January 17, 2011
by Greg Hinz

Rahm Emanuel has Daley's will to power, with an eye for the bottom line

One wowed Chicagoans with big projects, leaving the city deep in debt. The other promises a new focus on basic city services and strong fiscal medicine.

Both wield power reflexively, with a hard-edged style that may be needed to govern a sprawling city but can backfire if taken to excess. At the same time, both emphasize family—their own and Chicago's—but have different ideas on how to serve them.

As Rahm Emanuel's odds of becoming mayor appear to grow (he's up 16 points in the latest poll) there's no doubt he's as driven and disciplined a politician as Chicago has produced. The question is how he compares to the man he aims to succeed, Richard M. Daley, a mayor of great triumphs and more recent big failures.

The most striking differences are in spending and financial matters. All indications are that a Mayor Emanuel would downplay attention-getting projects like luring the Olympics in favor of putting more cops on the street. Financial razzle-dazzle like Mr. Daley's asset privatizations would give way to private-sector-style fiscal discipline, Mr. Emanuel has suggested, promising to give details in a February speech.

“This is the time for the city to turn the page,” Mr. Emanuel, 51, says over a quick salmon-salad lunch, “time for a new generation with new energy and new ideas.”

Still, Mr. Emanuel's desire to run Chicago rather than stay in Washington or return to the lucrative life of an investment banker echoes Mr. Daley's oft-stated view that no job beats the one he's held for the past 21 years. Like Mr. Daley, Mr. Emanuel works closely with corporate leaders and aims to raise the city's profile as an international business center.

“He will fight to make sure Chicago is at the top of everyone's list. That's strikingly similar to Rich Daley,” says political consultant Greg Goldner, who has served as campaign manager to both and has endorsed no one in this election.

WHERE THEY DIFFER

Similar as they may be in temperament and zeal for Chicago, they are products of different backgrounds and, perhaps most important, different eras. Mr. Emanuel, if elected, would take office at a time of budgetary stress far more severe than Mr. Daley faced until the last years of his reign.

Mr. Daley “was a lot like his father, a build-and-spend Democrat. It took a long time and a bad economy to catch up with him,” says Mike Quigley, who holds Mr. Emanuel's old seat in Congress. “Rahm is a lot more practical. He realized right away the bad financial situation this mayor left the city in.”

Ergo Mr. Emanuel, while stopping well short of directly criticizing Mr. Daley, has talked about money since the day he announced his candidacy, when he declared that Chicago “cannot keep putting off hard choices.”

Since then, he has ruled out privatization of Midway Airport, a top priority for Mr. Daley, who leased out the Chicago Skyway and city parking meters, among other deals. Mr. Emanuel says his financial team would be composed not of City Hall insiders, as was Mr. Daley's, but of outsiders who “have been successful and worked with stressful situations.”

Similarly, he has said he won't even consider tax hikes before innovations like private garbage collection are studied, has called for shrinking the tax-increment financing program Mr. Daley vastly expanded, and has offended much of organized labor by saying city workers ought to have their pensions cut and city teachers should lose their right to strike.

“I don't think (Mr. Emanuel) quite understands what we have to offer,” Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says.

On schools, the incumbent mayor's overwhelming top priority, Mr. Emanuel wants to boost teacher training, link compensation to performance and allow parents to bring in outside management at failing schools. But he talks more often about violent crime, which his website warns “exacerbates almost every other problem the city faces.”

Specifically, he says he'd put 1,000 more police officers on the streets, a combination of new hires paid for with TIF funds and others moved out of desk jobs. He also would boost after-school programs for teens and step up seizures of illegal firearms.

Some of that stems from Mr. Emanuel's emphasis on family—so intense that he became visibly upset when a Crain's reporter suggested writing a story about his wife. But it's also consistent with his focus as a top policy aide in the Clinton White House: putting more police on the street and taking assault weapons off it.

Both Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Daley share a global perspective, believing Chicago's economy depends on its ability to attract businesses from around the world. With success stories like Groupon Inc. to sell, “You have to be an ambassador for outside our borders,” Mr. Emanuel says. “Unlike other cities, we have corporate citizens who are passionate about our city.”

Both men also share an inner circle that dates back decades: political consultant David Axelrod, mayoral brother Bill Daley (who just succeeded Mr. Emanuel as White House chief of staff) and David Wilhelm, who led both Mr. Daley's and Mr. Clinton's first political races. But outside of fundraisers, relatively few senior Daley hands are active in Mr. Emanuel's campaign. Those who are include issues adviser Sarah Pang, Chicago Transit Authority Chairman Terry Peterson and red-tape cutter Terry Teele.

While each certainly is willing to accept backing from ward bosses and other machine figures—Mr. Emanuel got to Congress with huge precinct help from then-top city water official Donald Tomczak, who later was convicted of federal corruption charges—neither is entirely a machine man. Instead, their main political weapon is money.

Their differences and similarities are most stark on the personality side. If Mr. Daley can be driven, focused and cranky, the more gregarious Mr. Emanuel has taken those traits to his own unique level.

Almost since the New Trier High School alum arrived on the national scene two decades ago, stories about his audacity have riveted the national media, perhaps to his liking. Such as how he sent a dead fish to an unhelpful pollster. Or walked naked into the House gym shower room to upbraid an unhelpful congressman. Or corralled then-Chicago Tribune reporter Mr. Axelrod at the hospital to press him for a favorable story.

“He's like a heat-seeking missile,” says Mr. Axelrod, who downplays any disputes between the two in the Obama White House. “Whatever he sets his mind on, he gets done.”

‘DO SOMETHING'

Where does that come from? Mr. Emanuel points to his immigrant family, which kept a board in their Wilmette home filled with pictures of relatives who, due to a war or a pogrom, never made it out of the old country. The clear message, he says: “You're in the U.S. now. You have to do something.”

And a near-death experience as a teen. After accidentally cutting the tip of his finger with a meat slicer, he made the mistake of going swimming. He “ended up in the hospital for seven weeks, suffering from five different blood infections and gangrene. . . .Three of my roommates died. I came away from that saying, ‘I'm not going to screw up anymore,' “ he says.

Former Illinois Public Action Council head Bob Creamer, who hired Mr. Emanuel as a young fundraiser, recalls how the 22-year-old rewarded one donor who wrote a big check. He approached the man at an IPAC event and “gave him a big kiss, right on the lips,” Mr. Creamer recalls.

Mr. Creamer's take: “He was always pretty good at understanding how iconic stories about him communicated messages that got people to do things he wanted.”

‘RELENTLESS'

Whatever its cause, that drive earned him a gig as Mr. Clinton's chief fundraiser, where he handed out favors such as time with the candidate only to those who produced big numbers, however big their reputations. But he stumbled at the Clinton White House, where he was demoted after offending too many colleagues.

He “worked his way back up,” Mr. Axelrod says. “I don't know anyone who is more relentless. For a mayor of a big city, that's a good trait. You have to be larger than life to succeed.”

At investment bank Wasserstein Perella & Co., Mr. Emanuel made millions in just two years between the Clinton White House and Congress.

“Even though Rahm didn't have a business background, he was one of the best