This piece is from Greg Hinz, from Crain’s Chicago Business, who is usually good. Kinz lays out the potential candidates to replace Da Mayor. His blog has several good posts about the mayoral race. I will be checking it out from time to time.
I tend to agree with the commenters on the post I linked to. The Chicago business community is looking disaster in the face here.
My WAG: The money is going to rally to someone early, probably Rahm, who can promise stability.
Things are very bad. The recession is hitting hard here, on top of a very unfriendly, uncertain and even punitive climate for business in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois.
The business guys I know (small and medium-sized) all say they would leave if they could, and would never move here if they weren’t here already.
So, the people who have large investments here, who are committed to the place due to real estate holdings and other fixed investments, and cannot uproot themselves, need to fend off an exodus that a weak or worse, anti-business mayor, would cause. That means they need someone in there who will be up to the job and not just get rolled.
Then, long term, they need to stop the bleeding and make it worth doing business here. That will not be easy. It may not be possible.
One of the jokes circulating among my friends is that Blago should run. My response was, what is Lee Kwan Yew doing these days? We could use him there.
My wife’s first reaction: “We should have sold our house when we had the chance. Now we are going to turn into Detroit.”
A lot of people have to be thinking this way.
[See also The Last Boss, from Zenpundit.]
Well, Lexington, 87 year old LKY suffered a massive heart attack in May (and the pacer he had had put it is thought to have contributed to it). His wife is in the same hospital, having been in a coma for around two years.
I realise this is of tangental – if that – relevance … but he has always been my hero politician, and he so often stood alone and followed his instincts, and they were always right. His son, Lee Hsien Loong is Singpore’s current Prime Minister … and he won it in an open fight. The Singporeans just recognised that he shares his father’s brilliance. He has been an outstanding leader for Singapore.
Maybe I can get away with this post by mentioning that Singapore would, obviously, be an significant member of a formal Anglosphere … which I believe Jim is against. But I think a formal arrangement is the only way forward in today’s world.
I think the Chicago = Detroit concept is what kept Daley in office all these years. I think Rahm is dreaming if he thinks he can beat a black politician for mayor. Todd Stroger looks like the favorite to me unless Daley and Obama have a deal worked out where Obama comes home to be mayor instead of running for term II in 2012.
Unfortunately for him, Stroger the Younger, unlike his father, is widely recognized as an imbecile. He makes Blago appear a Rhodes Scholar. The big money types who are tight with Daley and Obama, like the Pritzkers, would recoil.
Stroger is a non-starter.
The only Black politician I see who could make a serious challenge is Meeks.
I like him. But I am afraid he would not be able to keep the wheels from coming off.
I didn’t think being an imbecile was a barrier to public office but maybe I’ve become too cynical; or watched too much of Blago.
Michael: There is a lot at stake in Chicago. People with power here are not going to let an imbecile take over. I’m more cynical than you are.
Is it wrong to assume that Daley decided to retire because the city is bankrupt, everything that can be sold has been sold, every bit of revenue is committed twice, and there is no place where taxes can be raised?
As for a successor, what about Richards younger brother William, who was Secretary of Commerce under Clinton, after Ronald “The Most Corrupt Man in Babylon” Brown meet his untimely end.
Well, you folks have much more recent experience with Chicago than I do. I don’t quite go back to Big Bill Thompson’s promise to punch the King of England in the nose if he dared to come to Chicago. I do remember as not very old events the careers of Bathhouse John Coughlan and Hinky Dink Kenna. I’m sure that Chicago politics has improved since then.
It seems that today being “mentally challenged” is an essential for a politician. Thus Chicago has a vast pool to choose from.
I recently visited Chicago on business downtown.
From landing at the airport, to taking the subway, to walking around downtown, I kept seeing the name “Daley”, “Daley, “Daley” everywhere I looked. It was on billboards, it was on chisled in granite, it was up in lights. i was a bit surprised it wasn’t embrossed on the toliet paper.
Turns out, some guy named “Daley” is mayor there and the son and namesake of a former mayor.
Who knew?
“Turns out, some guy named “Daley” is mayor there and the son and namesake of a former mayor”
Back in the day of Mayor Richard J Daley, we used to joke that “Daley” would become part of the title of the office, kind of like “Caeser.”
Daley may have the airport, but last time I drove the Illinois Tollway, I saw a lot of “Governor Rod Blagojevich” and with all of the Tollway construction making travel slow and miserable in all directions, started calling him “Governor Narod” (“rod” in Serbian, I am told, means “work” and “narod” means “no-work” as in slacking off or loafing on the job).
Anyone but Gutierrez. Dear God, not that rabble-rousing nitwit.
Let’s see, I make it that Daley the Younger has been re-elected at least five times assuming a four year reign each time not to mention his old man’s rule. So frankly anybody in still in Chi-town is part of the problem. Can’t wait until Rahm the Sociopath takes over. After a couple of years of his rule, anyone left alive will YEARN for the days of old Daley.
It used to be that anything done by the government in Chicago would
1. cost ten times as much as it should
2. get done reasonably well reasonably close to on time.
And that made for a working city. But that time looks to be over now, as that crucial 10-1 ratio crept up and that critical effectiveness level crept down.
Joseph Somsel: In Russian, at least, narod means people. There was an organization in the 19th Century called Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narodnaya_Volya
They eventually assassinated the Tsar.
This quote made a connection with me
” The business guys I know (small and medium-sized) all say they would leave if they could, and would never move here if they weren’t here already”
I live in Will County, I was telling my wife the other day, If we did not own a business here (Over 30 year old business). We would pack up and move out of this rotten state of Illinois