Jan. 28--On Feb. 24, Chicago voters will be asked to choose among five candidates for mayor. One of them is Rahm Emanuel. The other four are not.
That was the most obvious takeaway from the 90 minutes we spent Tuesday with the candidates, who debated each other for the first time in the 2015 campaign.
In a raucous discussion, Emanuel's challengers -- Ald. Bob Fioretti, Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, activist William "Dock" Walls III and businessman Willie Wilson -- devoted most of their energy to attacking the first-term mayor.
Emanuel's policies, they all say, have helped the downtown business district at the expense of the neighborhoods. Residents have been "nickel-and-dimed" to death by new fees and fines. Schools and mental health clinics have been closed. Crime and unemployment are still too high.
The five-way race feels more like four against one.
That's natural, since Emanuel is the incumbent, the only candidate with a mayoral record to defend. But with less than a month before the election, the others have some work to do if they hope to stand out on that crowded ballot.
If you caught the debate, you learned a lot about who they are and that they have some compelling personal stories.
There's Wilson, a self-made millionaire with a seventh-grade education. He talks about his early years earning 20 cents an hour as a sharecropper, and he promises he'd work for free if elected mayor. He's a businessman, he stresses, not a politician.
There's Garcia, a mild-mannered former alderman and state senator who says his strength is consensus-building. He's running as "the neighborhood guy."
There's Fioretti, an alderman who's been a thorn in the side of two mayors and wants to prove he could do a better job.
And there's Walls, equal parts passion and impatience. He wants to undo almost everything Emanuel has done: reopen those 50 shuttered schools, take down the traffic cameras, cash out the tax increment financing districts.
There are a few things you can count on if any of them becomes mayor. A vote for any of them is a vote in favor of an elected school board and against the red light cameras. None of them shares Emanuel's enthusiasm for charter schools. All of them have eyes on the TIF money.
Let's talk about the hard stuff. Chicago's credit rating is the lowest in the country and its pension debt the highest. The city is staring down the barrel of a $600 million increase in police and fire pension contributions on top of a projected budget gap of close to $300 million next year. Where's that money going to come from?
Everyone knows voters don't want to hear about property tax hikes. Fioretti says he'd consider taxing financial transactions or suburbanites who work in the city. But first he wants to scour the city budget for savings and dust off the inspector general's 2010 belt-tightening suggestions.
Walls wants to convert the city to a pay-as-you-go budget -- so far, so good -- but he'd get there through one-offs like canceling projects and applying the TIF balances to the deficit.
Garcia, who has a solid grasp of how local government works, suggests consolidating the city and county health departments -- perhaps the most promising idea we heard from the challengers Tuesday. But after that he falls back on cutting waste and getting more money from the General Assembly.
Wilson wants a Chicago casino. He wants more fairness in the allocation of city contracts. He would get cops out of their cars, fire police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and set up four police districts, each with its own chief. It was frustrating, though, to hear little more than that he'd "get inside the budget and see what we can cut" after he's elected.
Two friendly pointers for the not-Rahm crowd: First, the city budget is available online for all to see. Fire up your chain saws before the election, if you dare. Second, don't count on Springfield to pass new taxes or increase Chicago's share of existing revenue. Illinois is broke, too.
Emanuel's balanced budgets have depended on speed and red light camera tickets, higher water and sewer rates, increased cigarette taxes, higher parking fees, hikes in zoning application fees and a near-doubling of 911 service fees on all telephones. But they have also directed spending cuts and reforms that were way overdue.
Even more is needed to put Chicago back on a healthy footing. Regardless of who is elected mayor, there's more pain, not less, in Chicago's future. The challengers are reluctant to acknowledge that.
Four years ago, with the city election approaching, we noted that a mayor brash enough to confront the city's daunting challenges would inevitably make a lot of enemies. That, in part, explains why there are four candidates gunning for Emanuel and why he has struggled to retain broad popular support.
You can watch the full debate at chicagotribune.com/tribdebate.
It will help you figure out who will be the prime not-Rahm candidate -- or if Chicago needs one.
