Chicago, long a determining factor in national Democratic politics, elects its new mayor today, or at least decides to narrow down its choices. But thanks to our neighbors, we might be more famous as a Democratic sanctuary state.
Happy Municipal Election Day! Some predictions, observations, and links to keep you busy as you await your civic political fate. The only place you’ll find an explanation of why Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins will finish ahead of Rahm Emanuel.
As the editor of Chicago magazine, I am pleased to announce that we have just published our first Russian edition! Just kidding. But a Chicagoan might be entitled to wonder, if he or she happened to be visiting the south Russian town of Krasnodar and picked up the local city magazine. Witness above the basis for confusion: Our “40 Reasons to Love Chicago” cover from December 2010 and Krasnodar magazine’s “30 Reasons to Love Krasnodar” dated February 2011. The striking similarity was first brought to my attention by Olga Smolkina, a…
The latest development in the tragic death of the Bears’ great is that Duerson’s brain will go to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy so that it can be studied for trauma. It’s another chapter in a story that’s been haunting the NFL for a decade, and an issue that looms over a pending lockout.
Carol Moseley Braun says that Rahm Emanuel’s rainmaking was the result of “rape and robbery”… before restating it as “pillaging and plundering.” Which, if either, was it?
Sharpie-mania! Watch our behind-the-scenes video, check out photos, and read our Q&A with the Blackhawks forward.
At the ABC7 debate Thursday, the candidates for mayor were asked whom they would name to their “kitchen” cabinets—their unofficial group of advisers. Not surprisingly, Gery Chico named two men whose endorsements are crucial: Congressman Luis Gutierrez and the Reverend B. Herbert Martin, Sr., longtime pastor of the Progressive Community Church in Bronzeville. Martin, 68, is best known for being Harold Washington’s close friend and pastor—and for standing with Steve Cokely in 1988 after Cokely, then 37, made inflammatory recorded lectures at Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam headquarters.
Will there be a runoff? Can Carol Moseley Braun arrest her slide in support? Will voters move from Del Valle to Chico in order to stop Rahm Emanuel’s seemingly inevitable victory? The Magic 8-Ball says….
Rahm Emanuel and his surrogates have been pounding relentlessly on Gery Chico for accepting—sort of—the endorsement last month of the Chicago Tea Patriots, an offshoot of the main Chicago Tea Party group. But late last year, before a new campaign finance reform law kicked in, Donald Trump contributed $50,000 to Rahm’s campaign for mayor. This is the same Donald Trump who appeared in Washington earlier this month before the uber-right group…
In case you missed it, last night WGN News at Nine aired another excellent investigative story about Cook County assessor Joe Berrios. It’s worth watching. The segment—reported by co-anchor Mark Suppelsa and Marsha Bartel—reveals how Berrios continues to put his family and close political friends on the assessor’s payroll, even while laying off 53 employees. In last night’s story, WGN reported that Berrios hired his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Vicki LaCalamita, to be his…
