UPDATE: To Rep Davis’ threat to Clinton; Stay out of Chicago politics (12/31)

After outcry over Clinton, Obama unlikely to campaign for Rahm

By: Meredith Shiner
December 31, 2010 02:24 PM EST

CHICAGO — Though Rahm Emanuel holds a commanding lead over his rivals in the latest polls, his path from the White House to the Chicago mayor’s office leads straight through a political minefield: the city’s African-American community.

Last week, when former President Bill Clinton announced he would campaign for Emanuel in the Windy City, the two prominent black candidates running against Emanuel were outraged. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) declared that if Clinton came to support Emanuel, one of his former White House advisers, it would be an “overt” move “to thwart the legitimate political aspirations of Chicago’s black community.” And former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, reminding the former president of the bruising 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, warned that “Clinton should remember South Carolina, where he played the race card painting Obama as ‘the black candidate.’”

But the strong reaction to Clinton from the black community — as “parachuting in” for the “anointed” candidate — also serves as a harsh reminder to the city’s native son President Barack Obama, who cut his political teeth in Chicago, hired Emanuel as his chief of staff and gave Emanuel his blessing to run for mayor, that getting involved with politics here can be complicated.

Despite strong ties to the Windy City — it is widely reported to be the home base for his 2012 reelection campaign — and his 80 percent approval rating among African-Americans, the president most likely won’t travel home to campaign for his former chief of staff. Chicago’s mayoral race has exposed long-standing friction between the city’s white political power base and its black community after years of tenuous but productive peace under the stewardship of outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley.

And many close to Chicago politics point to Obama’s complex political and racial history here — from the trouncing he received in 2000 when he ran for Congress against Bobby Rush, a respected African-American politician and former Black Panther. And given his relationships with party movers and shakers, the president has taken a hands-off approach in endorsing other Illinois Democrats since leaving for Washington as a senator in 2004 and winning the presidency in 2008.

By most calculations, Emanuel will have to claim at least a portion of the black vote to win the mayor’s race outright and avoid a runoff. But black leaders see a wide-open race and their best chance to reclaim the legacy of the late Harold Washington, the city’s first African-American mayor.

The Clinton announcement last week — and the intense negative reaction it evoked here — exposed one of the unspoken truths known since November by local politicians and aides: That from here on, the only Chicago-based campaign Obama likely will participate in is his own.

“This Clinton imbroglio solidifies the strategy that already appears to be in place,” said one Chicago political operative following the mayor’s campaign.

“[Obama] did enough. He gave his approval. He said Rahm would make a terrific mayor,” the operative said. “What Rahm can do is to do direct mail off those comments into black communities especially, places like Hyde Park or Bronzeville where they might be more amenable to Obama’s endorsement or Rahm’s candidacy.”

Obama took a similar tack when Alexi Giannoulias — the Democrats’ 2010 Senate nominee — ran for state treasurer in 2006.

A senator at the time, Obama appeared onstage when Giannoulias announced his candidacy, then largely faded into the background. But Obama left behind enough sound bites for the Giannoulias camp to use as endorsements in the campaign, helping catapult his former basketball buddy into office.

Observers say Emanuel’s campaign, for example, could take video of the president praising Emanuel at his departure ceremony and use it for instant endorsements: clip, distribute and repeat.

In 2008, Obama also sidestepped endorsing a candidate in the special election to fill the congressional seat Emanuel vacated to serve as his chief of staff. And in 2010, though Obama eventually did travel home to stump for Giannoulias in his failed Senate bid, it was only after months of holding out — and when it became clear, late in the campaign — that Democrats were in danger of losing the president’s old seat.

Endorsements in Chicago can be tricky — and not just because of the fallout faced by a relative outsider like Clinton from politicians like Davis or Moseley-Braun. For Obama, being a product of the political system here means he is also caught in the intricate web that seemingly binds all of Chicago’s Democratic political powerbrokers.

Davis, for example, was a co-chairman of Obama’s 2004 statewide Senate campaign. Alice Palmer, one of the co-chairs of Davis’s mayoral campaign, held the state Senate seat Obama won in 1995 by disqualifying the incumbent from the ballot for filing a faulty nominating petition. Moseley-Braun, like Obama, was a history-maker in the U.S. Senate, becoming the first and only African-American woman to ever serve there.

Yet even without coming back to his home city, Obama and his Chicago-based 2008 campaign for president is shaping the way candidates are approaching the mayor’s race.

Those closely following the election talk about the “Obama model” of victory — solidifying a core base, then building enough momentum to pick off voters at the margins from other groups. In 2008, Obama had the core of progressive and black voters and built from there.

For Emanuel, in Chicago, he must solidify his base and then try to win enough black and Latino voters from a crowded field of minority candidates, including Davis, Moseley-Braun, former Daley chief of staff and Chicago schools chief Gerry Chico and Chicago City Clerk Miguel de Valle.

At the same time, the well-connected Emanuel is likely to dominate campaign fundraising — his prowess at raising money very likely will give him access to millions, a huge advantage in this race. Other candidates point to Obama’s grass-roots 2008 presidential campaign as a model for doing more with less money.

“What I’ve got to do is find, organize and get out the vote better than any opponent — and that costs money — but that doesn’t cost millions upon millions of dollars,” said Davis campaign manager Jason Perkey, citing his candidate’s built-in strengths with Chicago voters. “I can tell you that emphatically because it was organization that won all of those caucuses for Obama.”

Meanwhile, the final few days of 2010 are proving to be the most chaotic yet in the race to fill the seat held for decades by Daley.

Friday is the last day that candidates can receive an unlimited amount of money from any given donor, pursuant to new campaign reform laws signed by Gov. Pat Quinn last December.

Additionally, there is building pressure for one of the two top black candidates, Davis or Moseley-Braun, to drop out of the race. The Rev. James Meeks dropped from the race earlier this month and called for the community to coalesce around a “consensus candidate” in order to give that person a greater chance at victory.

Just this week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson jumped into the fray to serve as a mediator in meetings between Davis and Moseley-Braun, looking to broker one of their withdrawals.

But Jackson’s move has upset others in the black community, which selected Davis as its “consensus candidate” in November after a coalition of dozens of elected officials, pastors and business leaders conducted an exhaustive interview process of potential candidates. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH coalition had voters on the panel, according to sources close to the process.

“I find it disheartening that people say there is no consensus candidate because someone is violating that process,” said Eddie Read, a coalition member and chairman of the Black Independent Political Organization and Black United Communities. “Now, after we closed the process, Jesse Jackson has unilaterally called them in…. It is Sen. Braun who should be looking at getting out of the race, because she is not the consensus candidate.”

Read noted that the coalition would be holding a private meeting before the new year and would reconvene publicly either Monday or Tuesday not only to resolve the issues between Davis and Moseley-Braun but also to unveil an agenda that community members hope all the candidates will embrace.

What happens over the next few days within the black community could have serious implications on Emanuel, who despite a 23-point advantage in a recent poll, still needs more than 50 percent of the vote on Feb. 22 to avoid a runoff.

Emanuel is pulling 19 percent of the black vote, second only to Davis, at 21 percent. And 30 percent of Chicago voters, according to the poll, still are up for grabs.

If you see Rahm’s number going down in the black community as a result of one of the two black candidates dropping out, it could be a sign that that dynamic is taking shape,” said one operative not affiliated with a campaign.

“It’s almost never enough to be against something; you have to have something to be for — you have to have something to go to,” he added, questioning whether a voter backlash against Emanuel could stall the former chief of staff’s momentum. “That’s where this consolidation can come in, if you can have someone emerge from the black community.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=3DE34907-0EE7-216C-24ECEDDB6D450F52

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Rep. Davis to Clinton: Stay out of Chicago politics

CHICAGO (AP) — Congressman Danny Davis has a message for former President Bill Clinton: Don’t take sides in the Chicago mayor’s race – or else.

Davis, a longtime friend of Clinton, warned the ex-president on Tuesday that he could jeopardize his “long and fruitful relationship” with the black community if he campaigns for former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel instead of one of the two leading black candidates running – Davis or former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

The warning highlights the stakes in what is gearing up to be a contentious race for mayor in the nation’s third-largest city. About a dozen people have made it on to the ballot to replace retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is bowing out after more than 20 years in office, giving candidates their first real shot at Chicago’s top job for the first time in two decades.

In a news release, Davis, a Democrat from Chicago’s West Side, said Clinton’s relationship with the black community may be “fractured and perhaps even broken” if he comes to town to stump for Emanuel, who moved back to Chicago this fall to run for mayor and is leading in the polls.

Davis later told The Associated Press that he intended the news release to be a personal appeal to Clinton, friend to friend.

“You just wouldn’t want your friends to be campaigning against you,” Davis said with a laugh. “I’ve enjoyed a great friendship and relationship and have a tremendous amount of affinity for both the Clintons … and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I want him to be neutral,” Davis said of the former president.

Emanuel’s campaign recently announced that Clinton was going to head a campaign event in January, but no date or time has been announced. Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt declined to comment on Davis’ statement, and messages left with Clinton’s foundation weren’t immediately returned on Tuesday.

Blacks make up 35 percent of Chicago’s population, a key voting bloc that has the potential to doom or elevate a candidate. A recent Chicago Tribune/WGN poll showed Davis leading Emanuel among black voters, but just barely. Davis was backed by 21 percent of black voters, Emanuel was backed by 19 percent, but 30 percent were undecided. The poll showed Emanuel leading with 30 percent among all voters surveyed.

Emanuel held various positions in Clinton’s administration, including senior policy adviser, director of special projects and political director. Davis also has known Clinton for years, and political consultant Delmarie Cobb said Davis was among the first black leaders to support Clinton’s presidential campaign before he had widespread name recognition.

“I can see where Danny Davis would be very upset,” Cobb said.

Braun, the race’s other leading black candidate, joined the U.S. Senate the same year Clinton became president, and he was always supportive of her, Cobb said. Clinton appointed Braun as ambassador to New Zealand after she lost her Senate re-election bid.

Messages left for Braun’s campaign weren’t immediately returned.

Clinton – who Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison once dubbed the country’s first black president – still enjoys a great deal of support among black voters, and Davis said part of his concern is about Clinton’s impact on the mayor’s race.

“I think he certainly has some sway and power,” Davis said. “He’s still a tremendous draw.”

But Cobb wasn’t convinced that Clinton’s popularity would translate into votes. She and other black leaders want Clinton to stay on the sidelines because “a president shouldn’t inject himself in a local mayoral race. He’s an international figure.”

“This is not something he should be a part of, especially when he has no direct ties to Chicago,” Cobb said. “He is bigger than this.”

While Davis said his message to Clinton was meant to be a friendly appeal, the tone of his statement was more direct, suggesting that the former president would lose black support if he campaigned for Emanuel.

“The African-American community has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Clintons, however it appears as though some of that relationship maybe fractured and perhaps even broken should former President Clinton come to town and participate overtly in efforts to thwart the legitimate political aspirations of Chicago’s Black community,” the statement said.

Cobb echoed that sentiment, saying that if Clinton visits Chicago for Emanuel, “it would appear that the president was supporting a white man over Hispanic and African-American and women candidates, and I’m sure that’s not . . . the perception the president wants to project.”

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