Really, Chuy? Watching the SOTU in person was more important than participating in a major mayoral forum?
Mr. Garcia goes to Washington? Wut?
2-9-2023 (issue No. 74)
Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.
This week
Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she wants to run against Paul Vallas, but does she?
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
A social service provider on why we’re seeing so much more homelessness
Mary Schmich — Perplexed about whom to vote for mayor? Me, too!
Re:Tweets — featuring the winner of the visual tweets poll and this week’s finalists
Tune of the Week — “Rose of My Heart” is the most touching love song ever. Fight me!
Garcia blows off WTTW-Ch. 11 mayoral forum
Chooses instead to sit in the audience to watch Biden’s State of the Union speech
Tsk.
I’m sure it’s a gas to be in the Capitol watching the president of the United States deliver the annual State of the Union speech, so who could blame Chicago Democratic U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia for choosing to go Tuesday night rather than participate in another joint appearance by the mayoral candidates?
Well, I could.
This wasn’t just any old forum, but the WTTW-Ch. 11 “Chicago Tonight” forum, a free-form exchange of ideas that has traditionally been the most illuminating of the candidate skirmishes and one sure to be watched by many voters who, like me, still aren’t quite sure whom to vote for on Feb. 28.
Garcia is locked in a statistical dead heat with incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in the most recent independent poll. That poll of 625 registered voters was taken for WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times/NBC5/Telemundo from Jan. 31 through Feb. 3.
But an independent poll of 1,040 likely municipal election voters taken Jan. 27 through Feb. 2 found Garcia tied with Lightfoot for fourth place.
Either way, he’s got some work to do if he’s going to finish in the top two and qualify for the all-but-certain runoff election April 4. So it made no sense for him to insult undecided voters Tuesday and pass on a chance to clarify and sharpen his so-far uninspiring campaign message.
He was slow to get in the race — all the other candidates were running by the time he announced on Nov. 10 — and he was slow to go on the air with TV commercials responding to attacks against him:
After being pummeled by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is finally punching back with his first television commercial of the mayoral campaign, touting his plan to deliver Chicago from violent crime. (Sun-Times, Jan. 24)
Garcia is OK at delivering talking points, but the one-hour WTTW forum was aimed at knocking candidates off-script with personal, sometimes chippy exchanges ably moderated by “Chicago Tonight” co-host Paris Schutz. It was an opportunity all eight other candidates took to show how they comported themselves in real give-and-take.
Could Garcia have been thinking that letting the viewing audience know he was attending the State of the Union speech was a projection of his importance and experience? Maybe, but that would have been idiotic.
For him to have skipped this important event in favor of being part of a glorified studio audience in Washington, D.C., does not speak well for his judgment or his priorities.
Last week’s winning tweet
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
Does Lightfoot really want to run against Vallas?
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has declared that she wants to go head to head with former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in the anticipated runoff election in April.
So you think she’d be training her fire on other candidates who might make the top two and going easy on Vallas. Instead she’s hammering on him for being a DINO — a Democrat in name only — with a website that highlights how cozy he is with certain right-wingers and a 30-second commercial that features this 2009 exchange with public access cable TV host Jeff Berkowitz:
Berkowitz: Are you now officially a Republican? Vallas: I’ll probably register as a Republican in the next primary. JB: But you don’t register in Illinois, right? You don’t register in Illinois. PV: Well, you have to enter the primary. JB: You have to take a [party] primary ballot. You are saying you would take a Republican primary ballot? PV: I would take a Republican primary ballot. JB: You think of yourself as a Republican? PV: I’m more of a Republican than a Democrat now. But I’m, you know -- JB: If you run again for office, you’d be running as a Republican as opposed to a Democrat? PV: I would, yes, yes. If I ran for public office I would be running as a Republican.
Vallas’ response to this attack on him was excruciating: “You're talking about an interview I did in 2009 where, you know, something that you said could be spliced," he said. "I don't know what the question I was responding to is."
Ooo! Ooo! I can help! The question was: “If you run again for office, you’d be running as a Republican as opposed to a Democrat?”
And the answer is not likely to play well in this deep blue city.
Democratic writer and political consultant Peter Cunningham tweeted a response to Lightfoot:
Vallas can and should make the case that, despite his unguarded babbling in 2009 and his recent palling around with wingnuts, he’s merely a conservative Democrat who, yes, breaks with party orthodoxy in places but is positioned to reflect the views of a substantial number of Chicagoans who find themselves in the political middle. And that’s why Lightfoot has decided she’d better try to take him down now rather than risk losing a head-to-head battle with him in April.
The rubbish about not knowing what question he was answering is unbecoming and ominous.
I’ve heard the suggestion that Lightfoot is attempting a political bank shot, making a big to-do about Vallas’ Republican adjacency in order to energize that party’s base voters in the city and give him just enough votes to make the runoff, which she assumes he will lose. That was more or less the strategy that Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker used in the lead up to last year’s Republican gubernatorial primary when he pumped big bucks into commercials railing that Darren Bailey was too extreme for Illinois. His hope was to motivate hardcore conservatives into nominating Bailey, whom Pritzker figured would be easy to beat.
They did. And he was.
If that’s Lightfoot’s strategy here, well, like I said, it’s a bank shot.
It’s too early to tell whether Wednesday’s news — broken by the Triibe — that Vallas’ son Gus was one of three San Antonio police officers involved in the 2022 fatal shooting of a Black suspect will cast an unflattering light onto Vallas’ pro-police stance and be politically detrimental. From the Tribune’s story:
Officials with the Vallas campaign in a statement confirmed Gus Vallas’ involvement.
“The matter was the subject of a complete investigation,” the statement from Vallas’ campaign spokesperson said. “Gus Vallas was found not to have engaged in any violation of policy and was returned to full duty.”
Vallas should have gotten out in front of this story months ago so, at the very least, it would be old news by now.
News & Views
News: The nation’s largest movie chain plans to charge extra for prime, mid-theater seats.
View: I feel the same way about this plan from AMC Theaters as I do about Netflix’s announced (and then rescinded) plan to crack down hard on password sharing: Sure. It’s fair. But good luck with that.
Serious moviegoers don’t appear to be particularly price-sensitive — they’re willing to pay a lot to see films a few months before they’re available for home viewing and purchase costly concessions — and they’re not likely to be put off by a seat pricing plan similar to that which we’re used to at sporting events, conventional theaters and so on.
But more casual, occasional moviegoers aren’t going to like it. Reaction on my Facebook page to the idea was voluminous and overwhelmingly negative, along the lines of “one more reason not to return to the movies.” And some pointed out that enforcing zoned seating was likely to require numerous attentive ushers.
News: Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, has introduced a City Council resolution calling for a hearing to discuss ranked-choice voting.
View: As an opponent of plurality-victory elections — to win, a candidate ought to have majority support — I’m a supporter of ranked-choice (“instant runoff”) elections, the mechanics of which are explained at the link.
The top-two runoff — likely to be held in the Chicago mayor’s race and in several aldermanic wards five weeks after the Feb. 28 general election — is ideal but costly. I am looking forward to the mayoral runoff campaign and associated debates, as the current nine-candidate field is too large and my attention span too short to compare their rhetoric to the facts and then to rank them all.
News: Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Joe Towns Jr. of Memphis has introduced a bill to remove Columbus Day as a legal holiday and swap it out for the Monday after the Super Bowl.
View: I have an easier fix to the problem of people staying up late on Super Bowl Sunday night and feeling too tired to work the next day. It’s a solution that will not enrage Italian Americans and those who now observe Indigenous People’s Day on the second Monday in October:
Start the damn game earlier!
Kickoff has been at more or less 5:30 p.m. Central time for the last 30 years, meaning that, with extended halftime shows, the game won’t end until around 9 p.m., and if you’re at a party, you’re unlikely to be home much before 10 p.m. That makes for a later Sunday than most of us are used to. So why not move the kickoff back to 3:30 p.m. Central time (more or less where it started back in 1967)?
Sports Illustrated writer Richard Deitsch made the case for just this change in 2016:
An earlier kickoff time would encourage more of a commitment to the full game on the East Coast, communal and otherwise, because Super Bowl parties would end at a more reasonable time (given Monday is a work day, you’d also be looking at significantly higher productivity for the economy thanks to fewer tired workers). A 1:30 p.m. West Coast start time would be very appealing to those viewers because it would still offer plenty of afternoon options following the game.
The quality of the game itself would also likely improve because it’s more reflective of a normal game day. …
The Super Bowl is the one television event where time of day would not impact the ratings.
And by the way, stop calling it “the big game” unless you are an advertiser or business owner who wants to tie a product or event to the Super Bowl but are forbidden from using the copyrighted trademarked term “Super Bowl.” But if you must refer to “the big game” in print, please don’t capitalize it.
Thank you.
News: Mayoral candidate and Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago has introduced House Bill 1110, a measure to allow people to carry a digital driver’s license on their internet-connected mobile devices.
View: It’s high time to implement an idea that’s already enacted in several other states. The American Civil Liberties Union has raised some valid concerns having to do with privacy, but I’m confident they can be allayed. Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias expressed strong support for optional digital licenses during last fall’s campaign, saying, “Unlike plastic cards that can easily be counterfeited or tampered with, mobile licenses are less susceptible to fraud and easier to confirm someone’s identity or authenticity.”
Let’s do it.
Land of Linkin’
“What Causes Déjà Vu?” (Scientific American)
Consult Chicago mayoral candidates answer 23 questions and/or take the Chicago mayoral candidate quiz if you’re looking for a way off the fence.
Another daily local/state news aggregator to check out is Isabel Miller, who writes regular, link-intensive briefings at her uncle Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax blog.
Chicago Public Square, another must-read rundown on the news of the day, has been offering a few free one-month subscriptions to the subscriber edition of the Picayune Sentinel. I can’t reciprocate since the donor-supported Square comes at no charge, but I can match the offer. Be among the first three to click this email link and I’ll comp you. No credit card info required!
He got you, babe: Chicago Public Square proprietor Charlie Meyerson pulled an amusing “Groundhog Day” prank on Feb. 2. Just scroll down. And down. And down. Meyerson notes that it’s a tradition.
In “Jay Marvin: Remembering Radio Legend Who Fought Long Health Battle,” Westword offers a deeper, darker look into the final years of the former Chicago music and talk jock.
In “Media's Money Problem,” Substacker Lyz Lenz calls for more transparency about the low salaries now being offered to young journalists: “Newsrooms are being gutted, scrapped and sold for parts. The newspapers and media outlets that do exist often don’t pay journalists enough to cover rent and still expect them to be grateful. The result is a land of news deserts — vast regions of America where misinformation thrives.”
The trailer for the Illinois Policy Institute’s documentary criticizing the Chicago Teachers Union is posted in advance of the YouTube release on Monday. I do not think it was wise of the IPI to trot out Charles Thomas — former respected TV political reporter turned paid Republican mouthpiece — to boost interest in the film.
10 beautiful pieces of classical music for funerals. Have you ever thought about what you’d like played at your memorial? I want only happy, peppy music at mine.
“What Causes Déjà Vu?” (Scientific American)
The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.
Paul Vallas webliography
“Everywhere Paul Vallas has been in charge of finances, he’s been run out of the city.” — Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson during the Feb. 7 mayoral forum on WTTW-Ch. 11.
I’m gathering string on Vallas since I’m still predicting he’ll be in the two-candidate runoff election and I know I’m far from the only one who’d like to know more about his record. I’ll repost and add to this list as I find or am directed to relevant links.
Political Educator — Paul Vallas pays the price of leadership (Education Next, 2003)
Vallas leaves a changed district (in Philadelphia), again in tumult (Chalkbeat, 2007)
Who is Paul Vallas and why is he coming to Madison? (Advocating on Madison Public Schools, 2012)
Fact-check: Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas claims CPS healthier under him (Chicago Sun-Times, 2019)
For mayor, the Tribune Editorial Board endorses Paul Vallas (Chicago Tribune, 2023)
No to Paul Vallas. Again No. Still No. Just--No. (CPF Insider, 2023)
Homeless advocate on the shortage of shelter beds: ‘You're seeing so many people sleeping in emergency rooms, sleeping on the CTA and living in tent compounds because they literally have nowhere to go.’
Last Thursday, I guest-hosted for Joan Esposito on WCPT-AM 820 and spent most of the final hour talking with my good friend and neighbor Douglas Fraser, the executive director of Chicago Help Initiative, a not-for-profit that addresses the needs and concerns of those without housing. I wanted to have him on because he and his wife were among our dinner guests recently, and when the conversation veered into talking about housing issues in Chicago, Fraser had a lot to say that I thought deserved a wider audience. Here is an edited transcript of our on-air discussion.
Eric Zorn: I’ll start by reading this off the web: Chicago Help Initiative is "a consortium of business, residential, religious, social service and institutional volunteer leaders striving to promote an atmosphere of dignity and compassion toward those in need by providing access to food, health services, shelter and employment."
What else should we know about what you do?
Douglas Fraser: That we really focus on three things. One is bringing guys in for meals. (I say “guys” because about 85% of the folks at our meals are men, and that likely reflects the unsheltered homeless population. Overall homeless, including people who are doubled up, sleeping on couches, etc is much more evenly divided between men and women.). At our meals, about half of the people are chronically homeless and half of them are transitioning in and out of housing.
Our second focus is to try to connect them to resources by putting them into peer groups where they connect with other people. Because relationships are the key to moving forward in life. You need friends, and you need resources.
The third thing we focus on is coordinating social service delivery in six churches around the city. We train volunteers there to provide, at meals, some of the basic things the homeless need to move forward. Like apply to get on housing lists, get email, get phones, get Medicaid, get SNAP, a whole bunch of things like that that help them access resources in the different parts of the city where they choose to live and where they choose to eat, rather than making them move around.
EZ: All over the city we see people living in tents under the viaducts and in parks. And they can do that when the weather's mild. But when it gets really cold, where do they go? Is there enough room in the shelters?
DF: There is not. In 2015, the city had about 5,200 shelter beds. And now we have about 2,900. In other words, we've lost about 40% of the beds. One reason for the dropoff has been COVID. Providers had to space people out and eliminate cots. But the decline began before COVID, when the city shifted to a policy of prioritizing funding for new housing over shelters. But they didn't come close to building enough housing to pick up that slack.
And now we're in a rough spot because we have more homeless now than we did last year. If you look at the Homeless Management Information System, you see a 15 to 20% increase in the number of people asking the city for help this year over last year. And this is a national phenomenon. It's not just Chicago. You're seeing so many people sleeping in emergency rooms, sleeping on the CTA and living in tent compounds because they literally have nowhere to go. If you go back a couple of years, there were only about six to eight nights a year when it was so cold out that those 5,000 shelter beds filled up. Now they're full every night. Anybody experiencing a sudden housing crisis has nowhere to go.
EZ: Tell me about the city's decision to prioritize housing initiatives over shelters. You would think officials would have planned that out carefully so that enough resources would remain in place.
DF: Right, you would think that. You would think they'd have wanted to keep some slack in the system to be sure to be able to deal with weather-related surges in demand for beds. But they didn't. And now we're in a position where there are more people that want those beds than can get them. That's why you're seeing this mess.
It’s also worth noting that there's been an influx of about 5,000 asylum seekers from the southern border into the city. The vast majority of them are being housed in about 12 different sites that the city has developed. But there's overflow that impacts the shelter system. I've talked to some of the shelter providers, and on some nights they tell me they have as much as 20% of their beds taken up by asylum seekers.
EZ: Is the crisis in opioid addiction figuring into the overall problem?
Real talk on ‘Real Time’
HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher caught up with the Jason Kilborn story last Friday night in a portion of his show-ending monologue:
There’s a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago named Jason Kilborn whose crime was that, on one of his exams, he used a hypothetical case of a black female worker who sued her employer for race and gender discrimination alleging that managers had called her two slur words. The type of real-world case these students might one day confront.
And knowing the extreme sensitivity of today's students, he didn't write the two taboo words on the test, just the first letter of each. He was teaching his students how to fight racism in the place where it matters most: the criminal justice system. But because he merely alluded to those words — again in the service of a good cause — he was banned from campus, placed on indefinite leave and made to wear the dunce cap. No, not really the dunce cap part, but our American version of that —eight weeks of sensitivity training, weekly 90-minute sessions with a diversity trainer and having to write five self-reflection papers. A grown-ass man! A liberal law professor!
I wrote extensively about this story a year ago — “The ongoing saga at UIC over a certain word,” “Dissenting views on the controversy at UIC Law,” and “UIC employs ‘N-word’ to teach a professor a lesson about redacted slurs”— so I wrote to Kilborn for an update on the related lawsuit he’d filed against UIC. He replied:
We’re still waiting for a ruling on the very first motion, nearly a year old at this point. But I’m back in the classroom, my evaluations from fall were excellent, and my new dean has been treating me fine.
Mary Schmich: I’m genuinely perplexed by this mayoral election
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:
A few weeks ago, a friend who voted for Lori Lightfoot for Chicago mayor last time around told me she would probably vote this time for Paul Vallas. I was surprised. I hadn’t given any serious thought to Vallas, largely because his rhetoric for the past few years about crime-infested Chicago sounded awfully Trumpy to me. That’s not to say crime isn’t a serious issue—it is—but Vallas’s rhetoric has struck me as a fear-mongering, incomplete version of the city as a whole.
But I respect this friend’s opinions so I listened. She mentioned other former Lightfoot supporters who were leaning toward Vallas. I started surveying friends on the North Side, people the media would classify as “lakefront liberals.”
And over and over, people who voted for Lightfoot last time told me they were leaning toward Vallas.
Today, Tom Tunney, the alderman in Lakeview, a previous Lightfoot supporter, endorsed Vallas.
I didn’t vote for Lightfoot last time — contrary to most of my friends, I went for Toni Preckwinkle — but I’ve always believed Lightfoot has good intentions and cares for the city. I also don’t think she’s been an effective mayor — though I recognize the incredible obstacles she has faced, notably the pandemic.
Now I find myself genuinely perplexed by this upcoming election and haven’t decided what to do. Vallas is clearly making a push for the “lakefront liberals” who once supported Lightfoot. I no longer rule him out but I’m not persuaded. Brandon Johnson and Sophia King speak in ways that appeal to me but I'm not convinced by either yet.
I’m curious to know what the Chicago residents here think. Who is the best mayoral candidate?
Mary’s Facebook community weighed in here and here.
Minced Words
Austin Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We talked about the race for mayor, the State of Union speech, movie theater seat prices and whether Super Monday should be a holiday. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:
Anyone who thinks the Covid vaccine is going to alter their DNA should probably welcome the opportunity. — various sources
A proper response to a girl calling "Amy?" in the ladies bathroom would’ve been silence. But instead I yelled, “YOU WON'T FIND YOUR PRECIOUS AMY HERE.” — @tarashoe
Guy who knew Jesus only professionally: Honey, did you hear they CRUCIFIED our CARPENTER??? — @ImagineAGuy
My hunter-gatherer buddies need to get with the times and start growing staple crops and husbanding animals. — @camerobradford
No one's hand looks like a turkey. Let's end this charade. — @IamJackBoot
What if, because of climate change, Nessie is forced to emerge and blend with society and we find out it's the sweetest, most caring, nurturing creature ever? And all of you have been calling it “monster” when the monster was really you!? — @ln0217
Oh hey mom. Yeah the date went fine, I think she liked my jorts bc she kept glancing at them. — @mentalpause1
I'm the absolute last person on earth that would ever exaggerate anything to make a point. — @JasonNotEvil
On paper, the electric chair is adorable. It's a chair with a hat. — @IamJackBoot
Can I interest you in some almond butter? It’s not as good as peanut butter and it’s also more expensive. — @roastmalone_
Vote here in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Tune of the Week
In advance of Valentine’s Day next Tuesday, I submit “Rose of My Heart” for your consideration as the most moving love song ever:
It speaks not to intoxicating, delirious romantic love but to solid, enduring, supportive love. In that way ,it’s a better waltz for landmark anniversaries than, say, wedding receptions.
We're the best partners this world's ever seen, Together as close as can be. Sometimes it's hard to find time in between, To tell you what you are to me. You are the rose of my heart, You are the love of my life. A flower not fading nor falling apart, If you're tired, rest your head on my arm. Rose of my heart.
It was written by Hugh Moffat and first commercially recorded in 1984 by Johnny Rodriguez. I prefer the poignancy of the version Johnny Cash recorded shortly before his death in September 2003. It was a track on the posthumous “American V: A Hundred Highways,” Cash's first No. 1 album since 1969. There is pain and longing in his ragged voice that suggests his mind was on June Carter Cash, his wife of 35 years, who preceded him in death by just four months.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
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I love the double reference to deja vu. Ha!
POLITICO Illinois, today:
"'I would support Giuliani': Mayor Lori Lightfoot is out with another ad showing Vallas in his own words during a 2009 interview. In this 40-second spot, Vallas is asked who he would support in 2012. “If I were to rank them, I would support [Rudy] Giuliani first, and I would support [Mitt] Romney second” over Barack Obama, Vallas said."
For a "life-long Democrat," Vallas has a very strange record.