Given Chicago’s troubles and the need for a fresh approach, the residency requirement for candidates seems backwards: candidates shouldn’t have to prove that they’ve lived here for the last year, but that they haven’t set foot in the city during that time.
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Monday could have been viewed as a bright day for American democracy. Cynics are forever pointing to the shortcomings of our government—and especially to how the rich and powerful are above the rules. Along came a panel of three appellate justices to deal with a case involving a multimillionaire who’s lately been among the nation’s most influential citizens. He’d now like to purchase the mayor’s office, for which he’s already raised a good-faith sum of $12 million. Only a silly residency rule stands in his way. By a vote of two to one, the appellate panel ruled against him.
Maybe the residency rule should indeed be changed—but that’s a job for legislators. The task of appellate justices is to deal with the law as it is, not as people wish it were. The 25-page opinion of the two majority justices shows them wrestling with the intent of legislators long dead, and with relevant court cases from more than a century ago. If the might of the person at the center of the case helped him or hurt him with the justices, there’s no sign of it in the opinion.
James Warren, the Chicago News Cooperative columnist, joined the blustering brigade. He ridiculed the ruling in a post for the Atlantic that was initially headlined “Why the Court’s Rahm Emanuel Decision is Worse Than You Think” (assuming a fact not in evidence, as the lawyers say). “Emanuel, the clear front-runner, can vote for mayor on Feb. 22 but he can’t run for mayor,” Warren wrote. “Sound really dumb? It is really dumb.” It is ironic—but is it dumb? As the majority opinion noted, the state constitution of 1870 seems to have set a higher residency standard for a candidate than for a voter. (Voters didn’t lose their right to vote if they’d been out of their district on “business of the United States,” but there was no equivalent exception to the residency requirement of candidates.) The majority justices found a rationale for the candidate-residency rule in a 1901 case, which noted that residency exposes a candidate to “the wants and rightful demands of his constituents.”
Clearly a pair of patronage hacks and mediocrities.
Before Monday’s ruling, he could have beaten the rest of the field with one arm tied behind his back. It won’t kill him to have his fingers crossed for a few days.
