Regarding the residency question, The Chicago Sun-Times points to election law experts who doubt that the former White House chief of staff meets the qualification of having maintained residency within the city for the past year in order to run.
Emanuel kept his house in the city but chose to rent it out during his return to Washington. That decision, the Sun-Times reports, may block his candidacy.
Residency “doesn’t mean they must simply own a home in the city that they rent out to someone else,” the paper writes. “They must have a place they can walk into, keep a toothbrush, hang up their jacket and occasionally sleep.”
But, and there’s always a “but” is this kind of story: The paper also notes that Emanuel may have an opening to get past the strict requirement.
“Emanuel could argue that he has maintained ownership of the home, voted absentee earlier this year, pays property taxes, lists the address on his driver’s license, registers his car there and always intended to return,” the report reads.
Emanuel was careful not to launch his candidacy from Washington and headed to Chicago immediately after his resignation was announced by President Barack Obama on Friday.
In a video released on his web page over the weekend, he said he would embark on a “Tell It Like It Is” listening tour of the city, at ChicagoforRahm.com, to determine the real needs of Chicagoans.
Emanuel is one of several candidates and possible candidates who have scrambled to put together campaigns after Mayor Richard Daley’s surprise announcement last month that he would not seek a seventh term as mayor.
Democrats who have announced or hinted that they also intend to run include Chicago School Board president and close Daley ally Gery Chico, Chicago City Clerk Miguel del Valle, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and State Sen. James Meeks, who’s also the pastor of a church in the city’s South Side.
Also, Sunday’s Chicago Tribune also reported that despite coming from a well-known and respected Jewish family in Chicago, Emanuel should not expect to receive the entire Jewish vote.
“Jewish voters won’t reflexively back Rahm Emanuel for Chicago mayor,” said Ron Grossman, in an editorial, who noted that many local Jewish voters at odds with Emanuel’s role in Obama’s Israel policy, his politics when in Congress — and his coarse language.
And, even though international policy would not normally influence a race for mayor, the Chicago co-chair of Americans for a Safe Israel Cheryl Jacobs told the Tribune said that many Jews were disappointed by the “the White House’s heavy-handedness toward Israel.”
But Emanuel has long supported Israel; during his tenure with President Clinton reports surfaced that Emanuel served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1991.
Clinton appointed Emanuel to direct his campaign’s finance committee, but Emanuel left when the Gulf War broke out, and served in one of Israel’s northern bases until the war ended and returned to become Clinton’s adviser in the White House for almost eight years, despite security questions on the legality of his high-level position.
Although a US citizen, Emanuel said he volunteered as a civilian with the IDF at an Israeli supply base where he helped maintain equipment there.
But all that may not help him garner Chicago’s Jewish vote, which is said to be swayed by Emanuel’s record on Israel with Obama’s White House than his time in the Clinton White House and the IDF.
