The end of a dynasty: Richard II calls it quits in Chicago

Here's an article by Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune on the career of Richard M. Daley, who on Tuesday announced his retirement as mayor (or, as they say back home, "mare") of the city of my birth and youth, Chicago. He will not run for re-election next year.

Daley has led the greatest city in the world for 22 years. Despite approval ratings of only 37% back home, from my vantage point in exile he seemed to me to be a pretty darned good mayor. And this from a guy who spent his young life- from a Republican boyhood through the night he was tear gassed as a messenger for the McCarthy campaign during the 1968 Democratic Convention to almost a decade of involvement with the "Independent Movement" on the Left of Chicago's electoral politics- fighting the political power of the current mayor's father, Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Chicago is a city in decline. When I was born, it was economically, culturally and in terms of population clearly America's "Second City," surpassed only by New York. Now it is a distant third to that artificial patchwork of suburbs, Los Angeles, in population, and- like all large American cities- was struggling economically even before the economy imploded.

It remains a cultural center with few peers nationally, and under Daley's leadership has done better in dealing with both the economic downturn and the realities of modern economics and demographics than nearly any other major American city. Still, the revolutions in transportation, communications and technology have left it behind Los Angeles, and this is not, in any case a very good time for our nation's cities generally. One of the ways Mayor Daley has dealt with the problem of the budget in the aftermath of the Great Recession has been to establish the second highest sales tax in the nation. For a while, it was the highest. A declining quality of life combined with a rising cost of living has left Chicago in a bad way; the recession has made a bad situation far worse. Against these crises the current Mayor Daley struggled manfully, healing the political and cultural wounds opened under his father with the city's minorities and his own party's Left (David Axelrod, President Obama's "Karl Rove," was- like yours truly- a member of the Independent Movement, and his cordial relations with Chicago's mayor would have been unthinkable for a member of that movement in my day; Barack Obama would not have been possible without the rapprochement between the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization and the former Independent Movement- a rapprochement over which Richard II presided ) and doing the best he could against an increasingly deteriorating situation on too many fronts to count.

Despite our political differences, as a person who still considers himself a Chicagoan despite a thirty-year exile (and always will), I am grateful to "Richie," as he is known, for the fight he put up these past two decades for the city I love. I probably would have voted for him at least on occasion in recent years. Perhaps not every time; our differences on some issues are profound. But maybe once or twice. And given the job he's done against tremendous odds, I wouldn't have been all that disappointed on the election nights when I was at the defeated candidate's
"victory party."

Because I love Chicago, I am not about to give up on her. The fight to restore her place in America's economy and culture will continue, and even if I'm condemned to continue to do it from a distance, I'll be rooting for her with every fiber of my being.

Most prominent among potential successors is President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Other potential candidates include socially conservative African-American activist Rev. James Meeks, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, County Assessor James Houlihan, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, City Clerk Miguel Del Valle (thus far the only declared candidate), and City Council members Bob Fioretti (2nd Ward), Sandi Jackson (7th Ward), Thomas Allen (38th Ward), Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), Pat O' Connor (40th Ward), Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward) and Tom Tunney (44th Ward), Tunney, who represents the Lakeview and Wrigleyville neighborhoods on the Near North Side, is openly gay.

I really, really hope it's not Emanuel, though.


ADDENDUM: The consensus back home seems to be that it probably won't be. The affable and popular Dart (above)- who has made a name for himself by refusing to evict people who have defaulted on their mortgages- is said to be the favorite, and key Chicago constituencies- including the Latinos and the African-Americans- aren't too crazy about the lack of support they see themselves as having received from Emanuel in his present position.

Of course, President Obama could intervene, perhaps on Emanuel's behalf and perhaps on someone else's. But the president's popularity in our mutual home town isn't that much greater these days than it is in the country as a whole. It isn't clear how much influence, as a practical matter, he could wield.

This figures to be the most interesting and certainly the most wide-open Chicago mayoral election of my lifetime, and perhaps in the city's history. Stay tuned; this is gonna be fun.

Oh, to be back home for it!