Preckwinkle launches run for Chicago mayor
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle walked into the sweltering banquet room in a Hyde Park hotel packed full of supporters Thursday afternoon to declare she's running for Chicago mayor, a job she previously had passed on pursuing.
In launching her campaign, Preckwinkle alluded to many of Chicago's ongoing problems: violent crime that claims too many lives, neighborhoods that long have had little economic opportunity and dozens of neighborhood schools that have disappeared as the city's student enrollment has shrunk.
All of it, she said, begged a question.
“There are those who have asked, and will ask, why I want to take on this job. I understand their thinking,” said Preckwinkle, 71, who is unopposed on the November ballot for a third term running the county. “I've faced no shortage of challenges while in public office. Why would I want to tackle even more?”
Preckwinkle then gave an answer befitting a politician who holds the most powerful post in the Cook County Democratic Party: “I'm doing this because I can. I'm doing this because it's necessary. I don't make this decision lightly.”
“Because I can” isn't exactly “Yes, we can,” but Preckwinkle's no-frills 20-minute speech reflected a no-nonsense approach she's long brought to bear, first as a schoolteacher and gun control advocate and later as a Hyde Park alderman and the county's chief executive.
Preckwinkle made her announcement at the Chicago Lake Shore Hotel, a former Ramada and Hilton hotel where former President Barack Obama first announced his 1996 state Senate bid and where Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, in 1982 announced his campaign for the city's top office.
Preckwinkle, who would be the city's first African-American woman to become mayor, highlighted her work to tamp down gun violence, reduce the county jail population and call out misconduct in the Chicago Police Department. As mayor, she said, she would emphasize the importance of neighborhood schools, push for an elected school board, help enforce police reforms under a new consent decree, work to decriminalize substance abuse and mental illness, collaborate with aldermen and promote neighborhood development along with growth in the Loop, proclaiming, “I'm not anti-downtown, I'm anti-only downtown.”
Most of all, Preckwinkle said, she hopes to build a new political movement in Chicago — one that several of the supporters who introduced her said they hope echoes the groundswell of support Washington built in the 1980s.
“My hope is that today is more than a kickoff of a campaign, but the start of a movement — one that is rooted in a new coalition across gender, race, age and geography to demand a mayor's office that understands values and reflects the diversity of its residents and communities,” Preckwinkle said.
Preckwinkle made no mention in her remarks of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose surprise departure from the race this month led the Cook County Board president to reconsider a run at the fifthfloor mayor's office at City Hall. She did, however, thank former Mayor Richard M. Daley, saying she could not have executed the vision she had for her 4th Ward “without the help and support of Mayor Daley.”
She also thanked Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for stepping in to force the consent decree, in which a federal judge will enforce reforms to the Chicago Police Department. Left unsaid was the fact that Madigan had to sue Emanuel's office to make it happen.
The field of candidates in the mayor's race now has swelled to 15, and some of the original dozen who joined the race before Emanuel dropped his bid for a third term wasted no time in taking shots at the new entrant Thursday, illustrating Preckwinkle's immediate status as a front-runner.