Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been airing an attack ad that attempts to tar and feather his strongest challenger, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, for voting in the 1980s for the “largest property tax increase in Chicago history.”
In fact, the $80 million increase that Garcia supported as a Chicago alderman allied with then-Mayor Harold Washington was not the largest property tax increase in Chicago history.
That distinction belongs to the $83.4 million property tax increase that Emanuel’s political mentor, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, pushed through in the year after his last mayoral election.
Garcia’s campaign manager Andrew Sharp said the over-statement is just the latest in a string of exaggerations or outright falsehoods included in the political ads blanketing the airwaves to rehabilitate Emanuel’s image and tear down his strongest challenger.
The irony is that Daley issued a one paragraph statement last week endorsing Emanuel for another term.
That’s even though Emanuel has spent the last four years trashing virtually everything his predecessor and political mentor did without ever mentioning Richard M. Daley by name.
“This comes down to honesty. Commissioner Garcia has been honest with voters and explained his vote was an effort to keep 5,000 police officers on the street. Mayor Emanuel has chosen the opposite path,” Sharp said Monday.
“Instead of being honest with voters and asking for their support, he has hidden $700 million of tax hikes and fee increases in his budget. The red-light cameras and speed cameras are the most glaring example of the Emanuel political style. The mayor has turned all of Chicago into a giant speed trap. He is acting more like a small-town sheriff than the mayor of a great city.”
Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for the Emanuel campaign, said if adjusted for inflation, the ad’s claim remains correct.
“Commissioner Garcia’s defense for voting for the largest property tax increase in city history is that he actually only voted for the second-largest property tax increase in city history. Unfortunately, his math doesn’t add up. Chuy voted to raise property taxes by $173 million in today’s dollars, far outpacing the amount of any other increase in city history. The vote also raised the city’s property tax levy by a far greater percentage than any other increase in city history. Chicago voters can count on more of the same from a candidate who launched his campaign by saying all revenue options are on the table.”
During the first of five mayoral debates, Emanuel pulled the property tax charge out of his pocket like a trump card.
“You increased property taxes to the largest amount ever with your vote,” he told Garcia.
Garcia parried: “Here we go. Taking a vote from 30 years ago when we ended Council Wars, when we beat the Vrdolyak 29. We carried a deficit of $80 million from Jane Byrne. We were gonna lay off 11,000 city employees, including 5,000 policemen. I did the right thing. Several months after taking office, I did the responsible thing, which was to keep vital services and personnel, first-responders on the payroll by taking a tough vote.”
Garcia argued that the vote he cast during the 1980s “pales in comparison to the $700 million that you’ve increased over the past four years, Mr. Mayor. . . . People in Chicago feel that they have been nickel-and-dimed, fee-ed and taxed — the equivalent of a 60 percent property tax increase when you factor in everything that has happened. All the penalties. Constant.”
