There's never a dull moment in Chicago politics.
Now the race has begun, the field has narrowed, the candidates have lined-up, and a shift is about to happen.
I will never forget when Jane Byrne, the first woman mayor of the City of Chicago, said a cabal of men ran the city. Mayor Richard M. Daley decided not to seek reelection. Rahm Emanuel left the powerful position of White House as Chief of Staff to run for Mayor of Chicago. Bill Daley, the Mayor's brother, moved to the White House to replace Emanuel.
The game of musical chairs begins when the best job in America is available. None of these men were to be found when now president Barack Obama emerged from the independent political camp and claimed his destiny.
Or is this a game of chess?
All of these men are professional political players, capable, able and experts in what they do. Personally, I am thrilled to have Bill Daley in the White House, so that there is a Chicago connection that, until now, seems to have been forgotten.
As we move forward in this election, I hope the politicians and the media are mindful of their words and actions. There is a Black candidate, a Jewish candidate and two Hispanic candidates. The communities are represented. The Irish candidate dropped out. Two African American candidates dropped out. One Hispanic candidate dropped out.
Political columnists wrote in race language about the Blacks who dropped out. They presented their view on the Black community's leadership status. They missed the mark. The Black community organized itself with one candidate in a winning strategy. The levels of leadership weighed in.
We are not in a post-race/race-free society. However, I wish we were.
There is a war going on, and the city is up for grabs. Any one of these candidates can become the next mayor of the City of Chicago; it depends on who electrifies the voters. What matters now are the issues and how the candidates will present their solutions and management styles.
The race has turned its focus on Carol Moseley Braun's income taxes. She did what small business people do: she leveraged the assets of her house. She was late with taxes. She paid employees. But the media did not tell how another candidate bankrupted a legal firm that was a century old. The media did not drill down on that issue. Did that miss the media test?
The past two years have been bad business years for most. Ask General Motors. Or, ask both of Chicago's major newspapers--they've been in or near bankruptcy, before investors came to the rescue.
So, Carol is broke. So what?
So is most of America. So is most of everybody. How many small businesses went out of business last year? Where's the set-aside money that continues to dwindle downward, but is never allocated, as it should be. Why do the fronts keep appearing? Why can't the city find minority businesses to work with the City of Chicago?
These are issues that sometimes do not make it on the radar in mainstream media. This is also why we conduct polls, to get to the heart of the issues that affect the Black community.
Recently N'DIGO was slammed because we conducted polls. When Harold Washington ran for mayor, not one major news outlet predicted his win. Monroe Anderson, a Black male political writer for the Chicago Tribune, predicted his win early on. He experienced the movement flavor in the Black community and called the unity factor. He did not get promoted within the ranks. So, I thought it was a good idea to do polls, because they are all different anyway. The unions do their own polls. The TV stations do their own polls. The newspapers do their own polls. Independents do their own polls. They all show different results depending on when and whom you poll.
The average poll consists of 500 people. We will continue to do our style of polling, with online surveys and various distribution methods. These are People's Polls. After the election we will review the polls, and determine the accuracy factor. We will give a read of our sampling that will probably differ from the major media outlets.
The politicians, the pundits, and the gamesmen will countdown and spin the political ball during the next few months. Any candidate's win will be historic, as the city has never had a Jewish mayor, a Black female mayor or a Hispanic mayor.
It is up to the politicians to do what they do: address the issues. It is up to the media to do what they do: report fairly. And it is up to the people to do what they do: VOTE.
And on that note, we're off to the races!