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" GUEST POST BY NANCY DAY In the end, it came down to water. After nearly an hour of &amp;quot;debate&amp;quot; between Chicago&amp;#039;s incumbent mayor Rahm Emanuel and his challenger, Cook County Commissioner Jesus &amp;quot;Chuy&amp;quot; Garcia last night (3/16), NBC-5 political editor Carol Marin asked each to give a succinct &amp;quot;Big Idea.&amp;quot; Chuy promoted a Port of Chicago on Lake Michigan that would help the economy of the South Side. Rahm advocated for more riverfront improvements.   Each candidate accomplished what his advisors no doubt told him: Rahm: be nice. Chuy: be mayoral. Marin is a skilled interviewer, but each candidate dodged most of her questions. Emanuel was more specific, but still got in his key campaign cliches, that previous state and local administrations had &amp;quot;kicked the can down the road&amp;quot; re: the city&amp;#039;s dire financial straits and that he had cut the budget deficit in half. Marin asked each candidate if he&amp;#039;d be able to write a check for $550 million, the latest estimate due police and fire retirees at the end of the year. Rahm at one point ruled out a property tax increase, which most analysts think is inevitable, although he also referred to it as a &amp;quot;last resort.&amp;quot; Instead, he suggested making the sales tax &amp;quot;more progressive,&amp;quot; taxing services as well as tangible goods. The sales tax is 9.25 % and only a sliver is the city. It was even higher until the Cook County Board, on which Garcia serves, cut it 1%. Last night, Chuy lost or ignored a chance to tout that tax-cutting experience. Instead, he chided Rahm for his &amp;quot;rich cronies&amp;quot; and contended the former White House insider and congressman is &amp;quot;out of touch&amp;quot; with the ordinary citizens of Chicago. He also criticized his use of &amp;quot;TIF &amp;quot;(Tax Increment Financing) funds, benefiting downtown instead of neighborhoods. An analysis by Greg Hines, political reporter for Crain&amp;#039;s Chicago Business, supports Rahm&amp;#039;s assertions on this revenue source and expenditures. One of the best questions of the night came from a young woman named Anastasia, a student at the University of Chicago, who asked what each would do to integrate a city where so many people still live largely segregated lives, a matter ignored by the city&amp;#039;s major newspaper editorial boards in endorsement questionnaires but detailed by the Chicago Reader. The in-person audience was quiet, as dictated by NBC and Telemundo. It included Tom Balanoff, Illinois State Council President of SEIU, the state&amp;#039;s largest union, which endorsed Garcia Sunday. The head of the Service Employees International Union was in a more rambunctious mood Sunday when he pledged workers and money to support Garcia, &amp;quot;the batman we need&amp;quot; versus &amp;quot;bully&amp;quot; Emanuel. Rahm looked relaxed -- for him, anyway -- perhaps because of a poll the Tribune released Sunday showing him with a comfortable lead three weeks out. Of course, polls were way off on Feb. 24, a chilly day that in Chicago&amp;#039;s past meant the ward-heelers would get out the vote. This time, those fired up were the &amp;quot;anybody but Rahm&amp;quot; voters. Neither made a major gaffe. And, as Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown notes, Chicago will survive. The real winner, in life if not electoral politics, could be the one who comes in second on April 7 and can further contemplate a water view. Nancy Day is a veteran political writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Associated Press, and has worked as a freelancer in New England for the Los Angeles Times, Working Woman magazine and other publications. She was on the faculty of Boston University. Based in Chicago, she was chair of the Journalism department at Columbia College for 11 years, where she is now an associate professor. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33714/letter-from-chicago/>