No matter the fate of the Romney ticket this November, Paul Ryan—who is scheduled to deliver the biggest speech of his life on Wednesday night in Tampa—is sure to try down the line for the nomination for the top spot. And my guess is that Congressman Ryan and our own Mayor Rahm Emanuel could end up running against each other for president—if not in 2016, then in 2020. Here, a look at what the two men have in common... Read more
Rahm Emanuel threw a hissy fit in May when he learned of the involvement of Joe Ricketts, whose children own the Cubs, in a proposed harshly anti-Obama ad that revisited the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy of the 2008 election. Ricketts is back, this time as an investor in a new Barack-bashing film called 2016: Obama's America. Read more
In their upcoming book on Rod Blagojevich, Chicago Tribune reporters Jeff Coen and John Chase write that the former gov once threatened to fire an aide if he revealed a secret: that Blago had voted for George H.W. Bush. “If you ever repeat this, first I’ll deny it, secondly I’ll wait a little bit, then I’ll fire you,” Rod had told the aide... Read more
Lists just out from Politico ranking donors to the two presidential candidates show that, on the Democratic side, Chicagoan Fred Eychaner ranks number one. On the GOP side, at number nine with $2.3 million for Mitt Romney and other Republican PACs and candidates, is Chicago hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin... Read more
After announcing on Friday that her last column would run on August 6, the Sun-Times’s Stella Foster, who has been writing “Stella’s Column” (the successor to the legendary “Kup’s Column”) since December 2003, told me in a telephone interview Monday that it was her decision to retire... Read more