Gene Schulter is retiring as the 47th Ward alderman after 30+ years. The two leading candidates to replace him create a brilliant microcosm of the trouble we face as a city. Tom O’Donnell is option number one, backed by Ald. Schulter and the litany of party regulars. Community organizations and progressives including Sherriff Tom Dart and Forest Claypool also back O’Donnell, a seasoned veteran of government bureaucracies. He can be counted on to get money for our neighborhood’s public schools by making a ruckus in the right offices at CPS. If there’s a pothole in our ward, O’Donnell knows whom to call. O’Donnell will fight for our piece of (the dwindling) pie and be successful at it.
Ameya Pawar is option number two, endorsed by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and idealist groups such as Democracy for America. The papers are enamored with Pawar’s iPhone app for reporting potholes citywide. Unlike O’Donnell, Pawar simply doesn’t know who to call ? and so better solutions, like an iPhone app, can be created. Policy people appreciate Pawar’s big picture, structural ideas for the city. He thinks in a bigger context, but has never, ever fought for pie.
Hence, the classic prisoner’s dilemma, Chicago style.
A City Council focused on citywide policy matters would absolutely be best for Chicago as a whole. The pie could and should be far larger than it is for everyone to get more. But like the theoretical prisoner, in every election scenario our ward’s best interest is to ignore larger questions and vote for a narrow-focused champion. In a City Council filled with insiders, we need a fighter to get our fair share; in a City Council filled with policy people focused on big structural issues, our local fighter will do even better.
Since the last census, 200,000 people left Chicago’s South and West Side wards ? seriously shrinking the pie for everyone — in no smart part because of larger structural problems in Chicago, like education funding, tax policy, community disinvestment and more. Had those people stayed, our North Side ward would be far better off, as would the rest of the city with a larger pie.
But unfortunately, the prisoner’s dilemma remains: a ward that votes to grow the pie will lose its piece. And so Tuesday we see who wins, and whether we all lose.
— Bryan Zises, Chicago
