Oh, c’mon.
Everyone is so mean, beating up poor Lori Lightfoot for trying to pressure Chicago Public School children into joining her mayoral campaign. The same campaign that sent an email prodding CPS teachers to enlist their charges to spend 12 hours a week working for free for a Chicago mayor sunk to a nadir of unpopularity not seen since Levi Boone closed the city saloons on Sundays.
It isn’t like this is the most questionable gambit to gin up mayoral campaign support in the city’s history. There have been worse.
Remember Joe Gardner? Mild-mannered water reclamation district commissioner. Round glasses. Threw his hat into the ring against Mayor Richard M. Daley in the 1995 primary.
I was sent to attend Gardner’s announcement rally.
Here’s how I later described the event:
I started to notice something strange about the crowd. They seemed a lot more hostile than you would expect from a campaign kick-off crowd, which is normally a pretty cheery bunch. A lot of young, angry guys milling around. I commented to a savvy photographer that I didn’t realize so many young men in baseball caps and oversized pants took such a passionate interest in politics.
They’re Gangster Disciples, the photographer said. While I didn’t check for membership cards, it certainly seemed to me that Gardner was padding his crowd with gang members.
I had the presence of mind to ask Gardner if he intended on making a policy of recruiting gangs into his campaign.
”I don’t separate people on the basis of gang membership or non-gang membership as long as members and leadership are engaged in positive things,” Gardner replied, before rhapsodizing gangs as an unappreciated force for good, a brand of starry-eyed cluelessness I thought was the exclusive domain of Hyde Park liberals circa 1969.
Daley beat him like a drum, almost 2 to 1.
So give Lightfoot credit. At least she hasn’t reached out to Chicago street gangs. And the unwise email to CPS should be a passing embarrassment. Thursday she called the action done in her name “clearly a mistake.” She didn’t throw the responsible party under a bus, at least not publicly, which would be the Rich Daley go-to move. I admire that. It could have been worse; it could have worked, and she’d be the person who spurred Chicago teens en masse out into the mid-January cold to go knocking on doors. What could possibly go wrong?
Besides, are youthful volunteers really an effective resource for the mayor? Good for the kids, certainly. When I was a tadpole, I used to swing by McGovern headquarters in Berea, Ohio, after junior high, and enjoyed snipping the W’s off “NIXON NOW” bumper stickers to make them into “NIXON NO.” It was great fun, almost like having friends, to quote Luna Lovegood, but certainly didn’t help George McGovern.
Lori’s no quitter. Yes, hounding teachers to enlist their charges to her cause blew up in her face, Wile E. Coyote fashion. But it isn’t as if CPS students are the only captive pool of potential campaign talent at her disposal. What about, oh for instance, cops? Why not ask her pal Supt. David Brown to suggest that his officers work some freelance plugs for their ultimate boss into their patter? “Freeze dirtball! Put your hands in the air faster than our mayor fulfilled her promise to put more policemen on the street, at least in her mind if not in verifiable reality.” Something like that.
Given that firing Brown is on the Day 1, Minute 1 agenda for every other mayoral candidate, he’d be extra enthusiastic about plumping the mayor.
Will this actually affect Lightfoot’s candidacy? Probably not. Honestly, I haven’t sorted out my own feelings toward her. Growing up outside Cleveland, there is a definite nostalgic fondness for mayors who are not exactly suave, like Ralph J. Perk, Nixonian in his ill-fitting gray suits, setting fire to his own hair with a blow torch that was supposed to be used to cut the ribbon at a factory opening.
Don’t count her out. There is a resilience to awkward, unlikeable Ohioans. We have a habit of sticking around whether you want us or not. When I survey the mayoral field, I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s line about democracy: that it is “the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.”
