Rahm? What? Who? Whatever.
My attention yesterday was on the race for mayor in Illinois' largest city south of the Chicago area. The primary runoff narrowed the field of candidates from seven down to four: Mike Houston, Sheila Stocks-Smith, Mike Coffey, and Frank Kunz.
I expected Stocks-Smith to finish second, but I was very surprised that Republican-endorsed candidate Mike Coffey finished third instead of first. Republicans have a long list of precinct workers with patronage jobs at the county, convention center and other units of local government they control. I thought their organization would win the day.
Here's my guess about why Houston did better than expected: retired people who never left Springfield. This was a low turnout election, which means a large portion of the voters were retirees who can be counted on to always vote.
The thing about Springfield is that it's full of people who prefer comfortable predictability over excitement and change. If they liked to experience new things then they would have left town years ago like most of their children did. So who would someone like that support for mayor? The familiar name who used to be mayor 30 years ago, of course.
Sheila Stocks-Smith's strong showing was a victory for those who think Democrats should be Democrats. She has the support of Dick Durbin, Sierra Club, and most of Springfield's progressive Democratic leaders.
Conservative Democrats backed Republican Mike Farmer. Farmer is an intelligent and likable candidate so his loss can be attributed to the lack of organization among the old guard conservative Democrats.
Nominal Democrat Frank Kunz won his own ward (with less than a third of the vote), but also showed that he has little support elsewhere in the city. The biggest impact he can have on the race is to drop out and endorse the only Democrat with a shot at winning.
So what happens in the April 5 general election? First, those who backed the three losing candidates will have to pick someone new. More importantly, additional voters will show up since they'll also be voting for city council candidates.
It will be a different electorate in the general election so there's no guarantee that a familiar name will beat out organization again.