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[jayzededed-blog]

Thoughts on Chicago’s Primary. Before Results...

There is a massive crack in one of the most highly trafficked bridges in Chicago, and while it has become a campaign issue about infrastructure for many mayoral hopefuls in the “City That Works”, the election being fought today is actually a sign that this city may have outgrown that moniker.  Every chartered officer is up for election today in the “City That Works”, but more importantly, what’s at stake in this election is the character of this Chicago given the apparently bedraggled state of its democracy.  There won’t be a winner in many of today's races, but over the next five weeks many of Chicago’s occupants might become the biggest losers in the country.

The people of Chicago are exhausted; this is doubly true for its political reporters, in large part due to the seemingly endless unraveling of the fabric that has been the “Chicago Way” for decades.  This well known and worn political philosophy that relies heavily upon retribution-and-reward and the “Johnson Treatment” has lead to duly elected members of the City Council referring to each other as “rats” when they cooperate with the FBI, while making the case that they deserve to keep their jobs.

All of this has grown out of the tradition the city has for imperious mayors, the power vacuum left when current Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he would not seek a third term, and like many autocracies, the shuffling and jockeying employed by political opportunists concerned with the consolidation of power over the long term health of the city.  This is what brought us the bright idea to lease our parking meters for decades and discuss the privatization of other city assets as essentially a bridge loan to help civic solvency.  In many ways, the last three months have looked more like the film The Death of Stalin than a campaign for civic executive.

The real disappointment here is that after Emanuel’s announcement, the race crowded so quickly and in such an insubstantial way that the key issues facing the city have been largely reduced to yes or no answers in the televised debates that were many voters’ only opportunity to score and assess the candidates.  What’s left is the distillation down to cleavages of personality, attitudes toward gambling, and the hard-line push of the media towards identity politics.  I don’t blame the media for this push, but I do think it’s important to note the fact that local newsrooms have been stretched so thin that covering politics has devolved to be about racial sentiment, leaving voters with that and candidate polls as the only way to make sense of this race.  This is utterly depressing given the stakes of this race.  Chicago’s pension, police, infrastructure, and taxation systems are untenable in the rosiest views and dire at a more realistic glance.

When Rahm decided not to run for re-election, civic leadership, the media, and key constituencies should have gotten together and looked at the two paths the city could take: a continuation of the strong mayor, weak council dynamic, or the opposite, which has not been seen since the disastrous administration of Harold Washington, when the city showed the cruel racism that still lives at its core.  It seems like there was a very ham-handed attempt to align around a consensus candidate like Susana Mendoza, but her liabilities and exposure to Alderman Ed Burke, who is facing a federal corruption investigation, were likely a mortal blow to her campaign.

What’s really at issue here are two things.  First, there is the fact that in neighborhoods across the city, there has been a strong and growing push to the left brought on by the 2015 candidacy of Chuy Garcia and union offshoots like United Working Families. They saw, rightly, Garcia’s traction as a harbinger that there were huge swaths of the city dissatisfied with the status quo.  Secondly, there is the idea that there has been a total lack of creativity in city government for decades, which has sapped any vigor left in the City of Big Shoulders, now just a husk of its former self.

This brings us to the runoff, which is the most certain outcome tonight.  It will allow many of these left-right rifts to come into direct contact with each other in a condensed time frame. So the stage is set for chaos.  This can, in many cases, be a natural evolution within a democracy; however, given the unique nature of the systems in place here, there is the potential of even greater instability.  For example, if Bill Daley, Brother, and Son of the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history, or Preckwinkle, a fixture of Chicago’s political skyline, end up winning in a runoff while many of the aldermanic races veer to the left, there is no doubt that the friction that follows will lead to gridlock that has not been seen in the history of this city.  The sunniest example of this scenario would be the bedlam caused by the aforementioned Washington administration and the Council Wars that ensued.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that given the astronomically low turnout predicted, we may not know who is the winner of the mayoral or several key aldermanic races for several days.  The political climate here cannot bear this kind of instability.  Everyone should keep an eye towards these facts as the election results roll in this evening, and in the days after, everyone should remember that these are the actual stakes of the election.  Further, we need to do three things in the next five weeks.

First, we need to demand real answers to questions facing our pensions, police department, infrastructure, education, and how these will be paid for.  This is not a case where deficit spending and modern monetary theory can be employed the way that they are on the national stage.  We are beyond the point of borrowing, we cannot depend on the state for a bailout, and we need creative policy solutions that will generate long tail revenue.

Second, voters need to internalize how important this election is and separate their feelings about the national political climate from what can and should be done in our city.  Voters have quite a bit of political calculus to do in a very short period of time, and the impact could potentially last a generation.  Voters need to engage and the media needs to give them the fuel required for smart decision making. This means going beyond horse race coverage and doing true policy deep-dives on the two remaining candidates.

Finally, and most importantly, everyone needs to build a plan for how the mayor and new city council will work together to implement policy once the politics are over.  Voters have to go beyond “what is possible?” and look at what is practical.  Now is not the time for punitive approaches to lawmaking, but rather one that understands the stakes of what happens if the city gets this wrong.

It is not inconceivable that Chicago can become the next Detroit; it’s also not inconceivable that we could become the next Denver.  It all depends on the choices we collectively make.