Chicago’s 14 mayoral candidates scurry for votes in final weekend of campaigning

Chicago Tribune (IL)

Feb. 25-- Feb. 25--Bill Daley walked into the crowded sanctuary at the Indiana Avenue Pentecostal Church of God on Sunday afternoon and received the blessing of the Bronzeville congregation -- literally.

The elderly Bishop Charles E. Davis slowly rose from his seat as Daley approached the blue carpeted stage and was encircled by the pastor and more than a dozen church elders who put their hands on the 70-year-old politician's shoulders as he bowed his head.

"Bless us, God, with what is going on today. You know what Chicago needs," Davis said as some in the historic African-American congregation raised their hands in the air. "We ask you to empower this man here and that when he is elected, he will not forget that he has earned something to please you for your people and the city of Chicago. Bless him with the wisdom and knowledge to carry on for this great city. Hallelujah!"

Daley's anointment inside the 85-year-old church marked a small sliver of the frenzied final weekend of campaigning ahead of Tuesday's historically competitive election for mayor.

From scores of church pulpits and "L" stops to grocery store aisles and front stoops, Chicago's 14 mayoral candidates fanned out across the city as part of a mad scurry to secure votes in a race that could come down to the closest of margins. If no candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote Tuesday, which is widely expected, then the top two finishers will face off in an April 2 runoff.

Amid the largest field of candidates in modern Chicago history, most of the campaigns believe they have a strong shot to make the runoff. The little reliable polling that has emerged shows a jumbled race to replace outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with no candidate having reached 20 percent of the vote, leaving many campaigns to believe a finish in the high teens could be enough to move on to the next round.

Alyssa Chico Ravine and Sarah Chico Brancky can tell it's close. They've watched their dad, former school board President Gery Chico, run for office before.

There was the 48-point loss to Barack Obama in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 2004 and the 32-point defeat to Emanuel in the 2011 mayoral race, but this time his daughters say it's different. He's more upbeat.

"We've never seen him more happy than when he's campaigning," Chico Ravine, 31, said after her father gave a speech to volunteers at Los Amantes banquet hall in Archer Heights. "This time, truly not knowing what the outcome's going to be, that's so exciting."

Chico dropped by a late Lunar New Year soiree and a St. Patrick's Day pre-parade party while visiting firehouses, nursing homes and restaurants throughout the weekend.

"We call it a 'mayor-a-thon'," Chico deadpanned, before going on to say he's confident he'll qualify for the runoff, thanks to a strong ground game, solid debate performances and a sound media and TV plan. "I think we've hit every one of our targets. Now it all flips to 'get out the vote'. ... We're surging right now."

Weather complications

As often is the case with Chicago's February municipal election, the weather made it difficult on the campaigns' ground game efforts.

Saturday had highs in the 50s but came with heavy rain and thick fog. On Sunday, it was dry but the temperatures dropped into the 20s with wind gusts as high as 50 mph. That left volunteers on former Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy's campaign debating which set of conditions was worse. The edge went to warmer and wet.

But as the campaign's 45-passenger bus with McCarthy's face plastered on the side prepared to leave its River North headquarters, the candidate was comfortably seated toward the front and ready to dig into a breakfast burrito. After spending Saturday on the Southwest Side, McCarthy was headed back to Edison Park and Jefferson Park on the Northwest Side. Both areas are home to heavy populations of cops, firefighters and city workers, where the former top cop is hoping for strong support in a race he believes remains "wide open."

In the final days, McCarthy said it also hasn't hurt to have high name ID and to be instantly recognizable after running the Police Department for four years before being fired by Emanuel late in 2015 amid the fallout of the Laquan McDonald police shooting.

"Believe it or not, a lot of people talk to me like I'm a victim. They say what happened with me and Rahm and Laquan McDonald just wasn't fair and leaves people a little sympathetic," McCarthy said. "I don't want sympathy. Things happen for a reason, maybe the reason was I'm supposed to be mayor and not superintendent."

State Comptroller Susana Mendoza had planned to spend most of Saturday visiting early voting sites, but the heavy rain and electioneering law that requires candidates to stay 100 feet away from a polling place quickly ended that plan. Mendoza improvised by visiting restaurants instead before going to an Archer Heights church and a grocery store Sunday to meet voters in better elements.

She roamed the aisles of a Shop and Save in Garfield Ridge on the Southwest Side on Sunday afternoon, at one point approaching a woman pushing a grocery cart with one hand and holding a bottle of laundry detergent in the other.

"Are you building muscle here?" Mendoza asked the woman, as she grabbed the detergent and placed it in the woman's cart. She soon moved on to helping another woman pick out tamales while giving her a way to remember who to vote for.

"Think of that old song, 'Oh Susana, won't you vote for me?" Mendoza sang, before approaching some shoppers who spoke little English put plenty of Polish. After saying "good morning" and "thank you" in their native tongue, Mendoza told the shoppers about her husband's Polish descent. "We made a really good-looking kid," she said to one of them.

On Saturday, former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot's campaign handed out ponchos and hand warmers to dozens of volunteers who crammed into an Equality Illinois canvassing kickoff in the intimate dining room of Andersonville's Vincent restaurant. The LGBTQ advocacy group has backed Lightfoot, who if elected would become the city's first African-American woman and lesbian mayor.

Lightfoot fired up volunteers in front of a blown-up copy of a Chicago Sun-Times cover from when the newspaper endorsed her for mayor. The former Police Board president mockingly thanked Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's campaign for making repeated mistakes -- including an ally confronting Lightfoot at a news conference last week and the firing of a top Preckwinkle aide after he invoked Nazis to criticize Lightfoot in a social media post.

"It's all about peaking at the right time, and this is our time. We had an incredible week. Thank you, Toni Preckwinkle," Lightfoot said, as the crowd laughed. "They doubted us from the very beginning. They thought we would be an afterthought, that we would be irrelevant. ... Luckily, the voters still matter. We have seen this incredible coalition of people all over the city who want change."

Activist and policy consultant Amara Enyia is another candidate who has campaigned heavily on change. Her weekend had a full slate of neighborhood parties and meet-and-greets, but there were no publicized stops with her most famous backers -- hip hop artists Chance the Rapper and Kanye West, who poured a combined $600,000 into her campaign.

She addressed about three dozen people Sunday evening at an event hosted by local leaders of the Nigerian community, recalling her childhood as the daughter of African immigrants hanging around the diverse North Side neighborhood while noting the improbable nature of her campaign.

"When we started, we did not have decades of political favors that we could call in. We didn't have millions of dollars in the bank. We did not have (Democratic) party infrastructure behind us," Enyia said as her parents looked on. "What we have is the belief the city can be better and the belief that people should determine their quality of life ... and that we're entitled to have a say in what happens in the city moving forward."

She then emphasized the importance of getting supporters to the polls in the final days, "None of this matters if we don't manifest our enthusiasm at the polls."

Pulpit politics

Plenty of politics and preaching mixed Sunday, with many of the candidates dropping by to toe the line between church and state.

As part of several visits to churches, former CPS CEO Paul Vallas started the morning speaking to about three dozen worshippers at New Christian Joy Missionary Baptist Church in West Pullman, not far from Roseland where he grew up. Vallas gave a 12-minute talk detailing his plans to take on the city's pension crisis, cap property taxes and replace lead service pipes to homes while promising to invest in South Side and West Side communities that he said continue to be food and retail deserts with struggling schools.

"We have two cities in Chicago," he said. "We have a city that is prosperous and growing and dynamic. And we have a city that is struggling with high crime, struggling with inadequate schools, struggling with deteriorating infrastructure, struggling with a limit in economic opportunities."

At Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Gresham, businessman Willie Wilson stepped in as a guest preacher. He strayed away from promoting his political platform and instead talked for nearly an hour about his faith and his life's journey from humble beginnings in rural Louisiana to becoming a millionaire in Chicago.

He opened his sermon by singing a medley of songs with the band of musicians he calls his orchestra. And keeping with what has become his custom, he gifted the church a $10,000 donation.

"We get criticized for doing good. I decided I'd continue to do good," Wilson said, alluding to his many cash giveaways to struggling Chicagoans, as the crowd of 200 people cheered. "Even though I'm running for office, right now I'm running for Jesus."

Preckwinkle visited three churches Sunday -- Triedstone Full Gospel Baptist Church in East Beverly, Corinthian Temple Church of God in Christ in West Garfield Park and St. Stephen AME Church in East Garfield Park. That came after a Saturday rally to try to fire up two constituencies she's counting on: female voters and members of the Service Employees International Union, which endorsed her.

The union's presence was palpable at the "Stand with Toni" event at Northeastern Illinois University. Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1 and the SEIU Illinois State Council, was among a crowd packed with people wearing SEIU gear as SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry took the stage and touted Preckwinkle's credentials.

The SEIU has poured money into the Preckwinkle campaign, and she needs its members to help her get voters to the polls in coming days. Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakwosky were there to urge them on.

"None of the conversations, the hoopla, the banners and the ads will matter if the voters don't come to the polls and choose Toni," Moseley Braun said.

At the Triedstone church on Sunday, Preckwinkle cited her nearly 30 years as an elected official in city and county government while highlighting her reforms to increase access to health insurance and to reduce the county jail's population.

"Health care is our main responsibility, but we're also responsible for the courts and the jails and have worked hard to make the criminal justice system fairer to black folks," Preckwinkle told about 150 worshippers. "We all know that black and brown people are disproportionately impacted in our criminal justice system."

Daley also spent much of the day visiting predominantly African-American churches. After a pancake breakfast at St. John Fisher Parish in West Beverly, Daley visited New Beginnings Church in Park Manor, Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn and the Pentecostal church in Bronzeville. Daley was accompanied by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, both of whom have endorsed him.

In Bronzeville, Daley gave a brief speech to a few hundred worshippers, noting his experience in the White Houses of Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton while being a lifelong Chicagoan. He alluded to the fact that his father, Richard J. Daley, and brother, Richard M. Daley, both served long tenures as mayor, but sought to distance himself from that history ever so slightly.

"I appreciate the chance to present myself to the voters as someone whose name may be known, but as an individual is not well-known," Daley said, while portraying Chicago as a city "in crisis" that needs a mayor who will make Chicago "more inclusive than it's ever been," which he called "a big challenge for whoever the mayor is."

Daley gave his speech across the Dan Ryan Expressway and about a mile from the ancestral Daley home in Bridgeport and just around the corner from De La Salle Institute, where both future Mayor Daleys attended high school.

"I know this area well. I've known this city for my whole life. I've seen it improve, change, some areas get more difficult. I feel it," Daley said. "And when you come into a church like this that's been such a part of the community for so long, you feel the city. It's home."

Chicago Tribune's John Byrne and Juan Perez Jr. contributed.

[email protected]

___

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.