It’s the Big Leagues Now, Rahm.

It’s the Big Leagues Now, Rahm.
By MONICA DAVEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 30, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/us/politics/01rahm.html?th&emc=th


Correction Appended

CHICAGO — For the rest of the country, Rahm Emanuel’s departure from the White House will probably be viewed as an announcement that he is moving on, heading home to run the City of Chicago. Case closed. But here — in a city bulging with candidates to replace Mayor Richard M. Daley — Mr. Emanuel’s decision to run for mayor was received as anything but a guarantee that he will glide into the job.

“There’s no coronation that’s going to take place,” said Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat from the city’s South Side. “He’s a very viable candidate and he’s a smart politician, but he’s got as many challenges as everybody else.”

And so, as Mr. Emanuel prepares to begin a “listening tour” in Chicago next week, and as his detractors tell of plans to print buttons that one critic said would read “Abre” (Spanish for “open,” but also an acronym for “Anyone But Rahm Emanuel”), the argument over Mr. Emanuel’s mayoral odds has been joined. On one side, all the reasons he will definitely, positively, absolutely be elected mayor, and, on the other, the indisputable proof that he will surely lose in the February election.

Why He Will Win

1. MONEY Even before he gets on the plane home (and it won’t be Air Force One anymore), Mr. Emanuel has $1.2 million awaiting him, left over from his campaign fund when he was a member of Congress.

He also has another kind of money in the bank: Mr. Emanuel has worked on other Chicagoans’ campaigns and has run his own, so he knows a few things about where to find political contributions around here. He is already said to be making calls to line up financial support. Some Democrats here even worry that candidates for governor and Congress in the November election may suffer from fund-raising competition if Mr. Emanuel puts his full weight into raising money for mayor. “He’s got the Rolodex,” Dick Simpson, a political scientist and former alderman, said.

2. POLITICAL MAGIC Mr. Emanuel once worked on Mayor Daley’s campaign, and while Mr. Daley has insisted he will endorse no one in this race, Mr. Emanuel certainly understands what it takes to win here. The city’s fabled political machine has faded and shifted, and Mr. Emanuel may be the first to understand precisely how.

Representative Danny K. Davis, who is himself collecting signatures for mayor, described Mr. Emanuel as having previously been “what one would call a political analyst, a political operative, a political magician,” and that may be exactly the qualifications one needs to capture a complicated, changed political landscape among a wide field of candidates in a compressed campaign season. The election is Feb. 22, with a runoff, which seems likely, on April 5.

3. PLANNING Mr. Emanuel does not do things randomly. He likes to win. So the mere fact that he is headed to Chicago suggests that his efforts to take the temperature of voters — and donors — gave him reason to believe he can prevail. Consider the numbers from his earlier campaigns to represent just one district in Congress from Chicago: the scale of his victories over the years — 67 percent, 76 percent, 79 percent, and 76 percent — suggest that little will be left to chance.

4. SHEER WILL Mr. Emanuel wants this. He said on “Charlie Rose” last spring that this was his dream job — back when he didn’t know Mr. Daley would announce that he wouldn’t seek re-election. Add to that desire the fact that Mr. Emanuel can be an unstoppable force. He gets up early, stays up late, rarely stops dialing, e-mailing, talking, and yes, sometimes, yelling. “He’s a big political bully,” said Ricardo Munoz, an alderman who admits that he is “not a fan” of Mr. Emanuel. “There’s talk at City Hall, people out loud saying, ‘Do we want to go from a Daley dictatorship to another bully dictatorship?’ ”

The question may be out there, but bullies, history would suggest, here and elsewhere, can get elected.

5. THE PRESIDENT

Mr. Emanuel’s ties to President Obama (who has said Mr. Emanuel could make a “terrific” mayor) might not help him in some places, like in some of the backyard barbecues where the president is having to eat crow as he campaigns across the middle of the country. But here in Chicago, where Mr. Obama remains a hometown favorite, Mr. Emanuel’s connection could matter to ordinary voters.

“He has a direct line to the president,” said Greyling Stanton, a voter who was eating lunch downtown on Thursday. “If he has Obama backing him,” said Mr. Stanton, “he can cross racial lines.”

Why He Will Lose

1. CARPETBAGGER? To people elsewhere, Mr. Emanuel is Chicago, one in the crowd of Chicagoans now filling the White House. But around here — a place that, love him or hate him, saw Mr. Daley as a Chicagoan who loves his city as only a Chicagoan can — Mr. Emanuel’s roots are slightly more complicated.

For starters, he spent some of his upbringing in Wilmette, an affluent suburb. (He was born, his friends insist a bit grumpily, within Chicago’s city limits and spent his early years in the city.) And then there was all that time in Washington.

2. PAS DE DEUX VS. DOUBLE PLAYS Chicago loves politics and sports and politics as sport. (And for most Chicagoans, Mr. Emanuel’s training in ballet is unlikely to count.) For all the critics of Rod R. Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, no one would argue with his ability to rattle off Chicago Cubs statistics. But there have been hints that Mr. Emanuel, whose former North Side Congressional district would also imply (require, really) a powerful bond with the Cubs, may not actually care all that much about baseball.

In 2008, The Chicago Tribune reported on a statement issued from Mr. Emanuel’s Congressional office that misspelled the name of Ryne Sandberg, a famed second basemen, improperly described the date of the Cubs’ first game, and, stunningly, gave the wrong address for Wrigley Field.

3. WHO SENT YOU? Mr. Emanuel arrives in Chicago without an obvious coalition to form the base of his support. Most candidates here start with one or more blocs: the black vote, the labor vote, the white ethnic vote, the lakefront liberal vote, the Hispanic vote. Mr. Emanuel’s supporters note how easily he carried his district when he ran for Congress, and say they expect he will have support from some gay voters and from Jewish leaders (although not all are happy with Mr. Obama’s policies on Israel).

Still, he will probably need more than that to head off a challenge from someone like Representative Davis, who is black, or Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, who may get strong support from Latino voters.

4. RESIDENCY Some have also suggested Mr. Emanuel may be in for a legal challenge from his opponents over whether he really lives in Chicago. To run for mayor, a candidate must be a resident of the city for at least a year before Election Day, and some suggest that Mr. Emanuel’s stay in Washington may violate that law. Others argue that any challenge would ultimately be turned away because Mr. Emanuel still owns a home here and has been serving only temporarily in the White House.

In truth, friends of Mr. Emanuel say, it is uncertain exactly where he will live when he returns to Chicago this weekend. All had assumed he would move back into the North Side house he owns, but the renters there, who had expected the Emanuels to stay in Washington longer, have declined to move out early.

Rick Jasculca, a friend who is assisting Mr. Emanuel here, said housing would not be a problem. “He has lots of options,” Mr. Jasculca said. “This is his city.”

Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

Correction: September 30, 2010

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Luis V. Gutierrez. The article also incorrectly identified Rahm Emanuel's scale of victories in his Congressional elections as margins of victory.