While the climax of the “big, big, big, big deal” (in Mayor Richard Daley’s words) that is Chinese President Hu Jintao‘s visit to Chicago will occur Thursday night at a large dinner, a series of smaller, private events is laying the groundwork for the visit.
At his suburban home this weekend, Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus for CME Group, is hosting a “very small” dinner for Yang Guoqiang, China’s consul general to Chicago, to thank him for helping bring the president here.
“Without (Yang), it might not have happened,” Melamed told my colleague Becky Yerak. “I believe the consul general of Chicago is highly regarded in China, and his opinion that the president should visit Chicago was a very influential factor.”
Last week, Yang held a welcoming dinner for China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, the equivalent of the U.S. secretary of state, at The Peninsula hotel. Twenty people attended, including Melamed, World Business Chicago President Rita Athas and China’s ambassador to the United States, Zhang Yesui.
As for Thursday’s gala at the Hilton Chicago, “the leadership of all of Chicago will be there,” Melamed said. “It’s a measure of respect for Chicago and all of the work that Mayor Daley has done over the years to bring the Chinese world closer to our city.”
Melamed serves on the board of the HuaMei Capital Co., the first U.S. financial services firm to be co-owned by Chinese interests.
Among the 500 to 600 guests who have accepted an invitation to the Hilton dinner: ITW Chief Executive David Speer; Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman; Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown; TransUnion Chairman Penny Pritzker; CME Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy; Henry Crown & Co. Chairman Lester Crown; former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson III, who also serves on the board of HuaMei; Northern Trust CEO Frederick Waddell; Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association President Deborah Rutter; and Chicago-Shanghai Sister Cities Committee Chairmen Ray Chin and attorney William Spence, who leads Freeborn & Peters’ China practice group.
Oberhelman and Brown also will attend events in Washington.
“I got three calls from my friends (Thursday) morning saying, ‘Can you get me in?'” said Chin, a board member of the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. “I said, ‘I don’t know; it’s a pretty hot ticket.'”
Gambling
The Illinois House of Representatives didn’t take up a massive gambling expansion bill last week, but that doesn’t mean this long-running saga is over.
State Rep. Lou Lang, D- Skokie, decided not to call for a vote on the bill because he feared it would fail or, if it passed, that the governor would veto it, he said Friday. A veto would have been permanent because Lang couldn’t have mustered an override before the assembly’s session expired Wednesday.
Adding to his concerns, Lang said he had four or five supporters approach him after the House passed an income-tax increase and switch their votes. All believed the tax increase made additional revenue from gambling unnecessary, he said.
“There are members you can arm-twist, who will say, ‘OK, I can vote for the bill’ and maybe they’ll do it once,” Lang said. “But if it fails or if it gets vetoed, they’re not going to vote for it again … for a very long time. So I decided it was best to pull back and try again when we think we have this done.”
If that happens, it would be without the help of powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan, who has recused himself from the matter due to a conflict of interest and had planned to vote “present,” Lang said. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said that a client of Madigan’s law firm, which handles property tax appeals, could have benefited from the legislation.
Brown declined to name the client. But Walton Street Capital, which is led by Des Plaines casino owner Neil Bluhm, is listed as a client on the law firm’s Web site.
Still, “benefited” would not necessarily be the best way to describe Bluhm’s relationship to the bill. If the Senate’s version of it had passed, Bluhm’s casino, which is scheduled to open this summer, would have been ringed by five new competitors within 30 miles, cutting into its revenue.
Lang said he is already working on a new version of the bill to address the governor’s concerns that it was too “top heavy.”
Tribune reporter Becky Yerak contributed to this report.
Melissa Harris, who expects this week will provide quite the lesson on Chinese name pronunciations among the local media, can be reached at mmharris@tribune.com or 312-222-4582.
