Post-Runoff Blues: Chi-Town the Day After

Rahm Emanuel’s Win Points Up Nagging Problem of Leadership

Download this episode (right click and save)

The day after The Great Runoff finds Chicagoans taking the outcome—Rahm Emanuel’s return to City Hall for a second term—in stride, and political gurus mining the numbers for hidden clues about the race.

Emanuel’s win, with 56 percent of the vote, came the hard way, and with a repeat of the message that he’s not nearly the gift he thinks he is to Chicago. Challenger and first-time mayoral contender Jesús “Chuy” García, a Cook County commissioner who helped block Emanuel from winning a majority of the votes in the Feb. 24 election (which forced the runoff), got 44 percent of the vote.

Leid Stories listener-correspondent Gardis H. Watts, a native Chicagoan who filed a report about the race on Monday, the eve of the election, describes the day-after mood in Chi-Town.

Host Utrice Leid follows with a blistering commentary: “Why Rahm Emanuel Should Have Been  Defeated.”