Mayor Emanuel Says No to Plans to Run for President, Addresses New City Initiatives and Successes
Photo By: Deborah Bayliss
Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded with an, unequivocal “no” as to whether or not he would run for president, after he was asked the question by Chicago Citizen Newspaper during a press luncheon with Chicago’s Black media outlets and organizations, held at Ruby’s Restaurant, 3175 W. Madison St. last Friday.
The open discussion luncheon followed the mayor’s morning round table discussion where he talked about a new Chicago Housing Authority ex-offender pilot program.
Swirling speculations are that Emanuel, 54, former senior policy and strategy advisor for former President Bill Clinton, and former White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama, is either planning to run for president in 2016 if Hilary Clinton decides not to run or as a running mate for her if she does run for the coveted office.
When asked by the Chicago Citizen Newspaper if he planned to run for president “at any point in his career,” the mayor said no. “I’ve been there and done that and I didn’t like it. I’m a man of my word and the answer is no,” the mayor said as he leaned forward a bit to answer the question while eating lunch. “I love this job.”
The “I love my job,” part of his comment was expected. However, adding commentary about how he felt about his time at the White House was not.
During the luncheon, the mayor also addressed Chicago’s vacant housing stock, education, The Family Reunification, an ex-offender, re-entry pilot program; STEM education, City College’s, and Black laborers being cut out of city construction jobs.
“…Today we’re starting for the first time but has been long advocated, an opportunity to provide people with housing who are coming out of the ex-offender community but who show that they’re ready to make changes in their life. Once they’ve made that choice, we shouldn’t be shutting the door; we should be making the responsible choice as Danny Davis says to meet them half way,” Emanuel said.
The mayor also said that ex-offender re-entering their communitie's is a city versus a community issue and something that areas like Austin, Woodlawn, Auburn Gresham and Roseland cannot solve on their own.
“If it works like I hope it does, we’ll get bigger,” the mayor said addressing the various media outlets at the table. "It’s a comprehensive program. There are about 20 ex-offenders, who received job training working on the new Malcolm X College which is currently under construction so we’ve been doing things. Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is also part of the effort. I thought it was ridiculous that people wanted to eliminate the CTA’s ex-felon program. CHA is an outgrowth of a city-wide effort and has the housing piece. Community Colleges has a job training and an educational piece…It’s a City-wide effort.”
The Mayor admitted to a lack of funding for the program.
“The worse thing to be is dishonest,” the mayor said. “Twenty-five thousand people a year come out of prison and move back into the city. I’m proud of what we’re doing….but if you think we can fund the program on an annual basis I can’t. There’s a shortage of resources, to the size of the problem.”
The mayor hopes the private business sector will also hire ex-offenders.
“What we’re doing is an example for the private sector. If we’re doing it, we’re saying you need to look at this,” Emanuel said. “We doubled the size of the tax credit so we encourage you from the tax side. At the state level, we’ve passed legislation to make it more affordable for you to take this example.”
In terms of black laborers being shut out of the job sites the mayor said, “We proved something on the CTA Red Line, the Blue Line and the 95th Street project that will be breaking ground soon, that’s standard for CTA on every construction site. We set a goal and we met that goal and we worked in partnership with the urban league to achieve it. It was criticized on the front and its now being looked at as a model in terms of community engagement and community employment and we’re using that going forward.”
The mayor is a big advocate of STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) education saying that it’s what children in school today will need to become successful no matter their field of choice.
“We’re taking computer science (in the City Colleges) and making it universal through the system so that whether you’re a nurse, in transportation, professional services, you’ve got to know something about computer code, computer writing. Reading and writing and math was for us, what science, technology, engineering and math will be our children whether they decide to go into STEM field or not, you’re going to need to know this.”
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