CHICAGO | Politics and Current Events

[LouisVanDerWright]

It has a significantly smaller "undecided" portion. A lot of undecided types tend to break towards name recognition and, as the article points out, Chuy is suffering from a lack of name recognition which isn't atypical of a challenger.

However, a poll is a poll, they aren't the election one way or another. I won't be comfortable until we have official counts the day after the election and Rahm has a 5% lead. This is an election we, as a city, can't afford to mess around with.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm not quite sure what to make of this.

this poll seems highly dubious considering every other recent poll has had the race in a dead heat.

Have other polls been published?

[Steely Dan]

^ yes, these are the 3 published head-to-head run-off polls that i am aware of that have been taken since the feb. 26th election.


Polling Group - Date - Rahm - Chuy - Undec.

APC Research - 3/13/15 - 51% - 37% - 11%

Ogden and Fry - 3/07/15 - 43.5% - 38% - 18%

Ogden and Fry - 2/28/15 - 42.7% - 38.7% - 18.6%

[Kngkyle]

I was called last night by a pollster and spent about 30 minutes answering questions. Usually I wouldn't give them that much time but I was stuck doing laundry so wasn't really a loss. The lady at the end was so enthusiastic about someone actually finishing all the questions.

I'm pro-Rahm and glad to see he's got a decent-ish lead. I didn't vote in the general election (I know I know..... I was like eh Rahm will win) but now I'm definitely going to vote this time. Chuy is just no bueno and it's too close for comfort.

[MayorOfChicago]

I'm quite scared of the thought of Chuy winning. He doesn't seem to have any plans or ideas. Just says "nice things" but no clue where any money will come for any of this. The state is obviously SCREWED.

I'm trying to get all my friends to vote, go in early, or helping them get absentee ballots.

For instance, I forced my BF to get a mail-in ballot last night and I'll sit there and watch him fill it out and mail it in

[the urban politician]

^ Well, we don't want the polls to show that Rahm is too far ahead anyhow, or else it will lead to more voter apathy.

So yes, if you don't want Chuy to fuck up the city even further you should probably be motived to vote next month.

If I could vote I could, but I can't even though Chicago's economy will certainly affect me at many levels.

[Baronvonellis]

Rahm, has started putting out negative attack adds this week. They seem to be working. He's a fighter for sure, I think he wanted to play clean for the first election, since he has a image problem anyway. He's got to go dirty to seal up the election now. Besides he did win the majority in the first election, so he should have won.

[the urban politician]

Chuy just put forth a horribly vague financial vision for the city which I'm sure Rahm's people will pounce on.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by sentinel

I agree with a lot of this.

As an aside, I'm curious to know what kind of relationship Garcia had with Daley, while Da Mayor was in office..

Their political pedigrees really couldn't possibly be more different.

Rahm's political pedigree is much closer to that of Daley's. Rahm worked as a fundraiser on Daley's 1989 campaign and in 2002 when he ran successfully for Congress he had Daley's backing and machine support. When Rahm first publicly mentioned an inkling to run for Mayor on the Charlie Rose show in 2010 he said "I hope Mayor Daley runs again but if he doesn't...". Granted he isn't as "machine" as many politicians you could name that spent all of most of their careers in Chicago but by any reasonable standard Rahm is closer to that then what Chuy Garcia is. Sure Rahm criticizes "the politics of the past" referring to the negative perceptions of the latter Daley years but he tip tows around it because he knows Daley is one of his political godfathers (along with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama).

Chuy Garcia became Alderman during the Mayorality of Harold Washington who is kind of the standard bearer of what is called a "reform politician" in the modern Chicago sense of the word. Chuy was elected Alderman and he broke the block of 29 machine Alderman so Washington could have a bloc of reform Alderman (including Chuy) to actually get some of his legislative accomplishments through. Washington soon thereafter died and a couple years later Richard M. Daley was elected Mayor. Chuy was elected to the Illinois State Senate a few years later only to be later be defeated in 1998 by Daley forces via the HDO (Hispanic Democratic Organization) an hispanic arm of the machine who's aim it was to defeat reform Hispanics like Chuy. Only recently in 2010 did Chuy return to elected office on the Cook County Board. Whatever relationship Daley and Chuy did have it was pretty minimal and probably quite adversarial. Daley did appoint Chuy's protege Ricardo Munoz 22nd Ward Alderman in 1993 (the office he still holds) when Chuy became state senator but I imagine that was more about Daley appeasing that constituency for his own political calculus than doing Chuy a favor.

Say what you want about Rahm, Chuy or Daley whether it be positive, negative or indifferent but get the political history right. The very idea that anyone is even wondering if Chuy is more of a Daley like politician (in style or substance) than Rahm is simply ludacris.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Chuy just put forth a horribly vague financial vision for the city which I'm sure Rahm's people will pounce on.

Here is Chuy's entire economic plan directly from his campaign for us policy wonks to sift through:
http://chicagoforchuy.com/docs/towar...ainability.pdf

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm not quite sure what to make of this.

this poll seems highly dubious considering every other recent poll has had the race in a dead heat.



full article (paywall): http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...ry.html#page=1

Well that is encouraging hopefully there will be another poll to back this up

even if Rahm gets 46-47% he will win this challenge which is what this city and state needs, desperately


Im still confident enough Rahm has this.


But I am not confident enough to say that the two museums are in the bush.


We might lose both of them and today at the suntimes Sneed was saying the Obamas want to live next in NCY.


This may bode bad for the library which is even a bigger prize than the 2 billion dollar gift that Lucas wants to send our way.





Either way Rahm winning is more important of the three.

[the urban politician]

We may lose all 3!

No Rahm
No Lucas
No Obama Library!

But it's ok, because thank God we have ridiculous pensions and zero accountability for public employees, a degraded CTA, higher taxes, and a Mayor that nobody in the world has ever heard of nor takes interest in. Yay for Chuy! Hell, Chuy is still so unknown that when I say "Chuy" I still think more about Chewbacca from Star Wars than this guy.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by MayorOfChicago

I'm quite scared of the thought of Chuy winning. He doesn't seem to have any plans or ideas. Just says "nice things" but no clue where any money will come for any of this. The state is obviously SCREWED.

I'm trying to get all my friends to vote, go in early, or helping them get absentee ballots.

For instance, I forced my BF to get a mail-in ballot last night and I'll sit there and watch him fill it out and mail it in

Same here, I'm forcing everyone that I can to get off their asses and actually vote and to vote for Rahm. We literally can't afford the alternative.

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Besides he did win the majority in the first election, so he should have won.

Correction, Rahm has a plurality, not a majority. He is going to have to turn that plurality into a majority in order to win.

Originally Posted by Chicago103

Chuy Garcia became Alderman during the Mayorality of Harold Washington who is kind of the standard bearer of what is called a "reform politician" in the modern Chicago sense of the word.

Reform politician in name only. Everything Chuy is proposing is a direct attack on changes, i.e. reforms, that Rahm has made. Chuy's entire platform seems to be to revert to a city government as it was on Day 1 of Rahm's first term. That is the opposite of reform, he wants to undo the unpopular but effective reforms Emmanuel has put in place. I'm surprised he isn't proposing giving Burke his security detail back as well.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Just started skimming the Chuy "plan" and this is even more frightening. The man is demonstrating either blatant financial ignorance or he is lying through his teeth and trying to take advantage of the ignorance of others:

Similar borrowing strategies have been used elsewhere. Mayor Emanuel has trumpeted his use of the “social impact bond” to expand preschool education - a $17 million loan package that will obligate the City to pay back $34 million to the lenders over the life of the loan. Preschool expansion is laudable, but Chicagoans will lament the financing mechanism as the bills come due.  

Seriously? Does he not understand the concept of interest? This is what ALL bonds and loans result in. That's why we are in a big fucking heap of trouble. Of course a $17 million loan results in roughly double payments over it's life. Now just imagine what the billions of dollars in debt that Chuy's backers (i.e. the public sector unions like the CTU) are racking up year after year with their pensions is going to cost us.

Any politician who says "we shouldn't do this because it will cost more to pay back the debt" is either a carpetbagging liar or too stupid to be let within a mile of City Hall. Not borrowing money isn't an option here, it's not even a part of the discussion, yet Chuy somehow tries to play issuing bonds as "the big banks stealing from from the city"... And that's literally the first thing I read when skimming this wall of text that Chuy released...

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Hell, Chuy is still so unknown that when I say "Chuy" I still think more about Chewbacca from Star Wars than this guy.

I think of Chuy from Chelsea Lately.

[ardecila]

^ Never seen that show... you mean this guy?



lololol

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yes, these are the 3 published head-to-head run-off polls that i am aware of that have been taken since the feb. 26th election.


Polling Group - Date - Rahm - Chuy - Undec.

APC Research - 3/13/15 - 51% - 37% - 11%

Ogden and Fry - 3/07/15 - 43.5% - 38% - 18%

Ogden and Fry - 2/28/15 - 42.7% - 38.7% - 18.6%

Looks like the APC poll was not an outlier. The latest from Odgen and Fry shows Rahm pulling ahead.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-...y-mayoral-poll

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

......and a Mayor that nobody in the world has ever heard of nor takes interest in. Yay for Chuy! Hell, Chuy is still so unknown that when I say "Chuy" I still think more about Chewbacca from Star Wars than this guy.

Who outside of NYC had heard of Bill de Blasio before their 2013 mayoral race?

I mean while there are always valid financial/policy points to be made but I don't buy this "we need an already well known person to be mayor", I think anyone who is Mayor of Chicago, the third largest city of the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth, is by definition a major political player. I think people who keep pushing this point are actually rather underconfident and insincere of Chicago's position in the world of cities, I could see people in Milwaukee or Indianapolis wanting a household name mayor to get them on the map but Chicagoans talking that way to me is just weird.

Also if Chuy is elected Mayor he would gain some fame as the first Latino Mayor of Chicago, the largest city with a current Latino Mayor, and probably the highest office ever achieved by a Mexican born immigrant (former LA mayor Antonio Villagrosa for instance was actually born in the USA). Granted I don't think Chuy has any prospects for anything beyond being Mayor of Chicago but don't underestimate the potential national publicity it could bring.

Then there is the national press coverage this race is getting, in part because of Rahm and Chuy the men but also because of what this race symbolizes as far as a rift in the Democratic party and/or center-left in this country. For instance check out this eight minute PBS NewsHour segment:

• Video Link

[Chicago103]

Anti-Rahm and Pro-Chuy ad from an SEIU PAC. Of interest to us here because I think this is the first time I have seen skyscrapers used to frame a political ad. I say this half-jokingly but I wonder if some of the sentiment on here is because of our love of skyscrapers, they are under attack here as ivory towers separated from the city on the ground. At one point the skyscrapers almost take on an anthropomorphic quality as if they are pro-Rahm beings spreading gossip about Chuy to the citizens on the ground, lol!
• Video Link

[Steely Dan]

two new Ogden & Fry polls from this past weekend,



3/20/15

rahm - 55.8%
chuy - 44.2%




3/21/15

rahm - 48.5%
chuy - 32.1%
undec. - 18.4%