The New York Times reports:
If we could have exhumed Richard J. Daley, the iconic big-city mayor, and taken him to a plumbers union basement on the near West Side last week, he would have been revived and content.
Forget the mostly reformist doings of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Some grand and caricatured political traditions remain intact — like Cook County Democratic Party slate-making.
That explains why Patricia Horton, a commissioner of the Cook County Water Reclamation District, was in the basement Thursday at a meeting of the party slating committee. She passionately sought the imprimatur of her political patrons for another six-year term by not merely citing how she had helped the district “go green.” “I give free tennis lessons to the children who want them,” she also told the panel, many of whose physiques suggest an inability to bend over, much less play tennis.
The New York Times does actually explain who's running things:
Mr. Burke’s media-perpetuated image as clout-heavy chairman of the City Council Finance Committee masks a more complicated reality. His real power lies in his role as the longtime head of the judicial slating subcommittee.
For more on Chicago Mob
linked Alderman
Ed Burke.
