Emanuel: Election Marks `Fresh Beginning’

Likely mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that next year’s election marks “a new start and a fresh beginning for city government.” But those comments — and his earlier claim to being the reform choice to succeed Mayor Richard M. Daley– elicited chuckles and scoffing from elected officials at City Hall.

“I think that that’s a stretch based on his pedigree,” Ald. Howard Brookins (21st Ward) said. “It’s really hard for him to claim the mantle of being an outsider when he is the consummate insider.”

Emanuel resigned last week as President Barack Obama‘s chief of staff, and his ties to Daley include working as his chief fundraiser in his first successful campaign for mayor in 1989. He also spent six years in Congress representing a North Side district.

In the third day of his “listening tour” of Chicago’s neighborhoods on Wednesday morning, Emanuel shook hands and chatted with commuters entering and exiting the Jefferson Park mass-transit terminal, on the Northwest Side.

“My fundamental view is that people are very excited about having a new start and a fresh beginning for city government,” Emanuel said. “There is an enthusiasm, but it’s not about my candidacy, it’s about their love for the city. That’s what I see.”

He was very vague about how he viewed the city’s problems and made no indication of what potential solutions he would propose, saying only that the most important issues in his view were jobs, schools, crime and open government at City Hall.

In an e-mail to supporters late Tuesday, he was similarly oblique: “We can build better schools. We can make our streets safer. We can recycle better and commute better.”

In Jefferson Park, he cut off questions from reporters after 90 seconds and planned another stop in Chinatown, but he stayed clear of City Hall, where skeptical aldermen did not hesitate to react to his comments.

“That sounds like a lot of cliches,” said Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th), who has blamed Emanuel for Obama’s failure to enact immigration reforms that he promised as a candidate for the White House.

“I would like to see what kind of reform he is talking about, what kind of change, because in his short time as a member of Congress, I did not see any changes of any substance that could inspire me to believe that he is reform-minded,” Maldonado added. “I never heard him talking about the city of Chicago’s government in any way, shape or form.”

Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said of Emanuel’s embryonic mayoral campaign message: “I am not excited at all about this rebirth that he is giving himself, redefinition. It’s marketing, you take the same package and put some different colors on it and call it something new.”

After getting heckled by protesters and supporters of mayoral rivals on Monday, Emanuel’s visit to Jefferson Park — in his old congressional district — went smoothly. Commuters heading to the Blue Line el stop largely made warm comments toward him, such as, “Good to see you again,” and “Thanks for doing a great job in Washington.”

One young woman told him she was heading to her waitress job at a downtown restaurant and said, “I’m so glad you’re back in Chicago.” She took a picture with him using her cell phone camera.

Emanuel told the woman, “We have a number of reporters here who are cynical.”

Another woman avoided his attempt to shake her hand and said, “Go back to Washington where you belong.”

Emanuel wore a microphone under his suit coat and a cameraman from his campaign recorded his hour-long stop at the CTA terminal.