- M. Spencer Green/AP Photos
- Hey, Garcia—Fioretti is your friend here.
With Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia suddenly jumping into the mayoral race, the time has come for me to say something nice about Alderman Bob Fioretti.
And Amara Enyia and former alderman Bob Shaw, and the other mayoral candidates who are already running against Mayor Rahm.
In particular, I feel compelled to say something nice about Fioretti ’cause, first of all, he’s been fighting Rahm’s policies since long before it was fashionable.
And, secondly, because lots of progressives I know—and I know dozens of that ilk—have been calling to bash Bob now that their man Chuy is in the race. Like Fioretti should just drop out now and support Garcia.
Oh, people, when will you learn?
I like Garcia as much as the next guy. But he can’t win this mayoral election without Fioretti in the race. Just like Bob can’t win without him and neither can win without Amara and even William Kelly.
By the way, Kelly’s been the unlikely hero of this car wreck of a race ever since he donated $100,000 to his right-of-center mayoral campaign, thus blowing the lid on campaign financing. Now anyone can contribute any amount to any candidate.
So if there are any gazillionaires out there who don’t like Rahm, feel free to make a generous contribution to any or all of the above.
OK, one more time, people—we have a runoff system for electing mayors.
I know I’ve mentioned this a few times before. But I feel an urge to mention it again—just in case you missed the last production of this show.
The winner of this election is not simply the candidate who gets the most votes on February 24.
No, no, no—the winner has to get more than 50 percent of the vote.
If no one accomplishes that feat, there will be a runoff between the two top vote getters.
That means a vote for any candidate other than Mayor Rahm is essentially a vote for a runoff.
When Karen Lewis was running, I was convinced that Mayor Rahm would be fighting for second place.
However, with Karen out of the race, I must bow to the painful realization that despite the mayor’s I-wanna-be-like-Mitt inclinations, he’s the front-runner in this most Democratic of cities.
On top of that fact that most of his challengers are largely unknown to the great voting public, Mayor Rahm’s got millions of dollars from his investment banking pals with which to bombard our brains with mindless TV commercials until we drop from exhaustion and say, You win, I give up.
Kind of like what Bruce Rauner is doing now, speaking of Rahm’s old investment banking pals.
I’m not saying that Chicago voters are mindless vidiots who believe any old thing they see on the tube. Though, upon reflection, I may actually be saying that after all.
My point is that once Mayor Rahm fires up that propaganda machine to turn himself into the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, the best bet to beat him is to encourage as many people as possible to vote against him. No matter who they’re voting for.
And it’s kind of hard to do that if Chuy’s bashing Bob, and Bob’s bashing Chuy, and so on and so forth, thus turning everybody off.
It should instead be I love you, man, as each challenger makes his or her best case without bashing each other.
Otherwise, you’ll all be the losers on election day. And Mayor Rahm—freed from his obligation of doing things that people want—can go back to his peculiar policy of trying to make Chicago a better city by not paving its streets.