Pre-Smearing Candidates

Rahm's minions are smearing people before they even formally declare for mayor:

• Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, who’s weighing whether to try to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel next year, already has done her part to boost City Hall’s finances. Records show that, since 2013, the three vehicles registered to Gainer’s Lakeview home have been ticketed nearly 200 times for speed-camera, red-light-camera and parking violations.
  
  Gainer’s family has paid more than $16,500 in fines over the past five years for a long list of infractions the city of Chicago has issued against their 2008 Toyota Highlander sport-utility vehicle and two BMWs — a 2011 BMW 328xi and a 2015 BMW 228xi. All three vehicles are registered to the North Side Democrat’s husband Dennis Kibby at the home Gainer and Kibby bought for $1.2 million in 2013, according to state and county records.
  
  Gainer wouldn’t answer questions about the tickets except to say by email, “These are family cars and all tickets have been paid.”

First impression is that politics sure seems to pay well.

Second impression, and this is the more important one - if you manage to get a ticket every ten days (on average) costing $3,000 per year, you're some shitty kind of entitled driver.

And that's exactly the impression that Rahm and his tame reporter want you to get. We drive extra carefully to avoid giving Rahm even an extra nickel of revenue, and here's someone who (A) doesn't care and (B) is too rich and entitled to care.

Rahm can't afford another white person in the race with Vallas and McCarthy already splitting blocs. Gainer would divide that pie too much for Rahm's number people to give him a good chance of making the runoff, hence the hit piece - and it is done brilliantly. You have to be impressed by the picture the reporter painted for Rahm.