Gutierrez Looking More like a Mayoral Candidate / Chicago News Cooperative

Congressman Luis Gutierrez marches amongst 'Guitierrez for Mayor' signs while shaking hands during the Mexican Independence Day Parade in Little Village.
Keri Wiginton/Chicago News Cooperative

He wouldn’t declare that he will run for mayor next year, but all the hallmarks of a campaign were visible in U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez‘s appearance at the 26th Street Mexican Independence Day parade on Sunday.

Gutierrez, a veteran Democratic congressman and former Chicago alderman, posed for photos with a 2-year-old girl who sat in a stroller holding a “Luis Gutierrez for Mayor” poster. He shook hands with the crowd in the Little Village neighborhood as his supporters chanted, “Si se puede” (“Yes we can”).

Less than one week after Mayor Richard M. Daley said he wouldn’t seek another term, Gutierrez’s two adult daughters and about 75 other volunteers trolled the crowd with nominating petitions, seeking the 12,500 signatures that a mayoral candidate needs to get on the ballot in the Feb. 22 election.

“If I believe that I can formulate and articulate a plan that improves our schools, keeps our streets safe and creates jobs, that brings people together, then I’ll run,” he told the Chicago News Cooperative. “This is a test.”

Gutierrez said Chicago needs “a new way to do politics,” calling for greater transparency at City Hall and for “a free and independent City Council that challenges the executive branch.”

Daley, who has been in office for more than 20 years, has enjoyed greater support from the council than any mayor in the city’s history, with aldermen approving most of his proposals by unanimous votes or overwhelming majorities. Still, Daley often has bristled at descriptions of the council as a “rubber stamp” for his agenda.

“I’m not here to criticize the mayor,” Gutierrez said. “I’m here to speak about how I would do things in the future. Having been a former Chicago City Council member under three mayors, I assure you that things are done pretty much from the top down.”

In recent years, Gutierrez frequently has talked about altering his career path, but those public musings have remained no more than talk. He once announced that he would quit Congress and was thinking about running for mayor against Daley in 2007. Yet he stayed in Washington after all and ended up endorsing Daley in the last election.

Long-time supporters say his first goal in pondering a mayoral run is to establish himself as the consensus Latino candidate. He will have competition for even that status, judging by some of the other Hispanic politicians who appeared at the parade.

Like Gutierrez’s backers, City Clerk Miguel del Valle‘s supporters circulated nominating petitions and handed T-shirts touting his mayoral hopes.

Del Valle declared his intention to run almost immediately after the mayor’s announcement of his retirement plans, despite having only $6,274.72 in his campaign accounts as of the end of June, according to state records. In an interview with the CNC, del Valle conceded that he would be vastly outspent by other contenders.

“Our campaign is strictly grassroots,” said del Valle, who became the first Latino elected citywide in 2007, when he ran on Daley’s ticket. “It’s about volunteers, it’s about issues and it’s about talking about what can be done in the city of Chicago to address some of these seemingly intractable problems, like violence and the quality of public education and the loss of manufacturing jobs.”

In contrast, City Colleges board chairman Gery Chico said Sunday he would have to raise “a very sizable amount of money” –at least $4 million — to run for mayor.

“We’re still talking a very serious look at it,” said Chico, who was a Daley chief of staff and also president of the Chicago schools and park district boards. “We want to make sure that if we run, all the resources we need will be there.”

Chico said he had shown his fundraising prowess during his 2004 run for the U.S. Senate. Chico finished fifth, with 4.3 percent of the vote, in the Democratic primary, which was won by a young state senator named Barack Obama.

And the Latinos weighing a run were not the only potential mayoral hopefuls at the parade. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he does not yet know how long it would take him to decide whether to try to start a mayoral campaign.

He noted that the winning candidate would have to appeal across ethnic lines in a city where no racial group makes up a majority of voters.

“The campaigns we run have always been ethnically diverse, and my office is ethnically diverse,” Dart said. “It’s probably one of the most diverse offices, if not the most diverse office you can find. I ran for years as a [state] representative in a district that was 75, 70 percent African-American. That’s always been how I operate. I hate to sound cheesy, but I never really look at skin color, I just look at people.”

As Dart marched west on 26th Street, Democratic Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias — whose parents came to Chicago from Greece — joked with the sheriff: “Hey, what are you going to do to get the Greek vote?”

Among the few non-Democrats at the parade was Bill Brady, the Republican nominee for governor in the November general election. He marched in the parade, a short distance behind his opponent, Gov. Pat Quinn, and other leading Democrats.

Brady echoed Gutierrez in criticizing Quinn for not hiring enough Latinos in his administration since replacing impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“I’ve seen a lack of interest in including the Latino community in the Quinn administration,” Brady said.

In April, Gutierrez blasted Quinn, even threatening to withhold support, although Quinn aides noted that he had appointed Latinos to head the Illinois Commerce Commission, the state’s human rights board and a panel on improving education in Illinois.

Gutierrez reversed tack on Sunday, saying he endorses the incumbent governor over Brady.

“I say that at this point with no reservations,” Gutierrez said. “I understand that there is much work that needs to be done.”

The congressman then returned to posing for photographs with children in colorful Mexican wrestling masks and reaching up to shake hands with men in sombreros who followed the parade route on horseback.

Meanwhile, state Sen. James T. Meeks (D-Chicago) is another prospective candidate whose supporters began circulating petitions Sunday, although he has not yet decided whether he will actually run, spokeswoman Tasha Harris said.

Tags: City Hall, Gery Chico, James Meeks, Luis Gutierrez, Mayor Daley, Miguel del Valle, Politics, Tom Dart

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 12th, 2010 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Dateline: Chicago. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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