Political Post (Big Post)

You can't really trust polls commissioned by candidates. They have every reason to lie - but they're fun to speculate about:

• In late March, the Democratic pollster to whom Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish delivered the political version of a dead fish to the mayor: a poll that, Alan Secrest claimed, showed Emanuel was unelectable.
  
  That poll, conducted for mayoral challenger Garry McCarthy, pegged Emanuel’s job performance rating at just 32 percent and the mayor’s favorability rating at 36 percent. Emanuel’s campaign tried to discredit the McCarthy poll by smearing Secrest.
  
  Now, a poll conducted for another mayoral challenger — Lori Lightfoot — shows similar numbers, making the results more difficult for the embattled two-term mayor to ignore.
  
  The telephone survey of 800 Chicago voters deemed “likely” to cast ballots in the February 2019 mayoral election was conducted April 23 to April 26 by pollster Jason McGrath.
  
  It showed that just 31 percent said they would vote to re-elect Emanuel. When respondents were asked to choose between Emanuel and someone new — without mentioning a specific alternative — 62 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to try someone else.

31% is more than enough to get Rahm into the runoff, especially with none of the other candidates breaking the 20% mark. McCarthy has the big name recognition, but when more and more lies are told about Lightfoot's "qualifications," her numbers rise up at or near McCarthy's.

McCarthy is trying to pull away from the pack by peeling off a bunch of the "protest Rahm" vote:

• Mayoral challenger and former Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday he’ll tackle the city’s crime woes largely by removing politics from the Police Department, alleging that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has meddled far too often in the city’s policing strategies.
  
  McCarthy made the remarks as he rolled out his campaign’s crime reduction policy during a news conference outside the Chicago Police Department’s Bronzeville headquarters, where he criticized Emanuel for increased homicide numbers since the mayor fired him as the city’s top cop in December 2015. If elected in the February 2019 election, McCarthy pledged to run a policing strategy guided by “fundamental fairness” with better community relations, improved public trust and less interference from City Hall.

Garry has promised to nix the new Police Academy, pandering to a wide expanse of anti-Rahm sentiment. Garry also seems to (still) read the (insignificant) blog:

• McCarthy also pushed back against Emanuel’s assertions that Chicago homicides are down this year, noting that they are still higher than 2013, 2014 and 2015. To make his point, McCarthy stood by a chart showing homicides through the first six months of those years compared to 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Someone must have whispered to him about "trends."

Paul Vallas is making waves, appealing to disgruntled retirees:

• “Mayor Emanuel’s decision to remove retirees and their spouses who are not yet eligible for Medicare from the City’s healthcare program and remove healthcare subsidies, without even considering providing an affordable alternative healthcare option, has been extremely harmful to many. This is especially true for widowed spouses and their dependents and other City employees with modest and often inadequate City pension income.
  
  “The insensitivity to the financial hardships was fully demonstrated when the attorney for the retirees highlighted the mayor’s cavalier reply to an October 2015 email from venture capitalist Henry Feinberg in an Illinois Appellate Court brief that pushed for preliminary injunction that sought to compel the city to restore the benefit. ‘Since when did Rahm Emanuel let a judicial ruling get in his way and not find a creative work-around solution?’ Feinberg wrote then. Emanuel replied, ‘Never! Which is why I eliminated retiree health care. Only elected official to eliminate-not cut or reform-a benefit. Thank you very much. A $175 million saving!’ Emanuel later said he “wasn’t bragging” as much as he was “acknowledging how we stabilized” skyrocketing healthcare costs. Attorney Clint Krislov didn’t buy the mayor’s argument. His brief branded Emanuel’s email ‘boasting.’

We don't doubt that Rahm or his people are nudging things one way or another to fracture voting bases. We think that Rahm is hoping for the most radical opponent (Lightfoot) so that he appears "moderate" in comparison. It's definitely heating up.