Clinton Campaigns for Emanuel in Chicago
CHICAGO — As the race for mayor of this city has intensified, the usual low-key announcements of endorsements – from various business leaders, preachers and members of Congress from Chicago – have churned forth. Then came Rahm Emanuel, who on Tuesday raised the ante a bit when it came to endorsers (the campaign equivalent of show-and-tell), standing on a stage beside his old boss, former President Bill Clinton.
While 700 admirers (with free tickets) watched inside the Chicago Cultural Center in the heart of downtown, Mr. Emanuel praised Mr. Clinton as a mentor, a teacher, an inspiration, a role model and a “great president for our nation.” Mr. Clinton, in turn, lauded Mr. Emanuel as someone who “was always fearlessly honest” with him, and who had the backbone to lead Chicago, particularly through times of such fiscal challenges.
“He’s a big person,” said Mr. Clinton, for whom Mr. Emanuel worked in the 1990s on campaigns and in the White House. “He’s made big decisions.”
The crowd crushed close and snapped cellphone pictures as Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Clinton, side by side, bobbed through the crowd shaking hands and offering high fives, but not everyone was pleased with Mr. Clinton’s appearance.
Carol Moseley Braun, a former United States senator who is challenging Mr. Emanuel, had accused him of being “an outsider running for mayor and bringing outsiders in to help him.” Danny K. Davis, a congressman who ended his run for mayor saying that voters needed to unite around a single black candidate, Ms. Braun, had warned that Mr. Clinton might fracture his ties to the African-American community in Chicago by inserting himself into the city’s mayoral campaign.
Mr. Emanuel faces a continuing legal challenge in his effort to appear with five other candidates on the Feb. 22 ballot. His opponents argue that he does not qualify because he was living in Washington until last fall working as chief of staff to President Obama, even though mayoral candidates are required to hold legal residency in Chicago for one year before an election. So far, Mr. Emanuel has won in court, though the case is on appeal.
Mr. Clinton mocked the notion that Mr. Emanuel might be pegged as an outsider to Chicago now. “That would come as an astonishing surprise to anyone who ever worked for me,” Mr. Clinton said. “We always knew where his heart was.”
Mr. Clinton, who told his audience of a 20-year relationship with Mr. Emanuel, pulled out his own memoir, “My Life,” and read from a section in which he had described Mr. Emanuel’s departure from the White House, and return to Congress from a district in Chicago — “the city,” Mr. Clinton read, “he thought should be capital of the world.”
Before the free event, Mr. Clinton took part in a fund-raiser for Mr. Emanuel. The event drew 40 or 50 people, Mr. Emanuel’s campaign said, who paid $5,000 a piece.
Across town, other campaigns pushed back with open challenges to Mr. Emanuel. Minutes before Mr. Clinton took the stage, Gery Chico, another mayoral candidate and a former chief of staff to the retiring mayor, Richard M. Daley, raised questions about the mortgage crisis and Mr. Emanuel’s role as a former member of the board of directors of Freddie Mac. And Miguel del Valle, another candidate and the city clerk of Chicago, appeared in an abandoned house in a city neighborhood troubled by foreclosures, and called for Mr. Emanuel to “explain what his role with Freddie Mac was.”
Polls have shown Mr. Emanuel ahead. If no one wins more than 50 percent of the nonpartisan vote next month, the top two candidates will go to a runoff election in April. Mr. Daley, the city’s longest-serving mayor, announced in September that he would not run again, setting up the first truly competitive mayor’s race in decades.
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