Emanuel Takes Campaign Pitch Directly To Voters, Avoids Questions From Media
CHICAGO (CBS) -- In the race for mayor Monday, it was the tale of two types of campaigns with two sets of rules: one for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and one for everyone else, reports CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine.
They are rules which have allowed the mayor to avoid contact and conflict with all nine other candidates. Emanuel's City Hall and Campaign offices refused to release his schedule, using his enormous campaign war chest to take his case directly to the voters, via campaign commercials, and attack his opponents' nominating petitions without being personally involved.
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners might take until after Christmas to make a decision on whether mayoral candidate Willie Wilson has the 12,500 valid signatures required to be on the ballot. Wilson's filing petitions contain 47,000 signatures, of which Emanuel and others contend 80 percent are invalid.
The mayor's challenge to the deep pockets campaign of the West Side multimillionaire was handled by high-priced election attorneys.
His campaign stops Monday, during the morning rush hour, and later at a senior citizens center were announced after the fact, with photos released long after he was gone.
While TV viewers saw him not answering questions on newscasts but unchallenged in paid campaign commercials in which he touts the ordinance to raise the city's minimum wage to $13-an-hour.
But the Mayor's action, Challenger Bob Fioretti said, didn't take into account how Chicago's small businesses will pay for it.
"We need to find ways to help our small business and if they are all under the umbrella of what was passed that day, we need to help them out to make sure that they can provide for their workers," Fioretti said.
At the Board of Elections hearing late Monday afternoon, Wilson raised another issue.
"Lives have been lost and we still got the same superintendent of police over and over again and the mayor of this city has stood by his side," Wilson said. "That has to change."
"McCarthy's gotta go," Wilson said. "The superintendent hasn't done the job. if I haven't done the job I'd be gone.
That kind of statement and Fioretti's both cry out for responses. The mayor's people would undoubtedly give us some kind of statement, if we asked, but it's not the same as getting it from the candidate him or herself, which we do on a daily basis with the mayor's challengers. Rahm Emanuel hasn't had what his office calls "an availability" since last Wednesday.