Feb. 26--Luckily, the egg all over the faces of many of us who predicted an outright victory for Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday will not be as detrimental to our health as it is to our self-esteem.
Last week's announcement that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee of the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has dropped its warning about eating high-cholesterol foods came just in time for the chastening returns.
A huge money advantage and a raft of gaudy endorsements didn't boost Emanuel over 50 percent of the vote against a lightly funded, lightly regarded field of challengers. So now he faces a one-on-one runoff April 7 against genial Cook County Commissioner Chuy Garcia, the second-place finisher.
How did we blow it? We misread the depths of disenchantment with Emanuel all across the city. And we relied on conventional wisdom about the power of TV advertising and the tendencies of voters who tell pollsters that they're undecided.
In my case, I thought it was clear that the challengers had gripes, but they didn't have game -- considered, realistic proposals to address the city's biggest problems. And that even though Emanuel is brusque, patronizing and often charmless, voters would choose his brand of tough stewardship over the what-me-worry alternatives.
Which they still very well might.
Even though Tuesday's result was a clear rebuke to Emanuel, it wasn't a repudiation. He finished first with 45.4 percent of the vote, and beat Garcia by more than 11 percentage points -- a landslide under the old plurality system.
And while it's tempting to see the 54.7 percent who supported the four challengers combined as a "not Rahm" vote, at least some of it was more of a "not yet" vote -- a message to Emanuel that he's not closed the sale with us, that we want to see him engage a serious battle against a serious candidate in a spirited contest that moves him off his robotic, noun-verb-and-all-day-kindergarten style responses to questions.
And, if I may continue blithely to extrapolate on the result that I didn't predict, a signal that voters want to see him humbled if they're going to give him another four years in office. They want him to listen -- really listen -- to what they're saying and what they want.
Former Gov. Pat Quinn was famous for repeatedly intoning, "Let the will of the people be the law of the land."
But for Emanuel, too often, the will of the people is just a flaw in his plan.
He closes schools, installs speed cameras, OKs massive developments such as the new basketball arena for DePaul University and otherwise operates without seeming genuinely curious about what the citizens of Chicago want.
We saw an excellent example of this Tuesday in the results of an advisory referendum in 37 of the city's 50 wards, where an overwhelming 88.9 percent of voters indicated their support for an elected school board rather than a school board appointed by the mayor, as we have now.
Why only 37 wards? Because Emanuel opposes the idea and his allies on the City Council have repeatedly used parliamentary maneuvers to keep the question off the citywide ballot.
They know it's popular. Opinion polling regularly shows Chicagoans supporting the idea by about 3 to 1. In 2012, the idea of an elected school board was put to voters in only five wards, and they approved it nearly 9 to 1.
I'm not sold on injecting the shake, howdy and ka-ching of big city politics into the composition of Chicago's school system. Mayoral accountability for public education on such a massive scale may well be superior to the diffuse accountability of relatively anonymous trustees who win their seats in low-turnout races.
But I'm even less sold on the idea that the mayor really can't be bothered with what members of the public -- his constituents -- want. The idea that he might actually change his mind, petition Springfield for the necessary legislative change to have an elected school board in Chicago in light of what voters are telling him, strikes most of us as absurd.
Ideally, this runoff election will make Emanuel a better listener and focus our attention on the looming problems the next mayor will face.
I will not predict that outcome, however.
I am too afraid that crow meat is high in saturated fat.
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