Once or twice in the past I’ve voted for candidates I hoped would lose. These were symbolic votes, equivalent to “none of the above,” cast in order to withhold support from the inevitable and, to me, distasteful and undeserving winners.
Tuesday, however, for the first time, I plan to vote against a candidate I hope will win.
That candidate is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. I am in basic agreement with the Tribune, Sun-Times, Daily Defender and other institutional voices that have said that, on balance, Daley’s done a good job overseeing the city and deserves the nod over U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, whose campaign has been uncompelling.
But I don’t want to contribute to what polls suggest will be a suffocating landslide, so I’m punching Rush just to make the result a little closer.
A recent Tribune poll showed Rush with 13 percent support, five percentage points lower than the lowest poll number I could find for Daley’s top challenger in any mayoral election or primary. The late Joseph Gardner set the previous low-water mark, according to our files, when he polled 18 percent prior to the 1995 mayoral primary.
Twenty percent of the vote was undecided in the recent Tribune poll, and in the election seasons of 1991 and 1995, when Daley was running as an incumbent, most undecideds broke toward the challenger. Our archives show the mayor ultimately getting only roughly a quarter of that vote in ’91 and ’95, which in this case would put him close to the 71-25 percent thrashing he gave R. Eugene Pincham in the April 1991 general election (Gardner ended up losing 66-33 in 1995).
The thought of such a romp makes me uneasy, especially since Daley now controls the public schools and will soon control public housing; he already effectively controls the votes of a whopping majority of aldermen, more than a third of whom he originally appointed. The city clerk and the county state’s attorney also now owe their positions to Daley’s favor.
What keeps a public official with such broad power accountable? The threat of political challenge? As if. Barring the sort of spectacular misstep Daley has avoided, four years from now another grossly underfunded candidate will emerge, probably from the ranks of African-American politicians, to attempt to raise some reasonable questions with the mayor and the electorate.
Are public school students learning more, or are they just testing better? Who’s getting those no-bid contracts and why? Is enough being done to combat police brutality? Are the neighborhoods and the mass transit system getting the attention they deserve? Is the budget fair? What about police and fire promotions? That kind of stuff.
And once again Daley will refuse to debate. Why expose himself to the crucible of such scrutiny when the election isn’t in doubt? And those who hope to make substantive challenges–journalists, activists, candidates, rouge aldermen–will seem as futile and forlorn as that guy who marches down Michigan Avenue wearing a sandwich board that declares the real Al Gore is dead.
A Tribune news story Friday ended with this anecdote: “In a campaign walk down a stretch of Armitage Avenue . . . Daley stepped into only a handful of stores, acknowledged passersby on the street only when they spoke first. . . . And he didn’t ask anybody for their votes.”
Why didn’t he? And why didn’t he do the decent thing and apologize to recently released Death Row inmate Anthony Porter, whom Daley’s assistants errantly prosecuted for a double murder when Daley was Cook County state’s attorney in the 1980s? And why didn’t he take a bit of “the buck stops here” responsibility for CTA train woes following January’s snowstorm?
Because he didn’t have to. Because better than 2-1 victory ratios make him all but politically bulletproof, and he and his advisers have been canny enough to forge coalitions and make other moves that isolate and marginalize dissent.
When the mayor has no fear of opposition from critics or rivals, the cliche “You can’t fight City Hall!” transforms from a wry expression of frustration into a cry of futility. In this light, it makes sense to want a candidate to win by just a little–say, 4 percent rather than the 40 percent margin we may see Tuesday–and to vote accordingly. A dangerous gambit in theory, I suppose, but this time I’ll take the chance.
