What was so surprising about Mayor Emanuel’s fall was that everything appeared to be going his way. While the mayor’s race comes to an inconclusive end - none of the leading candidates break 20 percent in the most recent poll of likely voters, and a majority vote is required to win - the most important elections to keep an eye on are the aldermanic contests, where socialists are fighting for the largest number of seats on the city council in living memory. This not small change political corruption but involves millions in various and sundry payoffs to remold what Chicago will look like for the next century. The Burke-Solis scandals have pulled back the mask of the corrupt relationship between the real-estate goliath gentrifying Chicago and the political class that serves it. Solis hasn’t been seen in public since then. Things took a bizarre turn in January, when it was revealed that longtime Chicago alderman Danny Solis was wiring a wire for nearly two years for the FBI, recording the most private of political conversations with local and state leaders of the Democratic Party, including Burke. The scandal soiled the two leading candidates at the time, Toni Preckwinkle, the chair of the Cook County Democratic Party and the current president of the Cook County Board, and Susana Mendoza, the Illinois comptroller, who both share extensive ties to Burke. ![]() Burke, a fifty-year veteran of the city council, is at the center of the biggest corruption scandal in years - one that has threatened much of the city’s political establishment. Yet despite the enormous number running, the differences between them range from slim to none.īut in December, the Ed Burke corruption scandal broke. After a mad scramble of twenty-one candidate vying to replace him, the final number of candidates on the ballot is fourteen. The latest battle for Chicago began last September when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he was not running for a third term. The political class is scrambling to cope with a population that is furious about inequality, manifesting everywhere in daily life from commuting to work to paying the rent, but also desperate to continue doing nothing about it. Chicago’s 2019 municipal elections are a microcosm of our national politics. From the mayoral race to a score of aldermanic elections, few if any of the most contentious races will have an outright winner they’ll be settled in an April runoff.īut today’s election is the most important Chicago has seen in a generation, with an opportunity to make significant progress in breaking from the neoliberal status quo that has dominated the city’s politics in recent years. ![]() ![]() The only thing certain about today’s municipal elections in Chicago is that it will settle little to nothing.
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