These are the moments a City Hall reporter lives for: My girlfriend and I were having dinner at a downtown restaurant recently, and we couldn’t help but overhear the couples in the next booth kvetching about Chicago’s parking meter lease deal.
“I never thought I’d see the day when Daley was vulnerable,” she concluded. “But he is.”
There’s no doubt his stock has fallen. But Daley isn’t just any politician. I predict his poll numbers and popularity on the street will have little bearing on whether he runs again—and even less on whether he can win.
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Nobody wants bad press, but Daley seems to like a fight. More to the point, he likes a win, as much as Michael Jordan ever did. And he’s not interested in eking one out—he likes to win big. He gets annoyed when even a handful of aldermen vote against something he’s pushing. He likes to be dismissed as inarticulate, provincial, or weak—and then to outmaneuver his critics again so he can gloat a bit. In 2006, when Daley was preoccupied with that federal investigation into patronage hiring in his administration, mayoral irritant Joe Moore got the City Council to pass a ban on foie gras. Two years later the mayor refused to let Moore speak (and the alderman’s mike conveniently cut out) as mayoral allies used a parliamentary trick to overturn the ban without a moment’s debate. Afterward the mayor paraded around City Hall wearing the smug smile of a 14-year-old bully. Who can imagine that guy delivering a “You won’t have Richie to kick around any more” speech?
The way I see it, Daley is more Ahab than Nixon. He’s operating on his own logic, and he’s not going to change his course for anybody, even if it takes the ship down.
That’s his worst performance to date. Even his most formidable foes got it worse—Daley beat county commissioner (and future congressman) Danny Davis 63 to 31 percent in the 1991 primary and Congressman Bobby Rush 69 to 27 percent in 1999.
To remain in power, Daley didn’t have to be popular. He just had to be less uninspiring than his foes.
