In Mayoral Runoff, Rahm Emanuel’s Corrupt Governance Has Finally Caught Up With Him

[n2doc]

by Rick Perlstein

On Tuesday, Chicagoans voted themselves a reprieve. With 45.4 percent of the vote, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ended the first round of his first re-election bid almost five points below what he needed to avoid a runoff election in April — and three points below his performance in the last major pre-election poll. “Mayor 1 percent” will face second-place finisher Jesus “Chuy” García, the soft-spoken, compassionate Cook County board member who proclaimed himself with a Chicagoan lilt the “neighborhood guy” — who over-performed the poll.

Perhaps what turned some voters against Rahm at the last minute — or motivated them to go to the polls in the first place on a cold Chicago day that started out in the single digits — was an Election Day exposé that appeared in the British paper the Guardian by investigate reporter Spencer Ackerman. “The Disappeared” revealed the existence of Homan Square, a forlorn “black site” that the Chicago Police operate on the West Side.

There, Chicagoans learned — many for the first time — arrestees are locked up for days at a time without access to lawyers. One victim was 15 years old; he was released without being charged with anything. Another, a 44-year-old named John Hubbard, never left — he died in custody. One of the “NATO 3” defendants, later acquitted on most charges of alleged terror plans during a 2012 Chicago protest, was shackled to a bench there for 17 hours.

It “struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11 feel to it,” the Guardian reported. And for a candidate, Rahm Emanuel, who ran on a message he was turning the page on the old, malodorous “Chicago way,” the piece contributed to a narrative that proved devastating.

more

http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/26/mayoral-runoff-rahm-emanuels-corrupt-governance-finally-caught/

[BlueCaliDem]

1. Kick and REC! eom