We don’t know who all the candidates will be, but the 2015 campaign for mayor of Chicago is beginning this evening, with a Chicago Teachers Union deputy registrar training session.
The CTU, whose blood feud with Mayor Rahm Emanuel was deepened yesterday by his school board’s decision to close 50 schools, will be training registrars from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 4440 S. Michigan Ave.
"Finally, we will build the power necessary to ensure mayoral control can never trump parents’ and educators’ knowledge and experience again,” reads a placard for the event.
The union’s goal is to register 100,000 voters and defeat Emanuel in 2015.
"Clearly, we have to change the political landscape in the city,” union president Karen Lewis told the Sun-Times. “We have to go back to old-style democracy."
The 1982 voter registration drive that added 100,000 African-Americans to the rolls has been a touchstone for political organizers for 30 years. That effort had a candidate, though: Congressman Harold Washington had promised to run for mayor if his supporters registered 50,000 voters. When they doubled that, he had no choice. The CTU, on the other hand, doesn’t have a candidate, just a grievance. The only politician who can beat Emanuel, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, has stated emphatically that she will not run for mayor.
You can’t beat someone with no one -- even if you have 100,000 more voters.
