Mayor Daley bids emotional farewell to ‘best job in America’
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com May 4, 2011 1:25PM
Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM
Mayor Daley on Wednesday bid an emotional farewell to “the best job in America,” said he “loved every minute” of it and wondered aloud how he will adjust to political retirement.
“I love Chicago more than you can imagine. It’s been a great honor for me to serve with humility,” Daley said after presiding over his last City Council meeting.
“Thirty-two years on a schedule. I loved every minute of public service. It’s a great calling. … I don’t know if I could rest. I’m not one who just sits around. I’ll be doing things.”
After being chauffeured around for decades, Daley joked about getting behind the wheel again.
“That’s gonna be something. That’ll be an experience. [Watch me] go down Michigan Avenue,” he said laughing. Noting that he last drove himself in 1980, Daley said, “Wow.”
The retiring mayor said he would even miss a news media that has made his life miserable with countless headlines about City Hall corruption.
“I’ve enjoyed it. You have a job to do. ... I understand that. I’ve always understood that. ... This press has been very open to me continually. I don’t designate that, today you can ask a question and tomorrow, you can’t,” he said.
Asked if he would miss the job, Daley said, “Anything that you love and you have passion about — sure you miss it because you give your heart and soul into it, your body and your mind. You give everything possible to make the city [better]. ... You have to have passion. It isn’t a 9-to-5 job. It isn’t posters. It isn’t headlines. You have to really love the city regardless of what is said about you and what people may do. Just move forward. That’s why I never went on tangents. I always stayed focused on what I wanted to accomplish.”
Chicago’s always emotional mayor was in a reflective mood after listening to a City Council long ridiculed as his rubber stamp give its final stamp of approval to his 22-year reign.
It was a cross between a roast and a retirement party complete with a special gift: a crystal bowl engraved with the city seal and the names of all 129 alderman who have served under him.
The mayor’s daughter, Nora, and son, Patrick looked on from the box normally reserved for members of the mayor’s Cabinet.
Gone was the bitterness caused by the mayor’s decision to demolish Meigs Field after midnight without alerting aldermen and ram through a Children’s Museum in Grant Park over the local alderman’s objections. That’s a project certain to bite the dust under new Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
There was no mention either of the political backlash aldermen suffered after giving quickie approval to Daley’s 75-year, $1.15 billion deal to privatize Chicago parking meters.
Wednesday was all about celebrating the good things about the Daley years and about solidifying the mayor’s legacy.
“You’ve made Chicago the most livable city in the nation. Millennium Park, Northerly Island, the museum campus, the remaking of public education, the Skyway … and yes, your tenacity and courage in pursuit of the 2016 Olympic Games have been marks of your mayoral career. But, your true calling was a deep love for the city and its people instilled in you by your mom and dad,” said Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee.
Ald. Rey Colon (35th) got a laugh out of Daley with a reference to the notorious midnight raid on Meigs.
“There’s a time to listen and to work things through the community and there’s a time to scrape those X’s on the runway. … You’ve managed to teach us when it’s appropriate” to do both, Colon said.
Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) choked back tears as he called Daley a champion for gay marriage, gay political empowerment and gay rights.
Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s unofficial floor leader, talked about the guts it took for Daley to take over the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Housing Authority and recalled the mayor’s response when O’Connor warned it “could be the end of your career.”
“If I can’t do that for the children of Chicago, then I should not be the mayor,” O’Connor recalled Daley saying.
“You set the tone for big [city] mayors across the entire country to become more involved in education.”
Daley has appointed dozens of aldermen to fill vacancies caused by deaths, promotions, retirements and convictions. That has helped to solidify his iron-fisted control over the City Council.
But, the mayor has also worked at his relationship with aldermen — and suffered through some rocky times.
In the early days, then-Budget Committee Chairman Lemuel Austin (34th) was the only black alderman who dared to defend Daley’s programs.
“I only got six percent of the African-American vote. Remember that. They were testing me. They were trying to figure out” if he would be fair to the entire city, the mayor recalled.
Daley also alienated aldermen by stripping them of their contract oversight in one of his first acts as mayor.
In 1992, then-Ald. Jim Laski (23rd), a Daley appointee, led a City Council rebellion that forced the mayor to cut a $50 million property tax increase in half and cancel a smaller increase.
Aldermen also approved a big-box minimum wage ordinance snuffed out by the mayor’s only veto and grew feistier by the day after the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals had politically weakened Daley and neutered the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs that lobbies aldermen.
But through it all, Daley never lost his focus on maintaining a partnership with the City Council.
“It isn’t a rubber stamp, regardless of what you want to say … I worked it,” he said.
Daley has presided over hundreds of City Council meetings. But, he almost spends more time small-talking in the anteroom behind Council chambers than he spends in the mayor’s chair.
Wednesday was the exception. For two hours, Daley listened intently as aldermen sang his praises.
“This is the longest I’ve ever sat in this seat. … This is history,” he said during the Council meeting.
Daley implored the City Council that has worked so closely with him to forge an even closer partnership with Rahm Emanuel.
“Collaborate. … Work together, compromise, move the agenda forward. ... We owe it to this generation and another generation to make this city the best city — not only in the United States but the world,” he told aldermen.
“You’ve done it with me. I thank you. I ask you to do it with Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to make that strong commitment. I know you can do it. Each and every one of you love this city. You love your community. You love public service.”
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