Richard M. Daley had a certain quality that Rahm Emanuel lacks, James Warren noted in Sunday’s New York Times—a quality that gave the outgoing mayor an advantage over the incoming one. “As the church-going child brought up in a Bridgeport bungalow, he had an organic tie to the city’s neighborhoods and their ways of life,” wrote Warren, the Chicago News Cooperative columnist. He wondered whether Emanuel, raised mainly in the suburbs, could succeed “while lacking Mr. Daley’s visceral feel for the neighborhoods.” Warren guessed that Emanuel’s “air of power and steely resolve” and “impressive smarts” would help him overcome his deficiency.
But does growing up in any Chicago neighborhood give a person a visceral feel for every Chicago neighborhood?