He Said What?

So the Mayor and a number of incumbents in the run-off meet. And the Mayor says, "I don't know why people think I have a PAC. What's this PAC everyone says I got?" I'm paraphrasing. Obviously the Mayor is doing a little sidestep here. If you've watched the Mayor at all, you can even visualize his gestures, because they are very familiar.

Then Ald. Stone chimes in: "You know. Terry just gave me a check for $10,000."

Everyone in the room groaned.

That's our Berny. Embarrassing the Mayor, embarrassing the city. Good Old Berny. You can add to that an overconfident Berny. 52% he predicts. The machine will deliver on Tuesday. It's been a tougher race than he had hoped for, but he'll get 52%. His campaign is coming together now. Naisy Dolar, a confident notes, needs at least 1,000 new voters to even have a chance. That is somehow related to the number of absentees Berny is supposed to have come in. You and I, though, have heard that tune before.

I don't pretend to know how this race will turn out. It's hard to bet against Stone because he got 5,000 votes. I'd expect that if he turned out 5,000 votes again, he wins. But I also don't think Jan Schakowsky would back a loser. She must know something I don't in this race.

It is interesting to see commenters try to spin the No Debate decision. We all have our sides. But no matter what you think about this race, Naisy Dolar refused to participate in the only candidate's forum that Ald. Stone was going to do. Trying to compare an appearance on Chicago Tonight to a debate in the neighborhood is silly. Choosing not to participate is a gamble.

If you asked me, and since it's my blog, I'm assuming you did, I don't think that Stone or his campaign could have pulled off a two-party debate. I would have wanted him to focus all his campaign's energies on trying to do so, with only five days left before election day. I would have invited every bit of media out there, and videotaped the whole thing to put up on youtube. Dolar didn't have to do anything, and she could have forced the Stone campaign to spin its wheels in the last week before the election. Meanwhile, her campaign could continue to go after their pluses, with the field virtually to themselves. (No, I don't think Berny Stone can chew gum and walk at the same time.)

But she didn't wanna. Now there's some fast thinking. In the end, it's the neighborhood that loses, because we will never get to see the two of them side-by-side. If Dolar was right to skip this debate, then no one can fault Stone for skipping the Boone School debate. The WRPCO doesn't even register in my half of the ward.

If Dolar loses, as Stone thinks she will, you can point to this decision as an indicator of her forth-coming loss. If she wins, then she should be grateful for the advise she got. They will have been right.

Only the neighborhood will have suffered.