Daley wins reelection

I hope no one minds my declaring the projected winner of the Chicago mayoral race 36 hours before the polls close.

As I've written before, I'm not that enthusiastic about the incumbent mayor. But Mayor Daley's opponents (Walls and Brown) have been struggling to get even a little visibility. I just don't see either of them overcoming Daley's organization.

The Chicago Federation of Labor has declined to endorse Daley, partly in reaction to Daley's veto of the Big Box living wage ordinance, but they don't seem to be taking on the mayor head on. Instead they are opting to back opponents of the aldermen who helped Daley's veto stick, in hopes of strengthening opposition in the City Council.

In my own ward, the 48th, this election provides voters discouragingly few choices. Not only does Daley seems certain to win the mayoral race, but all three opponents of the incumbent alderman have been knocked off the ballot. Last week I was listening to British P.M. Tony Blair being interviewed on the BBC News' radio show, and the interviewer asked why Blair doesn't consider Iran's government a legitimate democracy, since they have an elected president and a parliament and so on. Blair's response was that two thirds of the people who would run for office are disqualified; therefore the people are not given a real choice. In Chicago's 48th Ward, three of four aldermanic candidates were disqualified for minor errors in their paperwork. By Tony Blair's standards, this puts Chicago's version of democracy about on a par with Iran's.