Want To Be The Next Mayor of Chicago- Tough Luck!

If you wonder why independent voters despair over career politicians treating government jobs as just a way to amass power and wealth, consider the latest moves involving Chicago's mayor's office.


Several weeks ago, current, long-time mayor, also son of a long-serving mayor, Richard Daley, made a surprise announcement that he won't be running for another term as mayor.


The sound waves from Daley's shocking declaration had barely finished reverberating before pundits fingered current White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, as his replacement. Word had it that Rahm wanted to be mayor...and maybe that was why Daley declined to serve another term.


Being Chicago, the Democratic candidate is effectively the mayor once he's won the primary.


Chicago may no longer be America's Second City, but it's still a large one. Whoever becomes its next mayor would, ideally, perhaps even logically, be someone with considerable administrative experience and specific interest in solving whatever the salient problems are in Chicago.

How, then, to interpret the very public talk that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel will be resigning shortly to seek office as Chicago's next mayor?

I live in a state where a nearly-dead man, Frank Lautenberg, was virtually lifted out of his coffin to run again for a seat he had earlier, simply because the nominated Democratic candidate for the Senate was being indicted for campaign fund chicanery. So I'm resigned to political expediency trumping common sense. As it was, Lautenberg bought his Senate seat after retiring from ADP, the company he successfully founded and built. Following on that model, recently-defeated governor Corzine bought himself a Senate seat, too.

I guess Chicagoans are expected to sit still for whichever powerful Democrat decides s/he wants to be their next mayor. Even if it's a sort of gift to Emanuel for his work electing centrist Democrats to take control of the House, then running Wonderboy's staff for nearly two years.

Does anyone actually imagine Emanuel has the best qualifications to be Chicago's next mayor? Or is this the new form of political reward, rather than handing out ambassadorships? In this case, Emanuel expressing a desire to simply run the city for which he was a Representative between stints on White House staffs?

This sort of noblesse oblige behavior is a major part of what has fueled the Tea Party movement.

And, hey, come to think of it, the movement's titular prophet, Rick Santelli, works down in the Loop!

Wonder how he'll feel if Emanuel simply walks into the mayoral job without serious opposition?