• Al Podgorski/Sun-Times Media
  • A champion of the minimum wage increase?

When you head to the polls in February, Mayor Emanuel is hoping you’ll think of him as a man of the people. You know, rather than the guy who closed all those public schools and mental health clinics while managing to scrape together the money to build a sports arena and a Marriott hotel. And certainly not as the guy who was silent on increasing the minimum wage in Chicago until plans started developing at the state level, and publicly undercut Governor Quinn by 75 cents when the governor was fighting to get reelected.

February 6, 2013: Governor Quinn, facing low approval ratings, endorses a proposal by some legislators and labor groups to raise the Illinois minimum wage from $8.25 to at least $10 an hour over the next four years. The General Assembly never acts on the proposals. Emanuel doesn’t comment.

January 7, 2014: Video surfaces of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner declaring that he’d like to cut the state’s minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. After being blasted for the remarks, Rauner waffles, eventually saying he supports a wage hike as long as it’s accompanied by limits to workers’ compensation claims.

July 7, 2014: The mayor’s task force recommends lifting the minimum wage to $13 an hour in Chicago by 2018. The group also suggests waiting until the General Assembly acts on a statewide increase after the November elections.

November 28, 2014: On the day after Thanksgiving, Mayor Emanuel calls a special City Council meeting for the following Tuesday to enact his minimum wage proposal. Some aldermen say the mayor broke city law by failing to provide enough advance notice. The mayor says he had to act quickly because state legislators could enact a law that keeps Chicago’s wage below $13 an hour. But no bills in Springfield actually contain that language.

But the mayor describes the city’s new wage in Utopian terms: “A higher minimum wage ensures that nobody who works in the City of Chicago will ever struggle to reach the middle class or be forced to raise their child in poverty.”