Dan wrote yesterday about the bigotry displayed by Republicans voting against Civil Unions in Illinois. Well, one of the State Senators who voted against the bill, the Reverend James Meeks, head Jeebus-Promoter of a 20,000 member African-American church on Chicago’s South Side, probably just cost himself a real shot at being Mayor.

Quick explanation: municipal elections in Chicago have a weird structure (besides the whole Dead People Vote stuff). Primaries are open, and if one person gets 50% plus one vote, they win and don’t have to run in the general election. With Mayor Richard M. Daley stepping down, we have 20 people running, with Rahm Emmanuel the consensus mortal lock/insider candidate who will maintain the status quo. But if he doesn’t get 50% plus one vote, there will be an election against the second-place candidate. With numerous African-American candidates (3 major ones besides Meeks—US Rep. Danny Davis, former Senator/Chump Carol Mosely Braun, and Roland Fucking Burris) Meeks had a genuine shot at being that second-place finisher and then perhaps taking Rahm down (assuming Rahm’s on the ballot: his residency is being contested).

But with this vote against Civil Unions, Meeks has eliminated any chance he might have had. Simple fact: gays in Chicago vote. And they remember. And no African-American mayoral candidate has a shot at the office on the fifth floor of City Hall without the votes of white Lakefront Liberals, ie, the gays and their family and friends. Meeks did some CYA meetings with Gay Leaders to Explain He Wasn’t a Bigot, but when it came time to show this in a substantive rather than a rhetorical way, he stuck to his homophobic guns. And now he’s done.

10 replies on “Sometimes Bigots will pay a political price”

  2. “His residency is being contested.” Damn straight it is – and should be. Care to tell me how a guy who hasn’t lived there for two years can run for mayor?

    Sorry to hijack the thread, but that pisses me off.

  3. @ 2
    State Law about residency has an exception for people who are “serving the United States”: vague about whether that means being in the military or working for the government in general. Plus, he’s been voting in Chicago, which would seem to indicate he’s a resident in some sense. And they keep guarding Obama’s house, even though he never visits. Very sad.

    The outcome of the Rahm challenge may come down to who the judge is–if it’s someone beholden to Ed Burke, Daley’s and Rahm’s arch-enemy, then perhaps he’s knocked off the ballot. And then Meeks really has blown it, since he’s got more money, organization and built-in voters than the other black candidates.

  6. Rahm was born in Chicago, is like a 4th or 5th generation Chicago native, was a state rep from Chicago, worked and lived in Chicago virtually all of his life, and only really left to do Federal work here and there over the past 20~ years. Saying he shouldn’t run is like saying someone shouldn’t run because they enlisted in the Coast Guard and was stationed in Florida from 2008-2010, despite being a Chicagoan from 1959-1993, when he worked in Clinton’s White House, and from 1997-2008. It’s silly, especially since Chicago law has a clause explicitly excusing this.

  7. Are you kidding me? I haven’t been paying that much attention to the mayoral race in my former hometown, but… Roland Burris? Carol Mosely Braun? Jesus… how many people are running for this thing?

    I’m still irritated that my prediction a few years ago that Ron Huberman would be the next mayor was bunk… When we was moved from the CTA to CPS, I truly thought Daley was grooming him…

  8. The higher the price, the better.
    =====================
    If it walKKKs liKKKe a ducKKK, quacKKKs liKKKe a ducKKK and looKKKs liKKKe a ducKKK, it’s a ducKKK.
    If they talKKK in code liKKKe the KKK, write in code liKKKe Rush Limbaugh, and looKKK liKKKe they just tooKKK off their sheets and stupid pointy hats, I call them the KKK.
    I don’t need any proof for my conclusions about who is a racist and who is not.
    I have the same innate, intuitive radar for the racism of tea party members as I do when someone deliberately and with cool calculation mispronounces a Jewish surname.
    It’s very subtle, and it’s carefully designed to be so. That way, the speaker always has an “out.”
    If you’re capable of sensing racist overtones, they’re as plain as the nose on your face.
    If you aren’t, you’ll be completely befuddled and think people like me and the NAACP are nuts.
    We’re not. It’s there.
    =====================
    The tea party KKKooks sKKKare me. They seem determined to KKKill every hope of anyone getting to the middle in politiKKKs in this KKKountry. They want to maKKKe it into some KKKind of KKKonservative monster, wreaKKKing havoc all over the world.
    ExKKKuse my misspellings. I KKKant seem to KKKontrol my anti-tea-party inKKKlinations. Every time I see their name, I start to stutter and repeat the letters “KKK.”
    =====================

  9. Great news about Meeks! This makes me miss Harold Washington all the more. Burris and Braun still? They were tired back when I was a babyfag vigilante-patrolling Boystown with the Pink Angels. That was, like, the 90s or something.

  10. Just as an aside, Obama does come home occasionally- I can think of 3 times in the past year. Doesn’t seem unreasonable under the circumstances. And, all things considered, it makes sense that they’d want to keep the house under surveillance even when they’re not here… better Secret Service than some white supremacist group doing it and waiting for them to come back.

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