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* Gery Chico’s new TV ad is about - what else? - “the Rahm Tax.” According to the campaign, it’s a $500K buy. It’s also quite witty. Watch…
Script…
VO: The Rahm tax would be the largest sales tax in the city’s history..
Rahm’s tax would hit families on everything including pet care, to car repair to taxi cabs to bowling alleys.
Bowler: Attention bowlers… Pay the Rahm Tax.
Gery: This is crazy. This tax is going to hit families when they don’t have one more ounce to give. They can’t take one more brick on their back. And that’s what this tax is.
VO: If you thought the Stroger Sales Tax was a Killer – You’ll hate the Rahm Tax
Cab Driver: Pay the Rahm tax!
Emanuel told ABC7 today that he won’t be responding to the Chico ad.
* Chico and del Valle said the lack of access between North and Southbound lanes on LSD was a big problem Tuesday…
Mayoral challengers Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle on Friday suggested periodic gaps in the median planters that beautified Lake Shore Drive to prevent a repeat of the Blizzard of 2011 fiasco.
If there had been a few well-positioned breaks along the way, emergency vehicles would have had quicker access to stranded motorists and traffic stalled behind accidents could have been diverted to the southbound lanes before being buried in snow, both candidates said. […]
Del Valle said there are many “lessons” to be learned from the Lake Shore Drive debacle — and one of them is that, “You have to have access.”
* And the Sierra Club is backing Emanuel…
Sierra Club today announced its endorsement of Rahm Emanuel for Mayor of Chicago during a tour of a clean water job training facility on Chicago’s west side.
“Throughout his career, Rahm has not just been a strong supporter of environmental protection — he has been a key strategist in efforts to protect Lake Michigan, and to move toward a clean energy future,” said Jack Darin, director of Sierra Club’s Illinois chapter. “That’s exactly who Chicagoans need as their next mayor — someone who wants a cleaner, healthier Chicago for the future, but also has the strength and smarts to get things done. Rahm knows we can bring new jobs to Chicago and make our city cleaner by being smarter about how we use energy, and by making Chicago a global capital in the green economy. We are proud to recommend Rahm Emanuel to all the Chicagoans who want a better future for their children and new, good-paying jobs.”
CHICAGO—In a unanimous decision handed down on Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was sleazy enough to be included on Chicago’s mayoral ballot. “It is the opinion of this court that Mr. Emanuel is coarse, vulgar, and power-hungry to such a degree that he should be eligible to hold this city’s highest office,” Illinois Justice Robert R. Thomas wrote in his majority opinion, adding that Emanuel also met a key stipulation requiring that any mayor of Chicago be a bully willing to do whatever is necessary to push his agenda through the city council. “Further, Mr. Emanuel is a sleazebag and a sleazeball, both of which are criteria he fulfilled prior to filing his papers with the local election board.” The decision overturned an appellate court’s ruling that Emanuel was only sleazy enough to be the governor of Illinois, and that he lacked the slithery, snake-like attributes necessary to oversee the morally bankrupt cesspool of Chicago politics
*** UPDATE *** The Tribune has just endorsed Emanuel…
Who would influence a Mayor Emanuel, in the way that Bridgeport friends and generous developers have influenced Mayor Richard M. Daley? By force of intellect and personality, Emanuel surely would co-opt others. It’s fair for Chicagoans to ask who would try to co-opt him. Consider:
Much attention has focused on the large number of companies that have employed Chico’s law firm and won business from city government. A different crowd could try to make demands of Emanuel: wealthy donors who have funded his campaigns. We hope those connections aren’t behind his vagueness over whether he, like the other major candidates, would block the Chicago Children’s Museum or any other institution from a land-grab in Grant Park.
That said, we think Emanuel embodies a healthy blend of tactical shrewdness, ethical conduct and inexhaustible energy. Emanuel could not let himself fail. He is among the most results-driven people to walk this Earth. That might mean more expletives fly and more fish corpses arrive by ground mail. But if Chicago emerges from an Emanuel mayoralty with its finances stabilized, its job market thriving, its schools improving and its middle class intact, his successes once again will have eclipsed his excesses.
Given all the enemies an effective mayor will have to make, he could be one term and done. But what a term it would be. We hope that, between now and Feb. 22, Chicago voters reach the same conclusion as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did when they brought him to the White House: This guy deserves a chance to get this near-impossible job done.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 3:43 pm
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The Onion nails it again.
Comment by Anonymous Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 3:54 pm
That’s a pretty good ad.
Comment by dave Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 3:55 pm
Sorry, Rich.
The Onion has overtaken you for #1 analyst of Illinois politics.
But have a good weekend. You’ll have to raise your game next week. We’re counting on you.
Comment by Anonymous Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:12 pm
There’s no way to keep up with those guys since they get to invent stuff. Sad, but true.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:20 pm
Chico’s really good on TV, much better than the phone-it-in, Stepford-Wife “clean, streets, safe streets, plowed streets” stuff you get from Emanuel.
We might get a runoff yet. Then, you re-shuffle the deck.
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:22 pm
==There’s no way to keep up with those guys since they get to invent stuff.==
It’s hard enough keeping up with the stuff our politicians make up.
Comment by Pot calling kettle Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:23 pm
The Tribune just endorsed Emanuel.
Comment by AnonX Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:24 pm
Yes, we all know how necessary bowling alleys and pet care are to our existence.
Cute ad, but effective?
Comment by Wensicia Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:31 pm
yeah, but if there’s a run-off, who’s in it (with rahm)? that’s the 64,000 dollar question…
Comment by bored now Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:42 pm
Trib, Sun-Times, Crain’s, Bob Thomas and the Illinois Supremes, Joe Morris, Jim Thompson, Jim Ryan, Ty Fahner, Dan Webb, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — who is not part of this conspiracy?
Will someone please listen to John Kass and the Breitbart press before it’s too late?
By the way, if you to be amused, or horrified, check out the comments in the Breitbart press regarding Emanuel. Just hope they don’t live on your street.
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:55 pm
===check out the comments in the Breitbart press===
You got a link?
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 4:57 pm
From the Illinois Supremes ruling. Read it and weep.
Anyone in the GOP want to step up on this sickness, and Beck, too?
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.66611c06a3acd7de23902bf90fe8c74c.481&show_article=1
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 5:06 pm
The Chico ad is funny and effective especially compared to Rahm’s boring ads cut by AKPD media. Why would Rahm use these guys. They have been the kiss of death in Ilinois politics over the past year. Looks like Chico might make a race of this thing yet.
Comment by chipoldem Friday, Feb 4, 11 @ 5:12 pm