{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Rahm the Screwup - James Warren - POLITICO Magazine

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/rahm-emanuel-election-chicago-116765_Page2.html#.VSWVE2opDbM

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 cakewalk.

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.

"Whether or not they have been or will be heard is still an open question but, despite his arrogance and condescension, I believe on balance Rahm is best suited to continue to attack the problems that concern us all, rich or poor."

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So he voted for Emanuel in a runoff that drew national attention, even if the national implications were overstated, especially for Democrats. In particular, Garcia wasn't offering some textbook study on how to run to the left of Hillary Clinton and beat a big money establishment.

Chicago's electorate isn't a neat microcosm of the nation. It's typically 38 percent black and 12 percent Hispanic, with no rural whites and even the dominantly white North Side showing fairly strong union composition.

And, as hard as Garcia tried to make the contest a fight between the "neighborhoods" and a wealthy and insensitive elite, it was not. This wasn't Bill de Blasio's effective 2013 "tale of two cities" race in New York, as much as prominent outsiders tried to portray it as such in backing Garcia, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), feminist Gloria Steinem and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

It was largely a referendum on the personality of a very prickly, dynamic fellow and, to a lesser extent, what an uninspired turnout (less than 40 percent) wanted when dealing (or not dealing) with their god-awful city finances.

Emanuel has exhausted Chicago as he exhausted people in both the Clinton and Obama White Houses as a top aide, nearly getting booted out of one (Clinton) and not inspiring waves of nostalgia in leaving the other (Obama, as chief of staff), despite his drive and tactical aplomb. To see him up close may be to respect him but, often, not to like him.

An internal Democratic Party ideological tussle, with the likes of the passionate Sanders weighing in, is old stuff. It's Howard Dean versus John Kerry and Dick Gephardt. Jerry Brown up against Bill Clinton. It's Barack Obama against Hillary and, now, the seemingly wishful thinking of an Elizabeth Warren contest against Hillary.

The surprise here was the ham-handed response of Emanuel, who's been operating on the national stage since saving Bill Clinton's hide by raising desperately needed funds during the rancorous New Hampshire primary of 1992. 

He should have seen this coming, not allowed himself to be caricatured as a tool for the "1 percent" and engaged far quicker than he did and underscore his own left-of-center ideology. 

For sure, he adroitly maneuvered to keep his biggest potential rival out of the race, but he didn't neutralize those on the left with some TLC and perhaps a contract or two thrown in.

"Rahm is the rare combination of both political and governing brilliance, but he's human, just like anyone else, and he put himself in this position over these past four years," said Tom Bowen, a Democratic consultant and Emanuel's former political director.

"It's surprising that Rahm's left flank was so exposed. He's been through this before in two White Houses and in Congress, and he has tremendous progressive accomplishments to tout."

***

Up against a wall, Emanuel poured his campaign money into an old-line gambit: trashing the easily trashable Garcia as a man over his head and not to be trusted with governing a major American city. Along with a TV blitzkrieg, Emanuel bought an effective runoff ground game that focused on early and absentee voting by partisans who might be on vacation this week. He even purchased 2,500 ponchos to help workers in Tuesday's inclement weather.

That combined with many Garcia failures.

He didn't turn the black community his way, partly by actively ignoring campaigning in their wards during the general election. His big issue (and only TV ad) in the general was putting 1,000 cops on the streets, which mystified progressives and turned off many black and brown voters, in the aftermath of Ferguson, Missouri.

During the runoff he was too vague in responding to what he'd do with city finances and underfunded pension liabilities. Garcia's failure to beat Emanuel despite the support of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) showed the declining clout of these black leaders.

Emanuel pounced and crunched him. And he says he took a lesson from this political close call.

"I will be a better mayor because of that," Emanuel told supporters Tuesday night. He promised to govern "in a different fashion."

Well, he's got four more years, though it's probably wishful thinking that he will be transformed into a chastened and magnanimous leader. That's just not who he is.

What he is is maniacally driven and fearless—characteristics that have served him well in tackling the big problems of his city. But if he's smart—and nobody disputes that—he will step back, realize the sources of the city's fatigue with him and stop fretting over winning every single news cycle. With a dash more heart and modesty Emanuel's future should be bright even after Tuesday's narrow and expensive escape.

James Warren is Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News and former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.