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It’s undeniable that over the last 20 years Chicago has fared far better in most ways than Detroit and the rest of the rust belt. And as its leader over that time, Daley can take credit for some of Chicago’s successes. Large swaths of the city, including downtown and the north lakefront, do look better than ever. Millennium Park, the flower beds, the reconstruction/gentrification of the South and West Loop, the thriving arts and tourism districts–if you like all of this, you can rightly point to the mayor as contributing to your happiness in ways small and perhaps great. And I have to give the mayor props for his passion for the environment, bicycling, and the lives of ex-offenders, even if the accompanying programs are often modest at this point.
On the other hand, I don’t think Daley is responsible for the fact that the auto industry was centered in another state and ran itself into the ground there, or that Chicago is so much bigger than Flint or Gary that white people here could flee from their incoming black neighbors and still find homes (and pay taxes) inside the city limits.
The mayor expressed confidence in the CTA’s new management team, but smartly avoided explaining why he watched the city’s transit system erode for years under the leadership of his pal Frank Kruesi, who wasn’t sacked until May. Daley rightly condemned gun violence, but didn’t touch the fact that many children who grow up in the city–away from the thriving neighborhoods along the lakefront–are at least as afraid of the police who patrol their neighborhoods as they are of gangs, while the mayor has repeatedly failed to act to weed out even the worst cops. The mayor had the nerve to boast of his administration’s fiscal discipline as taxpayers cover millions of dollars in legal fees stemming from bad police officers and illegal patronage hires.
