When I interviewed city clerk Miguel del Valle about his mayoral campaign, he met me at the door of his near-west-side campaign office, introduced me to staffers and other visitors, and then ushered me into his room for a 90-minute on-the-record talk.
In any event, at the time of the appellate court ruling, Emanuel was first in the polls by a big margin, and del Valle was last among the four major candidates, even though he’s the only one of the four to have been elected to citywide office. And it got me wondering: Have we come to the point where Chicagoans will only vote for a hard-ass for mayor?
The man has never publicly offered even a shred of an opinion on the pressing local concerns of the last few years, much less get involved in them. Yet just a few weeks after Mayor Daley announces he’s not running for reelection, here comes Emanuel, jetting into town. Within weeks he’s raised more money than any other candidate, talked several challengers out of the race, according to several of my sources, saturated the TV with warm and fuzzy commercials, lined up support from northwest-side powerhouses, surged ahead in the polls and refused to participate in neighborhood forums—because as the front-runner, why should he?
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Of course, the division was largely based on race: almost all the whites in the council opposed Washington and all of the blacks supported him. The raucous council meetings drew national criticism, including a Wall Street Journal article calling Chicago “Beirut by the Lake.”
Del Valle is running as the anti-Daley when it comes to council relations. He says he welcomes council participation on important citywide issues like the budget. Unlike Mayor Daley, he says he won’t get upset if the council only narrowly approves his legislation.
In his first run for office in 1986, del Valle defeated incumbent state senator Edward Nedza, who was backed by the powerful 31st Ward Democratic organization. In 1990 most of the Democratic ward bosses on the near-northwest side, including Alderman Luis Gutierrez (now a congressman), alderman Richard Mell, and Berrios, then committeeman of the 31st Ward, lined up behind del Valle’s opponent in the Democratic primary—but del Valle won reelection. “I guess I was tough enough to beat the big boys,” he says with a laugh.
