Friday, March 29, 2013

Reader: Chicago's black voters wake up with a Mayor Rahm hangover

Rahm Emanuel
I noted a report from Charles Thomas from ABC Chicago last week about Mayor Rahm Emanuel losing support in the Black community. Ben Joravsky recently noted that Black votes helped the Mayor securing his victory over two years ago. Thanks to a number of issues such as school closings and crime where would the Black vote be and his electoral chances in two years time?
At the very least, I'm having a hard time finding many black voters—outside of appointees, contractors, and aldermen—with nice things to say about Mayor Emanuel's administration.

Even though lots of black people voted for him.

Admittedly, there's nothing scientific about my survey. It mostly consists of me going up to anyone of any race, creed, or color and asking: (a) Did you vote for Mayor Emanuel? and (b) If so, are you happy with what you got?

And the overwhelming response from black people goes like this:

Yes. And—hell no!

Some people are too embarrassed to confess. So they'll say, "You know, I can't remember who I voted for in that last election."

Well, for all those who forgot . . .

The mayor received well over 50 percent of the vote in the city's majority-black wards, including 58 percent in the Sixth Ward, 59 in the Eighth Ward, and 59 percent in the 21st Ward.
The next part I could only image could be found on a Republican/conservative op/ed:
Instead, they largely voted for him because they assumed President Obama wanted him to be our mayor. As opposed to the president couldn't take one more minute of Emanuel as his chief of staff so he cooked up a deal with the Daley brothers to dump him on us. And then choreographed a happy White House send-off so everyone could save face.

Thanks again, Mr. President.

In short, what we have here is a massive misunderstanding.

Mayor Rahm thinks he got a mandate from black voters.

And black voters think their mandate was for President Obama.
So what do you all think about Mayor's electoral chances. In the blog post about Thomas' report I made sure to ask the question about who could credibly run against the Mayor. Then NBC Chicago's Ward Room offered one alternative, Toni Preckwinkle!

This past week Joravsky's Reader Colleague Mick Dumke even wrote about Preckwinkle making some noise over the expected school closings last week.

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