Daley walking away; buzz about candidates in high gear
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| Mayor Richard M. Daley didn't offer many details when he made his announcement Tuesday that he will not seek re-election. (AP photo) |
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CHICAGO — It was a surprising decision, even as it made complete sense. Surprising because when Mayor Richard M. Daley suddenly announced Tuesday he would not seek re-election after six terms, it was widely understood he was walking away from not just a job but the family business for all but 13 of the last 55 years.
Still, political observers and others nodded because they recognized both the job and his life are not what they once were. Daley, 68, finds himself devoted to both a city where times are tough and may get a lot tougher, and a wife battling cancer.
"Given his wife's health and looking down the road where (he sees) 'All I'm going to do is lay people off and raise people's taxes,'" said Richard Ciccone, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and author of a biography of Daley's father. "Do you want to be mayor for that?"
Others, including residents who have been aware of Maggie Daley's declining health and have seen the mayor tear up when he speaks about her, speculate his motivation was simple.
"He's old, his wife is in ill health. When you strip it all away, he's a family man," said Mark Sherwood, a 61-year-old attorney who works in the city.
Daley didn't offer many details when he made his announcement at a news conference, flanked by his wife and their children, saying only that he'd made "a personal decision, no more, no less."
"It just feels right," he said of the announcement he'd thought about making for months and had become comfortable with during the past several weeks. "I've always believed that every person, especially public officials, must understand when it's time to move on. For me, that time is now."
Whatever the reasons, Daley's decision — in a city where Chicagoans are accustomed to him running City Hall with his garbled syntax, red-faced temper and iron fist — could leave a significant power vacuum in the nation's third largest city, opening a door that has not been open to anyone but Daley for years.
It means months of political jockeying before February's election, possibly pulling in some nationally recognized names. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who once represented Chicago in Congress, mused earlier this year that he might like the post someday. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s name also has surfaced as a possible candidate.
Cook County Clerk David Orr said Tuesday's announcement means "the whole political landscape changes enormously."
"All of a sudden now many of the political people will be focused on the mayor's seat. February is so close," Orr told WBBM radio in Chicago.
The decision also serves as a reminder of what a political force Daley has been, both in the city and around the country, where he has made front page news since he was first elected in 1989, 13 years after his father, Richard J. Daley died after 21 years in office.
It was Daley who helped transform Chicago from a gritty industrial hub into a gleaming modern metropolis — including his push for what became one of the nation's most widely praised new city parks, Millennium Park, and for things like wrought iron fences and planters that have spruced up the downtown area.
He was the catalyst for a citywide facelift. West Side slums were cleared, new green space was created, a theater district came to life in the north Loop neighborhood, and Navy Pier became a colorful playground on Lake Michigan complete with boat rides and a giant Ferris wheel.
The Democrat is credited with saving a foundering public school system and tearing down the public housing high rises that helped give Chicago its well deserved reputation as one of the nation's most segregated cities.
President Barack Obama, also a Chicago resident, said "no mayor in America has loved a city more or served a community with greater passion than Rich Daley."
"He helped build Chicago's image as a world class city, and leaves a legacy of progress that will be appreciated for generations to come," the president said in a statement.
At the same time, his tenure has been marked by a recent series of high-profile setbacks, from the city's unsuccessful bid to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago to the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of the city's handgun ban.
His administration also has been dogged by corruption, including the 2006 felony conviction of a top aide in connection with illegal hiring practices at City Hall and a department head's conviction this year for illegally handing out city jobs to political campaign workers.
"I described his (tenure) as kind of schizophrenic," said Don Rose, head of the University of Illinois at Chicago political science department. "He was a strong administrator with some bent for reform, but also the Rich Daley raised in the old school of politics that believed in patronage."
Like other mayors, Daley watched as the national recession left his city swimming in red ink. He scrambled to find funds, leading efforts to privatize such money making operations as the city's parking meters to the nearby Chicago Skyway toll bridge.
But with little money coming in, the city is on a pace to empty the accounts created by those multibillion dollar deals years before expected. Combined with unrelenting national headlines about the city's gang violence, Daley's approval rating recently sunk to 37 percent, according to a Chicago Tribune poll in July.
Political analysts agreed Daley may have faced opposition for re-election, but likely still would have won, and held onto a job that was literally in his blood.
The fourth of seven children and the oldest son of Richard J. and Eleanor "Sis" Daley, Richard M. Daley grew up in the 11th Ward near the former Comiskey Park, an area of blue-collar bungalows and two-flats, home to many city patronage jobholders as well as judges, prosecutors and police officers.
Politics was a part of family life. A brother, William Daley, would become U.S. commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and another, John Daley, is a Cook County commissioner.
Richard M. Daley was elected to the state Senate in 1972 and was elected Cook County state's attorney in 1980.
In 1983, Daley finished third in a mayoral primary marred by racial antagonisms. U.S. Rep. Harold Washington defeated Daley and Mayor Jane M. Byrne and became the city's first black mayor. In 1987, Washington died of a heart attack, and Daley won a 1989 special mayoral election.
Critics have grumbled that in some ways Daley's Chicago was run much as it had been under his father, who was the boss of Chicago's Democratic machine for two decades. They pointed to City Hall scandals and lucrative contracts for the mayor's friends as well as chronic corruption and police brutality cases.
He nevertheless remained popular, winning elections by overwhelming margins.
"I'm not surprised, I'm shocked," Paul Green, a Roosevelt University political scientist, said of Daley's decision not to run again. "I just wrote an article ... about how tough he would be to beat."
