Really glad I clipped my nails this morning
Random predictions!
* Gery Chico does well in Republican-leaning (for Chicago, at least) wards. I live in one of these, or at least in and around Republican-leaning precincts in the borderland between West Town, Humboldt Park, and Ukrainian Village, and I’m seeing lots of Chico signs.
* Miguel Del Valle does well in Hyde Park, Rahm Emanuel does well in other "lakefront liberal" areas. A lakefront-liberal split would be genuinely fascinating.
* Rahm Emanuel dominates in the Loop, South Loop, near north side, and far northeast side.
* Snow and semi-crappy weather cuts into the ambivalently-for-Rahm vote.
* Eric Zorn has the best roundup of mayoral predictions. Experts (and other people who write things on the Internet, like me): Rahm wins outright. Commenters, who may actually have more expertise: Rahm doesn’t break 50%.
Random observations!
* If you use Twitter–or at least my list of follows–and signage as proxies for tea leaves, Rahm Emanuel finishes behind Chico, Del Valle, and, in a shocker, Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins. You heard it here first!
* Seriously, I haven’t seen very many Emanuel signs. Admittedly I tend to spend most of my time in the Grand and Chicago corridors near Del Valle’s offices and in a seemingly Chico-friendly area, but still, it’s weird.
* Off-topic signage story: during the last general election, my neighborhood featured a lot of Republican signage, with small pockets of Democratic signage, which included a Quinn sign and a Madigan sign at a roundabout. On my way to the polls, I noticed that the Quinn sign had disappeared from its stakes… but the Madigan sign was still there. Because, you know, why waste the effort?
Linkage!
* Mark Brown has a good point about the Berrios/Claypool race. Damn near every media outlet in Chicago put Berrios on blast, and he cruised to victory. We in the media will be using that as our "hey, look, we tried to tell you" card for the next couple years. Rich Miller concurs. That having been said, here’s a strong counter-argument from Kimbriell Kelly.
* Miller makes a good point about Carol Moseley Braun and the "consensus candidate" debacle. I will probably go to my grave wondering why Meeks wasn’t the pick.
* Megan Cottrell has a good post about whether or not white people vote for white candidates. Guess.
* The Trib is noticing low turnout, which is what I saw at 8:30am in my 26th Ward polling place. For all the hullaballoo about democracy coming to Chicago, the race as political entertainment has been underwhelming. The big fuss between the two front-runners was over a tax shift that would buy you a reasonably nice pot to urinate in (maybe RevereWare but not Le Creuset); the progressive/reform favorite, Del Valle, has been a low-key candidate who nobly put himself at a disadvantage by refusing money from businesses doing work for the city, all of which made it hard to get momentum in what was–keep in mind–a very short election cycle; and Moseley Braun, if you believe the polling, eroded her own support.
* Mayor Daley is in the British Virgin Islands, according to Sneed. I look forward to whatever public transportation innovations he brings back from there.