During his transformation from ’60s radical to political insider, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), has become a shrewdly calculating, self-described “practical politician.”
So the less than strident disclosure Friday that he’s leaving the door open to challenging Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s expected re-election bid, after ruling out any interest only two months ago, left political observers confused.
Rush, who represents the 1st Congressional District, including the South Side area that spawned the mayoral candidacy of U.S. Rep. Harold Washington in 1983, suggested Friday that he is open to being drafted for February’s mayoral primary.
“I’m always open to doing the things that the citizens want me to do,” Rush said in a radio interview. A mayoral campaign “would be in response to a call from people who feel as though they have been left out,” he said.
A co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968, Rush was elected to the Chicago City Council in 1983 as an ally to Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor.
Since then, Rush has moved up through the Democratic Party structure, serving for a time as the deputy state party chairman before being elected to Congress in 1992.
While he advanced a possible mayoral bid Friday, Rush’s tone was ambivalent about the idea during a taping by telephone of “The Reporters,” which will be broadcast at 9 a.m. Sunday on WMAQ-AM 670.
He has generally refrained from criticizing Daley’s five-year mayoral tenure, except to say the mayor hasn’t pursued some of the city’s major problems, such as crime and education, as forcibly as he could.
Rush’s mayoral trial balloon Friday focused on the same subject that motivated the insurgent campaigns that propelled Jane Byrne and Washington into the mayor’s office-he attacked the concentration of power on the fifth floor of City Hall.
He said Daley should be challenged by a representative of “the progressive forces of the city.”
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Joseph Gardner, who is hoping to coalesce liberal and black forces into such a challenge to Daley, had no reaction to Rush’s comments. However, Tommy Brewer, co-chair of an exploratory committee for Gardner, said Rush was simply “saying the politic thing” on the radio show when asked about his mayoral interest, while Gardner has the “fire in the belly” to run.
Jim Williams, Daley’s spokesman, sounded unconcerned about Rush, saying the mayor, who has not yet formally announced for re-election, would “welcome a healthy debate on his record.”
