Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
All three issues have roiled the council over the last year. Last summer’s big-box minimum-wage battles helped provoke several labor unions to get involved in the municipal elections, which produced nine new aldermen. In May Mayor Daley and his allies pushed an affordable housing ordinance through the council despite criticism from Preckwinkle and others that it didn’t do enough to help low-income families. Last month several aldermen deferred a mayoral proposal to reform the process of investigating police misconduct, saying it still wouldn’t be independent enough to confront corruption and abuse.
Preckwinkle said she isn’t sure how the caucus is going to do its business—whether it’s just going to meet and talk regularly, like the black and Latino caucuses do now, or whether it’s going to end up as regular voting bloc that essentially functions as the council’s opposition party. But she sounds like she’s aiming for the latter. “We haven’t met yet, so it’s hard to predict what people will want to do,” she said. “But we hope we can reach some consensus.”
