Business and Community Partners: Mayoral Race Bares Division Among Hispanics / Chicago News Cooperative

Mayoral candidate Gery Chico, center, talks with supporter Robert Berger of Deerfield, left, following a rally near Humboldt Park.
Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago News Cooperative

Once a month, about 35 young Hispanic professionals gather to take a United Neighborhood Organization class that has become a leadership incubator for the city’s fastest-growing ethnic community. The most recent session of the course, Tuesday night at the East Bank Club, came as Juan Rangel, the organization’s chief executive, emerged at the center of a dispute over how Hispanics should approach the succession fight for City Hall’s top job.

Many Hispanic leaders bristled last week when Rangel, a longtime loyalist of Mayor Richard M. Daley, endorsed Rahm Emanuel to succeed the mayor in the Feb. 22 election. In becoming a co-chairman of Mr. Emanuel’s not-yet-declared campaign, Rangel spurned two prominent Hispanic mayoral hopefuls: Miguel del Valle, the city clerk, and Gery Chico, the former president of the Chicago Board of Education.

Juan Andrade Jr., president of the Chicago-based United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, said the disunity among those involved in Hispanic politics could squander the once-in-a-generation opportunity created by Daley’s plans to step down after 21 years in office. Andrade said Rangel’s decision to back a white candidate was “pretty pathetic” and ran counter to the example he should set for the future Hispanic leaders in class at the United Neighborhood Organization’s Metropolitan Leadership Institute.

“For someone who purports to train Latino leaders for positions of power and authority, to turn around and endorse Rahm Emanuel when we have two eminently qualified Latino candidates, it’s the epitome of hypocrisy and opportunism,” Andrade said.

Rangel said his decision to support Emanuel provided an excellent lesson for his pupils in how to deal with a political reality that is especially true in Chicago: If you can’t take power, then the next best thing is to back the likely winner.

“I’m a very proud Mexican-American so, of course, I would love to see us have a Latino mayor,” he said, “but I’m also a pragmatist. I want to make the smart move for my community, and I think Latinos will do quite well by a Mayor Emanuel. At some point, there will be a Latino mayor. Time is on our side.”

The divisions that emerged among Hispanics followed familiar political fault lines and indicated that, rather than uniting behind a candidate who could also appeal to other Chicagoans, they are more likely to continue to represent no more than an important swing voter bloc in a city where no racial group constitutes a majority.

Hispanics make up more than one-fourth of the city’s population, yet only about 15 percent of registered voters, according to an estimate from the city election board. Hispanics are underrepresented at the polls partly because they are younger than other Chicagoans — 40 percent are under 18 — while many are not United States citizens or are eligible to vote but have not registered.

These difficulties quickly became clear for Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, a Democrat, during his brief flirtation with the idea of running for mayor. Within days of Daley’s Sept. 7 retirement announcement, Gutierrez and his supporters appeared at the 26th Street Mexican Independence Day parade with signs advertising his mayoral ambitions and nominating petitions to place his name on the ballot. A supporter marching near him shouted, “It’s time for a Latino mayor!”

Along the parade route, however, Gutierrez’s supporters struggled to find registered voters who could help him amass the signatures required to qualify for the ballot. Plunging into the crowd, his daughter, Omaira Figueroa, approached a group of women, all of whom politely replied in Spanish that they were not registered voters and could not help her.

Soon after conducting a poll that he said showed him with vast support among Hispanics — yet far behind the leading contenders among all voters — Gutierrez said he would not run for mayor and would remain in Congress to try to achieve elusive changes in federal immigration laws.

It was extremely unlikely that Rangel would have endorsed the congressman. Rangel said he believed that Gutierrez and many other Hispanic leaders acted as “angry activists” who pander to the Hispanic community and cast themselves as victims, seeking symbolic victories instead of forming coalitions across racial lines.

The mayoral succession debate is far from the first time that Rangel’s United Neighborhood Organization has generated controversy about how Hispanics should use their increasing numbers to gain political influence.

The organization’s supporters have allied themselves closely with the established white leaders of city and state government, and have received considerable benefits. In 2009, state officials earmarked $98 million to expand its network of charter schools in the city’s Hispanic neighborhoods. Rangel said the organization had received about $13 million of the grant money as of last week.

As the group’s chief executive, Rangel has been paid nearly $250,000 a year, according to the organization’s tax returns. He said he took a pay cut in February and would be paid about $195,000 in 2010.

Graduates of the organization’s leadership institute have gone on to high positions in the Daley administration, with Richard Rodriguez, the president of the city’s transit authority, among the course’s star graduates. Daley has attended the class to give advice to the young professionals.

“Harold Washington opened up the doors of City Hall for Latinos, and Mayor Daley kept them open,” said del Valle, who in 2007 became the first Hispanic elected to city office on Daley’s ticket.

But other Hispanic politicians have said Daley favored only his backers, including the now-defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization.

“Mayor Daley put people in key positions, but they mostly came from the UNO and H.D.O. sectors of the Latino community,” said Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum. “That was good for them but not representative of the depth of the Latino community.”

Mr. Rangel said he did not know Emanuel well before Daley’s retirement announcement. Shortly after expressing interest in become mayor, Emanuel contacted Mr. Rangel, who accompanied him on the first stop of his “listening tour” earlier this month, in the heavily Mexican Pilsen neighborhood. Emanuel also made a campaign stop recently at the new UNO high school on 47th Street, on the Southwest Side.

In a visit Friday to a public school on the North Side, Emanuel declined to address criticism of Rangel’s endorsement. “Juan has been a strong leader in his community,” Emanuel said. “I think he has done a great job.”

Emanuel added that on Saturday he planned to run in a race sponsored by UNO to raise money for its after-school programs.

Rangel is not the only Hispanic leader who is supporting a non-Hispanic for mayor. Victor Reyes, the former Hispanic Democratic Organization chairman and UNO lobbyist, is a senior adviser to the mayoral campaign of former Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who is African-American.

Chico said he was not concerned that Mr. Rangel did not support his mayoral run, despite Chico’s work as a zoning lawyer for Rangel’s group.

“The Latino community has never been a monolith,” Chico said, “and I don’t expect it to be this time. It’s a very healthy thing to see in the Latino community. We are making too much of both Rahm Emanuel and Juan Rangel.”

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