Less than a week to go until election day. Candidates are running all over town and calling in for reinforcements hoping to capture every last vote. Carol Moseley Braun won a needed endorsement, Gery Chico's Tea Party support is still haunting him and creepy, mayoral-themed videos are making the rounds on the 'net.
Stay tuned to HuffPost Chicago from now until February 22 for "The Countdown," a daily roundup of election news, gossip and other fun tidbits. You can also sign up to receive "The Countdown" via email daily by checking the "Chicago Brief" box here.
DEAD FISH OR DEAD HORSE?
Though it happened ages ago, Rahm Emanuel's dead fish days have been brought up several times during the campaign. Carol Moseley Braun accused the media of paying too much attention to her outbursts and not enough attention to Emanuel's past sins.
Should Emanuel be held accountable for mailing a dead fish to a pollster he didn't like 26 years ago? No, he says.
"It was 26 years ago," Emanuel said during a Tuesday radio interview. "Should there not be a statute of limitations at some point?"
He added that the prank wasn't even his idea.
"Four or five of us, and it wasn't even my idea," he said. "It's become this legend 26 years later."
Emanuel usually dismisses the dead fish talk, and NBC Chicago reports that the Tuesday chat on WLS's "The Roe Conn Show with Richard Reoper" was his first public admission of the mailing.
In the same Tuesday interview (which you can listen to here), Emanuel vowed to give $2,500 to the person responsible for the profanity-filled MayorEmanuel Twitter account. He said he likes the tweets, and if the person responsible comes forward, he will give them money for the charity of his or her choice.
CREEPFEST
Chicagoist discovered a very disturbing video today. The political satire titled "Trahm Legacy" features an animated Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga. Oh, and something called a "Hot Dog Cycle." Intrigued? Watch it here, but don't say we didn't warn you about the creep factor.
ODDS & ENDS
Carol Moseley Braun was endorsed by the Chicago Defender today.
Rahm Emanuel is going after Gery Chico in a Spanish language robocall, using Chico's welcomed and since rejected Tea Party support against him. Chico's campaign said the calls were "sad" and showed that "Rahm Emanuel is so desperate to avoid a runoff that he has resorted to cynical, divisive and false calls to Chicagoans."
President Obama, who said yesterday that Rahm didn't need his endorsement to succeed, is still very much in touch with his former White House chief of staff. Lynn Sweet reports that Emanuel talks to the President "regularly" and that Obama knows that the mayor's seat is something he should "go earn" on his own.
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