Report: Emanuel's Tenant Says He'd Like To Stay
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The last word has not been heard about Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's residency issue.
On Thursday morning, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported that Rob Halpin, the tenant in Emanuel's Ravenswood neighborhood house, said he would like to renew the lease when it is up in June.
Halpin tells Sneed that he "wouldn't mind staying." He also says he doesn't think the Emanuel family will move back, given that the house is far from City Hall and from the Latin School, where Halpin says he hears Emanuel's children will attend. He also calls the house a "security nightmare" with a lot of "glass and open space."
But Sneed reports Emanuel is looking forward to moving back into the house, and that he doesn't know yet where his children will go to school.
Halpin rented the house when Emanuel went to Washington, D.C., to serve as White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. When Emanuel returned to Chicago in September, he reportedly asked Halpin and his wife to move out, but they refused.
They instead extended their lease just before Mayor Richard M. Daley announced he wouldn't seek re-election, an Emanuel spokesman said at the time.
The controversy later exploded as numerous challengers claimed that by going to Washington, Emanuel was not eligible to run for mayor because he violated a state law requiring him to be a Chicago resident for at least one year prior to the election.
Following a series of circuslike hearings and an Illinois Appellate Court decision that briefly knocked Emanuel off the ballot, the state Supreme Court ruled he should be kept on. Emanuel won the mayoral election Tuesday with 55 percent of the vote.
Halpin also mounted his own campaign for mayor, but ended up dropping out after two weeks due to questionable petitions and a lack of money.
In December, Halpin was accused of asking for $100,000 from Emanuel to move out of the house.
