Emanuel allies create a new PAC to strengthen his City Council majority

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s allies on Friday created a new political action committee to re-elect the mayor and strengthen his City Council majority.

The “Chicago Victory PAC” will be chaired by Trisha Rooney, founder and CEO of R4 Service, a document destruction, shredding and record management company. She is the daughter of former Waste Management CEO Phillip Rooney Sr.

Frank Libby, the mayoral ally who recently retired as president of the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, will serve as treasurer. The carpenters’ union has an ownership stake in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Emanuel’s allies also plan to revive the Chicago Forward super PAC that spent $4 million in 2015 on a similar effort with mixed results.

As a super-PAC, the revived Chicago Forward will once again have no cap on contributions. But, it will also be prohibited from coordinating with Emanuel’s re-election campaign.

The Chicago Victory PAC will be able to coordinate with the Emanuel campaign. But, it will have to abide by fundraising caps that limit contributions to $5,600 from individuals, $11,100 from corporations, labor organizations and associations and $55,400 from candidate political committees and political action committees.

Libby said the mayoral and aldermanic races will be a primary focus. But he said, “That doesn’t mean that’s all it’s gonna do.”

“Wherever we can open up a dialogue and build bridges with politicians, that’s what we’re trying to do,” Libby said.

“We need to elect our friends and defeat our enemies. We’re in a life-and-death struggle with politicians in this state who want to see us destroyed.”

Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s City Council floor leader, has not decided yet whether to seek re-election.

O’Connor was asked Friday whether money from either of the Emanuel-aligned PAC’s will be enough to save aldermen who have been forced to walk the tax plank repeatedly to solve the city’s $36 billion pension crisis.

“That’s something you can’t worry about. The Council has done things that have been necessary to put the city on firmer economic ground to help make it inviting for new people and new businesses to move here and to make it where we’re not teetering on the verge of bankruptcy,” O’Connor said.

“If folks are gonna lose their elections based on the fact that they carried out their responsibilities, then does the next Council not do what the responsible things are so they can continue to be in office? …. If people don’t want you to do the responsible thing, that’s fine. Then, we’ve joined the age of Trump.”

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said he got no help from Chicago Forward last time around and he’s not expecting to get any money this time.

“The mayor is just flexing some political muscle, which he should be doing. If he feels confident enough that he can work on his own election and the election of allies, more power to him,” Sawyer said.

Given the backlash among black voters tied to Emanuel’s handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, Sawyer was asked whether accepting money from Emanuel-aligned PAC’s would help or hurt incumbent African-American aldermen.

“That’s a good question,” he said with a laugh.

In 2015, the Chicago Forward super PAC raised $4 million to re-elect the mayor and strengthen his City Council majority.

The big money effort sputtered badly in Round One even though it raised money from many of the same people who contributed heavily to Emanuel.

Chicago Forward reported spending nearly $830,000 to try to bolster 32 council incumbents, including JoAnn Thompson, the 16th Ward alderman who died shortly after the February, 2015 election.

The committee also helped two candidates for open seats: Patrick Daley Thompson, nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daly, in the 11th Ward and Glenda Franklin in the 17th. Thompson was forced into a runoff in the family’s ancestral power base, but won it.

Franklin lost to Ald. David Moore (17th).

Of the amount that Chicago Forward spent on mayoral allies, 64 percent went to candidates forced into runoffs; 31 percent went to winners and five percent went to two losers — Franklin and Ald. Rey Colon (35th).

Smaller amounts were devoted to opposing two of the most vocal mayoral critics on the Council.

Scott Waguespack (32nd) easily won re-election after Chicago Forward spent $6,000 in a failed attempt to unseat him.

Ald. John Arena (45th) was forced into a runoff, and ultimately survived a runoff against John Garrido, thanks to heavy union support that far surpassed the nearly $20,000 that the pro-Emanuel PAC used to oppose him.

Becky Carroll, the longtime Emanuel confidante who ran Chicago Forward during the 2015 election cycle, argued then that the effort “helped 18 aldermen secure re-election and placed 12 of 13 facing runoffs as the top vote-getters in their ward.”

She also pointed out that the long list of union groups opposed to the mayor had together spent almost twice as much as Chicago Forward in the aldermanic races.

Those groups “failed outright in unseating eight of our aldermen and had to spend nearly $200,000 to obtain their only win,” Carroll said then, referring to Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s landslide defeat of Colon.