- Al Podgorski/Sun-Times
- Alderman Joe Moore (right) has become a reliable backer of Mayor Rahm Emanuel—and says that’s a good thing.
Alderman Joe Moore was enjoying an Amstel Light when I arrived at the bar the other night for our beer summit. Clearly, the first thing we would have to agree to disagree on was our choice of beverage.
We had agreed to get together because we hadn’t really talked in ages—not since Rahm Emanuel had reached out to him during the 2011 mayoral campaign, and Moore had then invited the new mayor-elect to stop by a 49th Ward meeting.
“A rubber-stamp ‘no’ vote is just as bad as a rubber stamp ‘yes’ vote,” Moore said before calling out “aye” for the 2015 budget in November.
JM: Well that’s based on a false paradigm: you’re judged a reformer based on how many times you vote no. That may have been a valid measure 20, 30, or 40 years ago, but it’s not now. On each and every issue you could raise, I can defend it on solid progressive principles.
MD: But Rahm was first elected to Congress with patronage workers!
JM: I’m not going to defend him on his Bill Clinton-like parsing of the issue. But no elected official, including me, is going to say that in a perfect world we couldn’t use more police officers. But we’re not in a perfect world. Chicago has more police officers per capita than New York City or Los Angeles, and both have lower rates of violent crime. The issue is less the number of officers than how they’re deployed. How can we be more effective? How can we build trust in the community?
