J.B. Pritzker has apologized so many times for what he said about black politicians in a wiretapped conversation with Rod Blagojevich, it’s beginning to sound like a never-ending political version of going to confession.
Chris Kennedy hasn’t been the least bit apologetic about accusing Mayor Rahm Emanuel of masterminding a “strategic gentrification plan” to intentionally push blacks out of Chicago.
The African-American vote is up for grabs in the March 20 Democratic gubernatorial primary, and it’s likely to be decisive.
ANALYSIS
Only one of the six Democratic candidates is black — Tio Hardiman. But the top three candidates — Pritzker, Kennedy and State Sen. Daniel Biss — all have chosen African-American running mates.
J.B. Pritzker’s team is counting on winning “close to 50 percent” of the 200,000 to 220,000 black votes that have been consistently cast during Democratic primaries held during off-presidential years.
If that pans out, Pritzker will be “in good shape” to capture the Democratic nomination with all of the other pieces of the coalition he hopes to cobble together among progressives, Hispanics and downstate, his strategists contend.
Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), powerful chairman of the City Council’s Budget Committee, believes Pritzker will meet that mark — even after the political furor triggered by his wiretapped November 2008 phone call with Blagojevich.
In the recording, Pritzker pitched Secretary of State Jesse White as the “least offensive” choice to fill the Senate seat being vacated by then President-elect Barack Obama.
Pritzker described now-former state Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) as too “crass” for the job and joked along with the governor when Blagojevich suggested appointing Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to fill the vacancy.
“People were taken aback by the tape. They’ve asked many questions — not only about what was said, but about how was it obtained. The public can read between the lines. They know it was a set-up for them to have dropped this FBI tape at this time to diminish him,” said Austin, who has endorsed Pritzker.
“It did hurt [Pritzker]. But his apology may have soothed those who were hurt by a conversation he thought was private. Jesse White accepted. Am I supposed to stay mad when the very individual the conversation was [about] accepted” the apology?
Jones, one of a handful of black politicians who has endorsed Kennedy, did not accept Pritzker’s apology.
He branded Pritzker a “one-eyed jack” who is “trying to buy the black vote” and had some choice words for White, City Treasurer Kurt Summers and the handful of aldermen who stood with Pritzker as the candidate offered his first of many public apologies.
“I expect that from them. They are all safe blacks. A safe black is not gonna challenge or do anything,” Jones said.
Austin was livid.
“Who is he to say who has any backbone? We all have backbone — just like he does. Just because we didn’t stand with him on his tirade doesn’t mean we don’t have any backbone,” she said of Jones.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) has bucked much of the black political establishment to join the Kennedy camp. He is joined by Jones, longtime Congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis and Police Board President Lori Lightfoot.
Beale believes the “grass roots” black vote will “shift to Kennedy,” scion of a political dynasty with longstanding ties to the African-American community.
“They’re comfortable with the Kennedys. He has the right message. He’s trying to reform some things. We don’t need the status quo. We don’t need business as usual. We need somebody who’s gonna say, ‘I’m gonna shake this thing up and bring some fairness to the city.’ That message resonates in the black community,” Beale said, pointing to Kennedy’s attacks on the archaic and unfair system used to assess property in Cook County.
“People make promises to the black community all the time to get our votes,” he said. “Then, they sell us down the river and we don’t get anything in return. I don’t think we’re gonna get that with Kennedy.”
Beale argued that the Blagojevich-Pritzker wiretap has had a “huge” impact, adding, “People don’t trust him. It pulled the cover back that this person isn’t really who he says he is. Those weren’t jokes. Those were insults to our community.”
Delmarie Cobb is an African-American political strategist who is handling Sharon Fairley’s campaign for attorney general. She is not aligned with any candidate in the governor’s race.
Cobb pointed to the 20 percent turnout in the special aldermanic election won by Emanuel-appointee Sophia King as evidence that black turnout may not be what it should be on March 20.
King’s easy win in a field of six marked the first test after two seminal political events: the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the election of President Donald Trump.
“All of the activism doesn’t seem to be translating into, `I’m going to send a message through my vote,’ ” Cobb said. “We’re seeing it all over the country. But I don’t know that we’re gonna see it here.”
Unless “another shoe drops,” such as another wiretapped conversation with Blagojevich, Cobb said she expects Pritzker to squeak through on the strength of the black vote.
But there’s no question that the race for the African-American vote has tightened because of Kennedy’s message that “the black community is getting a raw deal” and being pushed out of Chicago, Cobb said.
“In the black community, we’ve been thinking that for a long time. To finally have a gubernatorial candidate and a white person articulate and affirm it certainly brought some people over to Chris,” Cobb said. “The mainstream media said Chris was crazy. But if you look at when his poll numbers went up among black people, that’s when.”
Biss has surged to second in recent polls, but he’s still “stuck in single-digits” among African-Americans — even after spending more than $1 million in the Chicago media market, sources said. That narrows his path to victory.
“He’d have to win 60 percent of the white vote in the Chicago market to compensate for the fact that he’s getting almost no black votes,” said a Democratic strategist advising Pritzker. “Biss and Kennedy are the yin-and-yang. Biss gets the white Chicago and suburban voters who are not for J.B. But Kennedy does better among blacks and downstate voters. They’re canceling each other out.”
Hardiman is on track to get somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent of the African-American vote, the Pritzker strategist claimed.
Former State Comptroller Dan Hynes knows first-hand how important the African-American vote can be in a Democratic gubernatorial primary.
He lost to former Gov. Pat Quinn in 2010 by 8,000 votes — less than 1 percent of the statewide vote — after Quinn narrowly defeated Hynes among African-Americans. And now Hynes is informally advising Pritzker.
“The black community is very astute. They don’t just listen to one message and make a decision. They’ll listen to the entire argument back and forth,” Hynes said.
“J.B. has done a great job of saying, ‘I could have done better. I wish I had not said those words. But if you look at my entire history and look at who I am, you should know where my heart is.’ . . . If anything, it’s caused him to show his true self. He’s not somebody who makes excuses. He’s not somebody who tries to talk around things. He confronted it directly. People really respected that.”
