Rahm Emanuel’s political nightmare: Jesus “Chuy” Garcia tells Salon why he’ll oust the Mayor ‪#‎Chuy2015‬

Rahm Emanuel’s political nightmare: Jesus “Chuy” Garcia tells Salon why he’ll oust the Mayor - Salon.com:

Rahm Emanuel’s political nightmare: Jesus “Chuy” Garcia tells Salon why he’ll oust the Mayor

EXCLUSIVE: Rahm's liberal challenger explains what the "out of touch and callous" Mayor's trouble means for America

EDWARD MCCLELLAND

 Until he was drafted to run against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia was little known outside his Southwest Side district and the city’s progressive community, which still pines for the days when Mayor Harold Washington united African-Americans, Latinos and white liberals to defeat the well-funded forces of Machine bossism. Garcia was the progressives’ third-string candidate: Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle declined to run, and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis learned she had brain cancer. Garcia raised $1.3 million — a twelfth of Emanuel’s $15 million — but on Feb. 24, he and three other candidates held the mayor to 45 percent, less than the majority he needed to avoid an April 7 runoff between the top two vote-getters. Garcia finished second, with 34 percent.

Born in Durango, Mexico, Garcia moved to Chicago at the age of 10, after his father, a migrant farm worker who picked crops through the bracero program, found a steady job in a meat packing plant. He was elected to the city council in 1986, as an ally of Mayor Harold Washington, then spent six years in the state Senate, serving alongside Barack Obama. After his defeat by an ally of Mayor Richard M. Daley, Garcia spent 12 years as executive director of a community development program in Little Village, the Mexican-American neighborhood he now represents on the county board.

A competitive mayoral race is a once-a-generation experience for Chicagoans: Since the city adopted non-partisan elections in 1995, this is the first runoff. Facing an electorate disgruntled over the city’s most-in-the-nation murders, the closing of 50 schools, most of them in African-American neighborhoods, a 2012 teacher’s strike, and the installation of speed cameras that spit out $100 tickets, Emanuel lost 10 points off his 2011 percentage. This despite an in-person endorsement by President Obama, who came to Chicago on the Thursday before the election to declare the city’s Pullman Historic District a national monument. The latest poll shows the mayor slipping even further. He leads Garcia 42.9 percent to 38.5 percent, a margin the Chicago Sun-Times calls a “dead heat.” The fundraising, however, is unlikely to be close. Last week, the super PAC Chicago Forward announced it would be spending $110,000 to support Emanuel’s campaign, triggering a state law that lifts the cap on campaign contributions.

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Garcia, 58, spoke to Salon on Tuesday. Following is a transcript of our conversation.

You weren’t well known outside your district, you were outspent 12-1, and Rahm Emanuel had the endorsement of President Obama. What are the conditions in Chicago and what is the message of your campaign that enabled you to force Mayor Emanuel into a runoff?

I think that the past four years in Chicago under Rahm Emanuel have really enabled people to see that this administration is disconnected from ordinary people, that the city has worked for the benefit of a select few, and that the neighborhoods have been left behind. I think some of the starkest examples of that were the mayor’s effort to break the teachers union by making it more difficult for them to have an authorization strike. He provoked the first teachers strike in 25 years. The massive school closures were another sign of how out of touch and callous he can be, and not listen to people when they plead with him not to engage in an action that makes Chicago a leader in one of the worst ways. The media coverage of how his contributors give to his campaign and then wind up benefiting through a variety of means, such as contracts, appointments to boards and commissions, TIF subsidies, etc., prove to people that this guy is a 1 percenter and that he doesn’t care about ordinary people. Ordinary people don’t matter in Chicago. My message in the first round has been that we need to make the neighborhoods in Chicago a priority, that having good schools in neighborhoods all over Chicago needs to be a prerequisite to making the city a better place, a fairer place. I’ve talked about the epidemic of violence that we’ve experienced — 10,000 shootings.

You were talking about being a leader in the worst way. Chicago has become known as the nation’s murder capital. Why does Chicago have more murders than any city in the U.S., and what is your plan to reduce the violence?

It comes on the heels of his promise, four years ago, to hire 1,000 additional police officers, a promise he broke. I’ve proposed I’m going to hire 1,000 additional police Rahm Emanuel’s political nightmare: Jesus “Chuy” Garcia tells Salon why he’ll oust the Mayor - Salon.com: