A political land rush began to build the moment Mayor Richard Daley announced he was heading for the exit, with ethnic and racial interest groups of every hue sizing up potential candidates to make a run at control of City Hall. “South Side Irish, North Side Irish, African-Americans, South Side African-Americans, West Side African-Americans, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, everybody’s doing it,” explained Ald. Ricardo Munoz, 22nd.
—Chicago Tribune, Sept. 12, 2010
Friday’s Tribune reported that mayoral front-runner Rahm Emanuel is gaining among black and Latino voters. Carol Moseley Braun’s campaign is imploding, with support among her fellow African-Americans plummeting from 39 percent last month to 20 percent now. Some 48 percent of black voters prefer Emanuel, who is white. And 37 percent of white voters tell pollsters they support Gery Chico (25 percent), Miguel del Valle (9) or Braun (3).
Notice something blessedly absent?
A campaign that could have rocked the Richter scale, with fault lines cleaving ethnic and racial tribes, instead has played out as Chicago’s wonkiest mayoral contest ever. Candidates are offering serious proposals on serious issues. Who among us expected a race so restrained that its most heated attack ad would be over a notion dubbed the Rahm Tax?
For Chicagoans who expected race to be a dominant factor of this campaign, the most striking finding in poll after poll is the independence of African-Americans. The efforts of some black leaders to coronate Braun as a “consensus candidate” struck us as a logical move: If one candidate best understands a community’s needs, why shouldn’t those voters rally around him or her?
We did, though, see the gambit as risky: Were the black leaders telling the two-thirds of Chicagoans who are white or Latino to view Braun as “our” candidate — but certainly not yours?
The real miscalculation, it turns out, was the implicit belief that black voters wanted to be led. Subsequent polling suggests that those voters are perfectly content to decide which candidates to support and which to reject. Braun’s unfavorability among African-Americans has leaped from 11 per cent last month to 30 percent now — a likely byproduct of her intemperate behavior during a South Side candidates forum.
Why isn’t race roiling this race? Chicago certainly has displayed clannish hopes and fears. The infamous 1983 campaign pitted supporters of black candidate Harold Washington (their slogan: “It’s our turn”) against supporters of white candidate Bernard Epton (their slogan: “Before it’s too late”).
Washington won and, by the time he ran for re-election in 1987, enjoyed an approval rating of 67 percent. How so? As this page noted at his death that November: “Harold Washington did not neglect white Chicago the way his predecessors neglected black Chicago.” The Mayor Daley who’ll leave office this spring used the same playbook. His repeated strong re-election showings in black and Latino wards suggest that voters see him, too, as trying to be the mayor of all Chicago, not just its white enclaves.
Candidates and voters who grasp the financial challenges facing this city and its people also have given this race a sober tone. Cultural historian Timuel Black Jr. neatly synthesized the point in September when he told the Tribune, “This is less about black, white or brown, but green. Candidates must emphasize jobs. … The racial rhetoric of old won’t work on today’s Chicago voters.”
This year’s tone may disappoint junkies who like more jousting with their politics. But we’ll take a serious campaign — built on serious issues — over one that splits Chicagoans into warring ethnic and racial camps.
