The Supporters of Rahm Emanuel Make News in Chicago Patronage Trial

The AP reports:

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's patronage chief sent city employees into the precincts to do the grass-roots job of getting out the vote for Democratic candidates Al Gore, Lisa Madigan, Rahm Emanuel and Daley himself, a government witness testified Wednesday.

"We worked during the whole election" when Daley was running for re-election in 1999, former sewer department personnel director Mary Jo Falcon told the trial of onetime patronage chief Robert Sorich and three other former city officials.

The Philippines-born Falcon said she headed an organization of Asian-American political volunteers, all but a smattering of them city employees. She said the group often was sent to the North Side's 39th Ward, where some precincts are home to a large number of Asian-Americans.

The group would canvass voters by phone or in person, walking the precincts and knocking on doors. Voters were asked if they intended to vote Democratic and if the answer was no they were offered literature extolling the party's candidates, she testified.

Gore lost to President Bush in the 2000 election, although he carried Illinois. Madigan is the Illinois attorney general, and Emanuel is a North Side congressman first elected in 2002 after a bruising Democratic primary in which city workers campaigned on his behalf.

A glimpse of Patrick Fitzgerald's day job.