* Mayor Emanuel’s people have been talking up this Chris Kennedy angle most of the week…
The mayor also said the heir to the iconic Massachusetts political family had asked for Emanuel’s endorsement.
Kennedy on Wednesday denied it.
“I did not. No,” Kennedy told reporters. “I didn’t do that, and frankly, I’m not sure his endorsement would be helpful with the voters.” […]
“Yes, he did ask,” Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said later. “Chris knows the truth.”
* A source close to the mayor sent me this quote for publication…
“Sure, he didn’t ask for the Mayor’s support. Just like he didn’t ask Mike Madigan and John Cullerton for support. Just like he didn’t seek organized labor’s support. Just like didn’t ask for Toni Preckwinkle’s or Dick Durbin’s support. It’s one thing to try to rewrite history and cast yourself as an outsider. It’s another thing when that history was just last year.”
* So, there should be little doubt who was circulating this video yesterday…
It looks like Chris Kennedy may have stepped on his own foot with accusations that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is behind a “strategic gentrification plan” to push blacks out of Chicago.
On Wednesday, while the gubernatorial Democratic candidate was unveiling an economic plan that he claimed would help stem the “mass exodus” of minorities from the city, a YouTube video of Kennedy praising Emanuel’s leadership in 2014 was making the rounds.
The video shows Kennedy, framed by shots of cranes and renderings of a luxury high-rise tower, comparing Emanuel to Joe Kennedy.
“He saw something in Chicago that he thought was extraordinary … It had stable and powerful political leadership, and it had a confident group of business leaders … Those factors were at work 60 years ago, and now with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s leadership, they are still true in Chicago today,” Kennedy said at the time.
The video is here.
To me, this is much ado about very little. It’s just politics. I meet with you about a possible endorsement, you go with someone else, I attack you. Such is life. The difference being that the Chicago media always works itself into a frenzy whenever any politician attacks the mayor. And not just this mayor, either.
* But this part of Mary Mitchell’s column was interesting to me…
Interestingly enough, usually in a planned development like Wolf Point Tower, a certain number of units have to be set aside for affordable housing. But with the help of a zoning lawyer, the Wolf Point project was able to avoid that requirement.
“It is nearly impossible when a building is 70 stories tall to create affordable housing because the construction cost itself is probably three times more expensive,” Kennedy told me, adding that the zoning for the land was put in place in 1973 when he was in grade school. […]
“Our new residents eat in restaurants and engage in neighborhood activities which provide entry level jobs to low skilled workers at a living wage,” he said.
Who knew that Chris Kennedy was a big fan of trickle down economics?
- Arsenal - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:24 am:
CK gave Rahm some coin, too. I mean, whatever, Rahm’s a Dem, Kennedy’s a Dem, you’d expect them to support each other. But it’s worth questioning how much of CK’s anti-Rahm rhetoric lately is conviction and how much of it is pique.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:28 am:
Yeah, video never goes away on the innertubes.
There’s video online of Citizen Rauner praising Quinn, Madigan and Cullerton for their “leadership” at McCormick Place.
- Sue - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:30 am:
CK is better off. Doubtful he asked anything from the lying Rahmster
- Anon0091 - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:36 am:
“* But this part of Mary Mitchell’s column was interesting to me…”
Yup - me too. When asked to put his money where his mouth was, Kennedy bailed.
- City Zen - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:40 am:
I find it hard to believe it’s impossible to create affordable housing in a 70 story building. You just raise the price per square foot on the market rate units to compensate. That’s how it works in all new construction subject to the Affordable Requirements Ordinance.
- 47th Ward - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 10:40 am:
===“It is nearly impossible when a building is 70 stories tall to create affordable housing because the construction cost itself is probably three times more expensive,”===
Strategic gentrification?
- Boone's is Back - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 11:08 am:
I agree that the endorsement squabble is meaningless inside baseball… but the Wolf Point project is a huge dose of hypocrisy. If I were on Team JB I would be shouting that from the rooftop. Here is a project that leads to the gentrification that you’re supposedly decrying and you get it rezoned on top of that to exclude Section 8 voucher holders.
Big time glass house…or tower.
- DuPage Bard - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 11:34 am:
A big hit on JB yesterday with ads running today and a seemingly pretty solid whack at Kennedy.
Looks to be a good day for the Biss folks. Let’s see if it lasts.
- City Girl - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 1:22 pm:
I think a great man once said…”Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. If they hold high-paying jobs and their employers are going to locate them in class A buildings, if they command great salaries, if they amass wealth, they’ll be able to afford condos in the buildings we design. And God bless the United States of America.”
- JoeMaddon - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 1:54 pm:
**Yup - me too. When asked to put his money where his mouth was, Kennedy bailed.**
More accurately, he bought a yacht and avoided regulations, and now he’s trying bail from the yacht and pretend he wasn’t driving it.
- Anonymous - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 3:15 pm:
Lol City Girl.
- Shytown - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 3:47 pm:
What City Girl said…
- Thomas Paine - Thursday, Jan 11, 18 @ 5:24 pm:
It is never good in my view to attack someone for receiving an endorsement that you sought.
It tends to backfire: by Election Day, voters have mostly forgotten, while you have succeeded in turning folks who were merely for the other guy into being against you…labor and other groups endorsing Pritzker are going to work much harder now just because they don’t want to have to deal with Kennedy should he prevail.
Rich may think it is common, but I disagree. It makes you look like a crybaby when things don’t go your way.
Kennedy would have been better off to just forego the endorsement process in the primary.
As for the blowback, I thought the Mary Mitchell column was the most damning. Referring to “age-old conspiracy theories”, Mitchell notes that prior Irish Catholic mayors escape Kennedy’s criticism while Chicago’s first Jewish mayor is accused of leading a greedy cabal.
A very disappointing turn of events from the Kennedy team.