. More below the fold.
Why Reconsider Rahm?
Because Rahm is on the wrong side of history. When in Washington serving as our very own President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm fought against the Affordable Care Act and he fought against pushing immigration reform. These two signature issues, which will be the heart of the President's domestic policy legacy, would have been shelved if the President had listened to Rahm. Why? Because Rahm runs Republican lite and cut his political teeth fund raising from the wealthy elite. And he certainly knows how to raise money - $15 million of it. With $10 for his opponents' every $1 and the power of incumbency and the support of Obama, Rahm could not get to 50 percent plus 1. Maybe as was shown in NYC and Massachusetts and California, there is a change a coming which I was blind to but which many of my fellow Chicagoans sensed, worked for, acted on and voted for.
What are Rahm's accomplishments as Mayor? He made tough decisions on the schools. And I bought that. But the numbers don't add up. The savings from the closing schools are ephemeral (only two of the closed schools have been sold and for less than the cost of an average home in Lincoln Park) and the beneficiaries appear to be charter schools (including one named for our new plutocrat governor Bruce Rauner) which have sucked up disproportionate resources from our school budgets to assure their success, to pay dividends to investors and profit making managers and to fund elaborate advertising campaigns to polish their images and justify their existences. The icing on the cake are new online schools - a much touted one named for Magic Johnson opened last week - whose aim apparently is to increase the "graduation rate" by serving as diploma mills. But getting back to those closed schools. Yup populations have moved and there are fewer kids in many of those neighborhoods. But when that school is the only institution left standing in a neighborhood, the true costs of closing that school to children and neighborhoods never made it on the balance sheets used by the Chicago School Board in making those tough decisions.
To be fair this realization came to me over time, not because of the school strike where the leaders of the Chicago Teacher's Union in their incoherence, personal attacks on the Mayor, and seeming wish for harm to come to children to make their points, made the Mayor and school board seem sympathetic and reasonable.
Yes Rahm attracted business to Chicago. Yup he played the game other craven state and local leaders play - hemorrhage the tax base to attract a pitiful number of employees while saddling residents and the businesses that created the city and create most of our jobs with higher taxes to pay for these tax incentives. Are we forced to play this game in Chicago? Seems so by the looks of other cities but it has to stop because it is a race to the bottom that is founded on the idea that our corporate citizens are blessings that need to be cosseted and stroked and which owe nothing in giving back to the communities that provide them employees, customers, infrastructure and their sources of investment.
A case in point is Rahm's use of city moneys to subsidize a new basketball stadium for DePaul University and additional infrastructure and hotels for our convention complex. Those couple hundred million dollars mean less money for streets (and for two years in a row Chicago must be the pothole capital of the world), for services, for education. And then we have our new "public service LED billboards" that are polluting our major highways - sure the revenue they bring in (wink wink most of the content on these signs are not public service announcements) helps to defray the city budget, but like the famous parking deal that preceded them (and preceded Rahm to be fair), those signs are raining money on the investors who backed JC Decaux and Interstate.
In short, Rahm in his economic policies is leaving millions and millions of dollars on the table for the grifters that claim to be the job creators in America but who are taking more than their fair share of government revenues in exchange for not much.
I would add to facilitating corporate buccaneering, Rahm's support for the two University of Chicago proposals to house President Obama's Presidential Library. Each one of these proposals call for reducing Chicago's urban park lands. Instead of repurposing the hundreds of blocks of abandoned factories and lots we have to site the Library (hell what about just repurposing the massive abandoned old central post office which dominates the West Loop and whose current owner is in defaulted), the Mayor was willing to give away unique green patrimony in Jackson and Washington Parks to attract the library and presumably defray the costs of the Library for one of America's wealthiest universities. Shame on the President's people but shame on Rahm.
Then there is that little controversy over George Lucas' vanity museum to be sited on lakefront public lands between Soldier Field and the venerable steel and glass McCormick Place convention center. Maybe we need the buzz and maybe the museum is a good idea. I cannot help but think that a large chunk of Rahm's reelection hoard came from Hollywood to help further the poaching of public lands for a monument to one of Hollywood's leading citizens. I know Star Wars and a museum of story telling will bring in the tourists, but what about the former US Steel site on south end of the city?
And then there is competency in governing - you know Chicago as the "city that works." Well the Lakefront is littered with unfinished repairs and building projects that never get done. And Chicago's own version of NYC's highline - the 606 - which was to open last fall remains unfinished with no completion date evident by the level of work done so far.
But what really got my goat tonight? Rahm's efforts to displace members of the City Council who disagree with him. If Rahm believes in his policies, believes in himself, then he should be man enough to walk into a City Council that is not a rubber stamp. Instead Rahm's campaign and allies filled our mail boxes with sleazy flyers attacking sitting alderman who work hard but who remain independent. While I am the first to agree that an indictment should not be the only way to leave the City Council, the aldermen Rahm targeted appear to have been all solid public servants. But they were not yes men. Why have a City Council if it is to perform the functions of a politburo?
And then there is the question of Rahm's relationship with our new governor Bruce Rauner. They are friends. Rahm's lukewarm support for Governor Quinn did not cause Quinn's defeat (there is enough blame to go around on that score between the Quinn's fecklessness, the dysfunctional nature of Democratic power in Springfield and the DNC's uninspiring midterm strategy) but it certainly did not help Quinn. More to the point, Rahm, as indicated above, is way too accommodating and understanding of the problems and concerns of the "job creators" represented by Rauner himself, let alone by his friends. After all, in his less than two year stint as an "investment banker" between serving the Clintons and running for Congress, Rahm accumulated an 8 figure fortune greasing government approvals so utilities and banks could merge and make more money and have fewer obligations to the public weal. It is not clear that Rahm will be much of a leader in the fight we must and will have to prevent, defeat, and rollback Rauner's announced depredations.
Finally, we in Chicago have been fortunate recently not to be embarrassed or to have many of our citizens suffer from outright police murder (the cops beating the barmaid on live TV was a while ago) as compared to other cities. We do have work to do to progress from the torture inflicted by police officers long ago like John Burge but in general we appear to have well trained and well led police officers. Oh! Wait a minute. The Guardian reported this week that Chicago has an in-city rendition site where police hold and interrogate people without having to arrest them or allow them to exercise those silly constitutional rights such as Habeas Corpus and the right to engage legal counsel. That was this week! And who were sent to the rendition site on Homan Avenue - kids and protestors. Not a suspected Islamic, ISIS, shoe bomb wearing terrorist among them. And even so, there is rule of law, a concept that makes our society a light upon the world. Rahm, what have you got to say for yourself?
Can't believe how I voted last week, especially when Chuy Garcia as Commissioner has served as the floor leader for the most effective government we have in Illinois right now - Cook County under the leadership of President Toni Preckwinkle.
Alas, I fear that the next 6 weeks will be dominated not by issues and vision but rather by the scare tactics used by capitalists everywhere - whether it be Greece or Scotland - that we must vote Rahm or our costs of municipal borrowing will go up and our leading corporate citizens will seek new homes. Just hope the White House does not send the President to Chicago once again to endorse and stand by for Rahm - given the President's effectiveness in Copenhagen getting Chicago the Olympics, I am not sure the President should double down on Rahm.