CHICAGO — Nobody asks “who sent ya?” when you walk into Manny’s Deli, pick up a tray and deliberate over pastrami or corned beef to go with your latke. This South Loop institution welcomes every element of Chicago. That was evident last week when we took “On The Road” to the American city that’s perhaps most consumed by its own politics. Manny's crowd spanned class and racial lines. They were united in caloric excess, the Chicago way. It’s one of the few things that links a city otherwise balkanized by neighborhood, class, ethnic group, even baseball allegiance. Another is its obsession with its own politics, particularly its mayors (pronounced locally as: Da Mare). Presidents and senators are fine — and one of their own will open his presidential library next month in Hyde Park — but the adage that all politics is local really could have been coined for Chicago. This clubhouse culture is why ward committeemen and aldermen — and the favors they distribute or retribution they exact — endure in Chicago’s municipal-centric ecosystem. But just as Manny’s feeds all, the historically closed system that was Chicago’s Democratic political machine is close to a relic, on its way to being as dated as the famous footage of 1968 in Grant Park. Nobody today is posing the locally famous question a young Abner Mikva faced when he showed up at a local Democratic office to volunteer and was told: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” That’s in part because there’s not a Richard Daley on the fourth floor of City Hall. And because the other enduring Illinois Democratic boss, Mike Madigan, was finally felled by the feds, meeting the same fate as so many others in both parties here. But someone has stepped up to fill the vacuum: Gov. JB Pritzker. Pritzker is hardly a political outsider — his family name can be found on buildings and philanthropic endeavors across Chicagoland. But the billionaire Hyatt hotel heir was always a donor and, he’s quick to note, an activist. He was no machine regular. Pritzker’s only run before his winning 2018 gubernatorial bid was in a 1998 House Democratic primary (he came in third). He may hate the term, but by virtue of his office and the personal money he’s steered toward consolidating political power, he’s effectively become Chicago’s new boss. That was apparent enough when, in March, he helped engineer… [TheTopNews] Read More.
4 weeks ago
