Mayor Daley’s official Twitter account offered a tantalizing tweet about Rahm Emanuel.
“Check back later this afternoon for news regarding Rahm Emanuel,” was the message the mayor (or, more likely, his webmaster) blasted out into the ether.
What was it? An endorsement of Emanuel’s mayoral ambitions? A smackdown of the brash young pup for daring to covet the mayor’s chair while a Daley is still keeping it warm?
Nope.
We learned a few hours later that the message was meant to trumpet Emanuel's inclusion on a panel at the 6th annual Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, an urban issues conference taking place April 27 at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Exciting, huh?
Daley, who tweets at most two or three times a day, thought this was the biggest news he could communicate --- on the same day that Emanuel announced his ambition to take over the fifth floor at City hall.
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Either Daley is super excited about panels, or the tweet suggests that the he really, really likes this kid.
Not everyone feels that way, though. Over at the Sun-Times, Fran Spielman reported that some Daley associates thought it was tasteless for Emanuel to talk about running for mayor on the same day that Daley’s cancer-stricken wife dedicated the Maggie Daley Center for Women’s Cancer Care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
“That’s Rahm,” they said.
Shamelessness is an essential quality for getting ahead in politics. Emanuel’s potential rivals seemed a little miffed that he thought of announcing for mayor first -- and, unlike them, had a national platform for doing so.
“I am sure every word that he spoke was not some sort of off-the-cuff remark but calculated to achieve some political goal,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez told Lynn Sweet. “When I see Rahm Emanuel, [from now on] I don't know if I am talking to the president's chief of staff and if that is his chief priority, or if I am talking to a future candidate for the mayor of the city of Chicago.” []
And Rep. Mike Quigley told Mark Brown he’s heard that Daley is running for re-election.
You could almost hear them screaming at their TV screens “That low-down, conniving son of a B****! He’s supposed to wait his turn” in a tone wholly unsuited for the Charlie Rose Show.
From the way Daley’s promoting Emanuel, maybe it is his turn.
