Vallas Being Drafted?

Kass notices something our readers have been speculating about for a year now:

• The 2027 Chicago mayoral campaign is rushing up at the city, like an angry thug scrambling out of the shadows to smash your head in and take your money and assault your wife, complete with a chorus of high pitched screamers on the street keening out their rage like a murder of female crows. If you have a smartphone you’ve seen it. And if you ignore it and hope to avoid it all, that won’t work.

  [...] So far, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias,  U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley are among those who have declared their intent to run for mayor. But several more are expected to get in. Among state elected officials, Comptroller Susana Mendoza and State Rep. Kam Buckner are mulling bids. Former mayor Rahm Emanuel is hanging off to the side like the other hyenas using his media contacts to help grab a leg bone.

  [...] So why, more than two years after the last mayoral election, are Democrats trying to anger Paul Vallas and push him into the 2027 mayoral campaign? They’ve put out “ethics reports” accusing Vallas of accepting $202, 000 in “excessive contributions” from 11 concerns firms doing business with the city, in violation of city law that prohibits contributions in excess of $1,500.  This, according to the mysterious Chicago Board of Ethics, an oxymoron if there ever was one. It was fed to the liberal Chicago media and dutifully reported, but most forgot to mention that the Chicago Teacher’s Union dropped at least $5 million on Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The most obvious answer is they're looking to split the voting blocs into smaller and smaller segments so as to exercise control over who makes it to the runoff - no one is going to get 50%-plus-one at this point. The best bet is to fracture the totals among the different ethnic groups. Vallas could draw from a couple different groups based on name-recognition alone and sink Conehead.

Who this benefits is anyone's guess, but it could hamstring Giannoulias (the money leader at this point) and Quigley and open up an avenue to Mendoza (the Hispanic bloc's push for finally getting the BIG prize.) 

Time will tell, but the smart play for Vallas might be to play Kingmaker (or Queenmaker) to circumvent the Machine.