Could Meeks inherit City Hall?
Rev. James Meeks, state senator and pastor of Salem Baptist Church, is mulling a run for Chicago mayor. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Tribune photo / September 13, 2010)
South Side senator and pastor would shake up mayoral race
John Kass2:08 a.m. CDT, September 15, 2010
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The man who could be the next mayor of Chicago, state Sen. James T. Meeks, met me for breakfast Tuesday morning.I picked the time. He picked the place, at the 312 Restaurant across from City Hall.
The political types noticed when the Chicago Democrat walked in. But they had the good manners not to grab their cell phones until after we'd ordered coffee and juice.
"You think they're noticing?" asked Meeks.
Yes, Reverend, I said.Anyone who studies politics in Chicago would have noticed, not because Meeks, 54, is loud or flashy or pushy. He is not any of these.
But as the pastor of a congregation of at least 20,000 at the Salem Baptist Church on the South Side, he brings leverage to any discussion of who should replace the departing Mayor Richard Daley.
"I'm collecting signatures for petitions and studying the process," Meeks said. "I've got some studying to do. If and when I announce, I want to come with something. I don't want to have just fluff."
Fluff isn't the word I'd use for Meeks. Leading potential candidates backed by the Daleyites — Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — must see him as a threat to their ambitions. And they'll attack by proxy.
There are many candidates puffed up in the media who don't connect with their communities. But Meeks definitely connects. Daley knows this. Dart and Emanuel know it too.
He can fire up a crowd, and his main issue, improving public education, has helped him build alliances across political and demographic lines throughout the state.
Anyone can call himself an independent. But I measure it by how far an elected official is willing to go to confront his own power base.
Meeks' support for a Chicago voucher system for inner-city children trapped in the worst public schools lost out in Springfield a few months ago by a narrow margin. Still, it took guts for him to go up against Chicago Public Schools bureaucrats tied to the legislative black caucus and the teachers unions.
"But a child is only in third grade once," he said. "Prison populations can be tracked by what happened to a child's education in the third grade. What we were trying to do was help those children seek a better education."
Now Meeks is reading city budgets line by line, and meeting with budget experts. He's also studying reports on political corruption in Chicago.
"People are apathetic," said Meeks. "There's a culture of corruption. People don't trust politicians, even a guy who's a minister. I mean, about 30 aldermen have been indicted."
But while aldermen get indicted, and four governors have been indicted, hasn't Meeks noticed that no mayor of Chicago has ever been indicted? I asked him if this means that the fifth floor of City Hall is a corruption-free zone.
"That's why I've always said, 'I'd rather be mayor than governor,' " joked Meeks.
Meeks will have to step lightly across the potential minefields, organizing a base without leaving himself open to attacks that he's playing the race card. When whites vote white, the euphemisms involve words like "stability." When blacks vote black, it's often called "racial politics."
"People may think I'm a one-track black preacher," he said. "But that's old. … It's incumbent upon the candidate to realize that even though people in the African-American community might be looking for you to be the 'black candidate,' you have to emerge with a broad cross-section of people from Day One. Blacks, whites, Latinos, Irish."
Greeks?
"Greeks too," he said with a laugh. "If you're seeking to be the mayor of Chicago, you're talking about Rogers Park to Roseland. Anyone who seeks to be mayor has to convince the voters that they're on a multiethnic path. And if I choose to do this, that's what I'm going to do."
Dart and Emanuel have been the beneficiaries of oodles of positive press. The Washington press corps can't help but fawn over Rahm. He and his ally David Axelrod — the White House media guru and Daley mouthpiece — still control access to the president. But in Chicago, Rahm isn't gatekeeper for anybody.
Dart has had by far the most favorable news coverage. He's been offered up to voters as a young progressive independent, even though he's also beholden to the Southwest Side political oligarchs.
If Dart or Emanuel want to have breakfast, I'll gladly sit with them, too, as long as Rahm doesn't re-enact the naked, angry confrontation he allegedly had with a lawmaker in the congressional shower.
I'm willing to sit with the other candidates, as well. But Tuesday was Meeks' day.
He remains largely unknown outside the African-American community. That's going to change.
In his 20s, he started as pastor of Salem Baptist with a congregation of just 213 souls.
"We had no employees," Meeks said. "My wife and I were it. Our home phone number was listed in the church bulletin for people to call if they needed anything."
He's built Salem Baptist into a giant church with a $17 million budget and 150 employees, including four full-time pastors. Meeks does the preaching on Sunday.
"The gift that I bring is communication," he said. "I talk for a living. I've been talking to people for 30 years. And if I'm mayor, I want the people to know exactly what I'm doing, and why."
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Kass: Meeks for mayor
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