Ex-UNO chief Juan Rangel eyes GOP

Is former United Neighborhood Organization chief Juan Rangel looking for a second act with Republican support this time?

◆ Backshot: Rangel, whose patrons were Dem chief Mike Madigan and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, resigned from UNO in December following reports he gave grant funds to family members of his top aide, Miguel D’Escoto.

◆ New shot: Sneed is told that Rangel will make his first public appearance since then on June 9 when he speaks to the Chicago Young Republicans about the future of charter schools, CPS and political power in Chicago.

Da!

From Russia with love? Former Mayor Rich Daley, who has conducted business deals in Russia with his son, Patrick, a onetime Moscow resident — was spotted decked out in jeans and a plaid shirt at the 3 p.m. showing of the Steppenwolf Theatre play “Russian Transport” on Sunday. No gal pal in sight. Hey, the doc is a working girl. 

A sad note . . .

Former Dem powerhouse Senate President Phil Rock, one of the savviest pols in the Illinois Legislature, is now in hospice care.

The Quinn bin . . .

Sneed is told Gov. Pat Quinn spent Mother’s Day in the western suburbs, dining with his 96-year-old mother, Eileen, and leafing through the family photo albums.

Letter box pox . . .

Is nothing sacred?

Apparently not even private letters written to a Roman Catholic priest who died in 1964.

◆ To wit: Private letters written by former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy to an elderly Irish priest — detailing the frustration she had with her father and husband’s womanizing — are hitting the auction block in Ireland next month. 

◆ Errin’ aisle: The cache of letters, written to a Dublin-based priest over more than a decade, are expected to fetch $1.6 million when they are sold June 10 by Sheppard’s Irish Auction House.

◆ Secret file: Considered private, the missives were dubbed by Kennedy “good in a way to write all this down and get it off your chest — because I never do really talk it with anyone,” she stated in one of the letters, printed piecemeal in the Irish Times, which was granted access to the letters.

◆ File defile: In one letter, Kennedy writes she was ‘bitter against God” about her husband’s assassination; in another, she wrote she was overcome by ambition “like Macbeth.”

◆ File defile II: The auction house won’t reveal where it got the letters, but it’s a good bet the priest regarded the letters as sacred and would have insisted the donor hit the confession booth.

◆ Hmmm: Will Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, who is refusing to comment on the auction, purchase them on the quiet?

CONTINUE READING MICHAEL SNEED’S COLUMN AT SUNTIMES.COM

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