After today’s mayoral election, Chicago could swap one former top aide to President Barack Obama for another.
William “Bill” Daley, who was Obama’s chief of staff for a year from 2011 to 2012, is in a tight race against 13 competitors vying to replace outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served in the same White House position for almost the first two years of Obama’s time in the White House.
Although no one is expected is expected to clinch the 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a runoff, a recent 270 Strategies poll showed that Daley has a good shot at being one of the two to progress on to the April runoff.
The poll put him in a three-way tie at 14 percent with Toni Preckwinkle, the first black woman to lead Cook County Democrats, and Lori Lightfoot, who is African American and openly gay. The trio are separated by just 0.4 percent. The mayoral field is the largest in Chicago’s 181-year history.
Daley, 70, is a big name in Chicago. Two of his relations are among the best-known mayors in the Windy City’s history.
His father, Richard J. Daley, was mayor from 1955 to 1976 and the central figure in the Democratic “machine” in Chicago. Many of his staff were convicted of corruption, but Daley himself was never charged. His brother Richard M. Daley, now 76, was the longest-serving mayor, from 1989 to 2011.
The two other leading contenders, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle, are also familiar among Chicagoans. Lightfoot is a former prosecutor who served as president of the Chicago Police Board. She is running on a platform of tackling corruption in the nation’s third-largest city.
Preckwinkle has a base of labor support and the Chicago Teachers Union’s endorsement. The poll had Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza trailing the three at 10 percent.
The election was shaken up when Democratic Alderman Ed Burke, who served on Chicago’s city council for 50 years, was charged with attempted extortion.
Burke had political ties to four of the candidates — Daley, Preckwinkle, Mendoza, and Gery Chico, a lawyer and former chair of the Illinois State Board of Education.
Preckwinkle had the closest ties to Burke. Last year, he helped raise more than $100,000 at fundraiser he hosted for her. Daley’s connections with Burke were not as close, although his brother, the former mayor, received political donations from Burke.
Emanuel, 60, a former senior aide to President Bill Clinton, has been Chicago mayor since 2011 but decided not to run for a third term last September.
Polls in Tuesday’s election close at 7 p.m. CST. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, an April 2 runoff election will be held.
