New Year Brings "Playoffs" For Mayoral Contenders
CHICAGO (CBS) -- With seven weeks to go until the Feb. 22 election for mayor of Chicago, the campaign has moved from the end of the regular season and into the playoffs.
A major television war started this week. Frontrunner Rahm Emanuel released a new ad Tuesday touting his work on a major crime bill while with the Clinton administration and his plan to put 250 more cops on Chicago's streets if he's elected mayor.
Ads from Gery Chico and Carol Moseley Braun aren't far behind.
Officially, there are still seven candidates running for mayor, but as CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, it feels more like three or, at most, four.
The leading candidates, with one notable exception, sprinted out of the gate this week, focused not only on voters and issues, but on those they consider their main opposition.
Chico, former president of the Chicago Board of Education, said Tuesday, "I think it's myself, Emanuel and Braun" leading the race.
Chico unveiled a major jobs initiative Tuesday at World Wide Produce, with 500 employees he said he helped save from leaving the city. Among other things, his plan would create a new City Hall position of deputy mayor for business development and job creation.
"We have to greet people at the door who want to do business here with a hug, rather than a rule book," Chico said.
Among his other proposals were the creation of a "jobs cabinet," plans to use TIF funds to reduce rents for local businesses and to "train people to match employers' needs."
At the same time, Emanuel was at the Better Boys Club on the West Side, proposing a $95 million a year after-school program for Chicago Public Schools students. The program would provide at least 2 ½ hours a day of after-school programming to keep kids off the streets.
"Kids would be safe and kids would be learning," Emanuel said.
Just back from a family vacation in Thailand, Emanuel also seemed to make a not-so-veiled reference to Carol Moseley Braun, who became the so-called "consensus candidate" for the African-American community after Danny Davis and James Meeks dropped out.
"The job of any one of us running for mayor is to lay down a vision of how we would tackle those challenges in a way that brings the city together and makes it a stronger city for all Chicagoans," Emanuel said.
Although most prominent African-American leaders, including Davis and Meeks, have thrown their support behind Braun, two other black candidates are still in the race – William "Dock" Walls and Patricia Van Pelt Watkins.
Also Tuesday, City Clerk Miguel del Valle announced endorsements of several aldermen.
Meantime, Braun stumbled a bit out of the gate this week, saying Monday that she wouldn't release her income tax returns until after the election because she didn't "want to."
She reversed herself later Monday and tried to recover quickly on Tuesday by releasing her tax returns for 2008 and 2009 and apologizing for saying she wouldn't in the first place.
"My remarks regarding the release of my tax returns sent the wrong message, and I regret the statement," she said in a statement on her website.
