One of the hottest runoffs in town is in the 37th Ward.
OPINION
In one corner is the incumbent, Ald. Emma Mitts, 59, who has represented the Austin community on the West Side since 2000.
The 37th is a study in pride and poverty. Most of Austin is black with a smattering of Hispanics. There are carefully maintained homes but, like flowers amid the weeds, the volume of dilapidated and boarded up buildings choke them out.
Mitts’ voting record in City Council, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study, aligns with Mayor Rahm Emanuel 97 percent of the time. Mitts insists she’s nobody’s rubber stamp.
“I took offense to them saying that. You don’t have to be a rubber stamp to come together for the betterment of others.”
Her loyalty was rewarded by Chicago Forward, the PAC devoted to Emanuel-friendly aldermen, with $36,000 in contributions. The mayor’s close friend, Michael Sacks, threw in another $5,400.
Mitts never saw a runoff coming.
“No! No! No!” she laughed. “I ask myself, why are you in a runoff? I know God don’t make no mistakes. So I had to be honest with myself. [Now] I’ve got an opportunity to talk to those voters, show them love.”
Factors that led to the runoff include a remap that brought in new voters who didn’t know her, Mitts said.
And her courtship of Wal-Mart and support of charter schools invited the wrath of the unions.
Mitts’ opponent on April 7 is Chicago public school teacher Tara Stamps, 46, who helped deprive Mitts of outright victory by picking up 32 percent of the vote to the incumbent’s 49 percent.
A first-time candidate, Stamps learned politics at the knee of her activist mother, the late Marion Stamps.
“A perfect storm made this runoff possible,” Stamps said by phone.
That storm included Emanuel shuttering 50 public schools, seven of them in the overall Austin area, though none inside 37th Ward boundaries. Stamps faults Mitts for an “aggressive number of charters” vs. an emphasis on neighborhood schools.
The Chicago Teachers Union has given Stamps $56,000.
Stamps, like CTU, is heavily behind mayoral candidate Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.
But will this mostly African-American ward go for Garcia?
“I am wedded to the black and brown alliance,” said Stamps. “We are each other’s teacher. I remember Jesus Garcia and [slain activist] Rudy Lozano and my mother getting Harold Washington elected.”
Mitts knows Emanuel has work to do in her ward, which he won decisively in 2011 [60 percent] vs. 2015 [41 percent].
“For the mayor, I think that he has to have a little bit more humbleness,” she said.
Mitts, meanwhile, questions Stamps’ honesty, referring to Illinois Observer David Ormsby’s report that Stamps in the ’90s was sued for “alleged welfare and food stamp fraud” by failing to notify the state she was working full-time.
Stamps says she never “fraudulently received welfare” years ago as a single mother and is currently “lining up documentation.”
She’ll need to.
What Mitts will need to do, not unlike the mayor, is seize some momentum.
There is no time to lose.
For any of them.
