The six remaining candidates for Chicago mayor have their occasional differences of policy, but more often than not, the race seems to be an echo chamber of the same ideas reverberating from one candidate to the next.
One point that most all of them agree on: Police Superintendent Jody Weis will be replaced as soon as they take over. Rahm Emanuel has promised to ditch Weis; Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle and Carol Moseley Braun have all made the same pledge. Patricia Watkins said she would be open to keeping him around in an interview with HuffPost Chicago; no word on where William "Dock" Walls stands.
But for the next few months, anyway, Weis has got an ally in City Hall: Mayor Daley, the man who appointed him and who announced today that Weis will stick around as long as he does.
The top cop's contract is up in March, but Daley said he would renew it for the last two months of his own term as mayor, according to a WLS report.
Chicago Public Radio reports that Daley mentioned the impracticality of appointing an interim chief for the two months before a new mayor arrived. But he also praised the work Weis has done at the department, pointing out that the "murder rate is lowest since 1965. He's been a good, honest public official."
He has, though, gotten under the skin of many of the city's rank-and-file cops, who were upset by the appointment of a leader who wasn't born and raised in the city and didn't come up through the department. Weis was a longtime FBI agent before coming to the Chicago Police Department.