Blow it, Almost...

Rahm the Screwup

How one of the country’s best mayors almost blew his chances for a second term.

By JAMES WARREN

Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday survived a political near-death experience entirely of his own making.

America’s most compelling, and exhausting, big-city mayor defeated a previously little-known Cook County commissioner, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, in a runoff where Emanuel spent around $4 million on TV ads alone.

He claimed to be humbled as he spoke to supporters as U2’s “Beautiful Day” served as the musical cue at election headquarters. It was far from that.

In fact, it is staggering that one of America’s smartest and feared politicians needed well over $20 million in both the general and runoff to keep his job against seemingly token opposition.

But a man who’s operated adroitly in the major leagues of politics for 25 years—as a champion fundraiser, bigshot White House aide for two presidents, congressman and mayor of a great international city—totally screwed up a reelection campaign that should have been a breeze.

That was especially true after he maneuvered to undermine a potential campaign by his most serious potential rival, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and saw a flaky but popular teachers union president, Karen Lewis, sidetracked by brain surgery and unable to run.

It left Garcia, a nice fellow of modest achievements who was a political empty vessel. He was handmaiden of a teachers union desperate to defeat the incumbent mayor after a rancorous 2012 teachers strike and an Emanuel directive that shuttered 50 Chicago public schools.

Though he ultimately won by a healthy margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, Emanuel was forced to the limit by a patently inferior opponent. He needed many of the cards in his golden Rolodex of donors, who include Google’s Eric Schmidt, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, hedge fund multibillionaire Ken Griffin and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Why? It’s both confounding and obvious.

When he first became mayor in 2011, he inherited a great city with harrowing financial troubles in a period of declining state and federal aid. Persistent crime, a beleaguered public education system, declining physical infrastructure, shameful poverty and segregation and a drop in population aggravated those ills.

A mix of cutthroat political operative and policy wonk, Emanuel created a record that is arguably impressive during an era of declining resources and rising cynicism about government.

He cut back on pension benefits for some city workers; started trimming a huge structural deficit; lengthened America’s shortest public school day and year; used his D.C. clout to get money for significant transit infrastructure improvements; accelerated an impressive rise in the kids on track to graduate from high school; and is energizing an embarrassing city colleges system with big help from corporate leaders in that golden Rolodex.

But I can ask neighbors on my North Side block (three streets away from Emanuel’s home) and elicit blank stares when broaching some of this.

Huh? He’s turned one lousy city college campus into a hub of transportation and distribution logistics with UPS, FedEx, Wal-Mart and Norfolk Southern Railway as allies? Folks are clueless.

That ignorance was part of his reelection problem, all the more ironic given how he prides himself on being a media master. His skills were honed in Washington, where he could massage often-gullible A-list columnists from his West Wing perch and hike his own stature.

In Chicago, he’s given to making multiple announcements most days — even producing five to 10 press releases on some — and obsessed with dominating every media day part. He’ll even put out releases embargoed for 4 a.m. TV newscasts.

But at some point it backfired. The caricature started arising of the rank self-promoter, and people, including media, couldn’t differentiate between substance and artifice.

They tuned him out, focusing more on what they could simply understand: He can be an imperious jerk who hogs the spotlight, takes too much credit for too much and compounds it all by being an erratic manager who’s not big on long-term planning.

By the time of February’s general election, even many who had voted for him four years earlier were tired. Some specifically wanted to teach him a lesson, voting for somebody else and assuming that would help force a humbling runoff.

Ignominiously, even all his millions and President Barack Obama’s personal endorsement several days prior to the vote could not get him over the 50 percent hump.

So he raised millions more, surpassing the roughly $4.5 million Garcia procured with big national union support, and trashed Garcia as incompetent and unfit to run a complex government machine.

On Tuesday, here’s what one successful white attorney on the white-dominated North Side told me:

“I happen to think that Rahm too often ignores or minimizes the concerns of residents in Chicago who tend to live on the South and West sides and who send their kids to public school and feel marginalized. I voted for Garcia originally because I wanted to help deliver a message that those concerns should be heard and addressed.