If he decides to come back to Chicago to try to run for mayor, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel almost certainly would face at least one major obstacle: the powerful Service Employees International Union.
SEIU has spent millions of dollars to support Illinois politicians in recent years, including several City Council challengers who unseated allies of Mayor Richard M. Daley in the 2007 election.
The union was also a big supporter of President Barack Obama, but Jerry Morrison, the union’s top political operative in Illinois, said Emanuel is likely to be the business community’s candidate for mayor. Morrison said that would put him at odds with working families in Chicago.
SEIU officials have been critical of Daley’s use of tax increment financing, which often diverts funds from schools, parks and local government to aid economic development. Chicago’s business community “doesn’t want the spiggot turned off,” Morrison said.
“My opinion is Rahm Emanuel is willing to ensure that,” Morrison told the Chicago News Cooperative on Wednesday afternoon, a day after Daley said he would not seek a seventh term last year.
Asked what Emanuel had done to offend organized labor, Morrison replied that the former North Side congressman had “led the Clinton effort to pass NAFTA,” the North American Free Trade Agreement, and worked as an investment banker executing lucrative deals for corporate clients.
The White House press office did not return an e-mail seeking comment Wednesday.
Although Morrison described Emanuel as the preferred candidate of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, chamber President and CEO Jerry Roper said the group is weeks away from even drawing up criteria for picking a candidate that it would endorse.
“We as a chamber are not raising any money for a mayoral candidate,” Roper said. “We assumed [Daley] was going to run again and win easily. He never needed more money.”