CHICAGO (AP) — Rahm Emanuel was sworn in Monday as Chicago's first new mayor in two decades, a historic power shift for a city where the retiring Richard M. Daley was the only leader a whole generation had ever known.
The former White House chief of staff took the oath
of office at downtown's Millennium Park, one of the signature accomplishments
in Daley's efforts to transform Chicago from an industrial hub into a gleaming
global tourist destination. He planned to head to City Hall later to the
fifth-floor office that was Daley's lair for 22 years.
"We must face the truth," Emanuel said in
his inaugural speech. "It is time to take on the challenges that threaten
the very future of our city: the quality of our schools, the safety of our
streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to
create the jobs of the future."
"The decisions we make in the next two or
three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next 20 or
30."
Emanuel inherits a city with big financial
problems. His transition team predicted a $700 million budget shortfall next
year, but because of some controversial decisions by Daley — most notably the
push to privatize parking meters — he has limited ways to pay for school
improvements or repair the city's aging infrastructure.
In his speech, Emanuel walked a fine between
bluntly assessing the city's problems without being directly critical of the
departing mayor.
"From the moment I began my campaign for
mayor, I have been clear about the hard truths and the tough choices we face.
We simply can't afford the size of city government that we had in the past, and
taxpayers deserve a more effective and efficient government than the one we
have today."
Emanuel also showed that he would not be shy about
wading into national politics, referring to efforts in other Midwestern states
to eliminate union rights for many public employees as part of budget cuts.
"I reject how leaders in Wisconsin and Ohio
are exploiting their fiscal crisis to achieve a political goal. That course is
not the right course for Chicago's future," he said.
Emanuel, who represented Chicago in Congress before
he went to Washington to become Obama's senior aide, made his mayoral ambitions
known more than a year ago during an interview on Charlie Rose's PBS talk show,
saying it was "no secret" that he wanted to run for mayor if Daley
did not seek re-election.
When Daley announced last fall that he would not
seek a seventh term after 22 years in office — a longer tenure than any other
mayor in the city's history — some wondered if Emanuel had some prior knowledge
when he made that comment.
But if he did, that didn't stop him — just days
before Daley's stunning announcement — from renewing his lease with the tenant
who rented his Chicago home while the Emanuels lived in Washington.
That decision to rent his house was at the center
of the biggest obstacle standing between Emanuel and the mayor's office: the
legal battle over whether he was a resident of Chicago and eligible to run for
mayor.
The fight ended with an Illinois Supreme Court
ruling in his favor — but not before an appellate court panel knocked his name
off the ballot, citing his time away from the city.
Once that issue was out of the way, Emanuel simply
steamrolled over his opponents.
Branded as a Washington outsider by other
candidates, Emanuel didn't miss an opportunity to remind voters that, unlike
his opponents, he had friends in high places, even as he sought to convince
Chicagoans that he was one of them.
Armed with a $14 million campaign war chest that
dwarfed those of his opponents, the only question in the last weeks of the race
was whether Emanuel would get enough votes to avoid a runoff.
Emanuel, who kept his temper and his famously
profane vocabulary in check during the campaign, ended up collecting 55 percent
of the vote. In his last election campaigns, Daley was accustomed to collecting
more than 70 percent.
Emanuel seemed to allude to his reputation when he
spoke about school reform.
"As some have noted, including my wife, I am
not a patient man," he said. "When it comes to improving our schools,
I will not be a patient mayor."
Once elected, Emanuel wasted little time putting
his administration together, bringing with him a number of people from his days
in Washington.
For key posts, he went far outside the city. He
hired the schools chief in Rochester, N.Y., to run the city's massive education
system. He went to Newark, N.J., to find his police superintendent rather than
promoting from within. And where Daley hired a local newspaper reporter as his
press secretary, Emanuel hired his away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
in Washington.
In his speech, Emanuel thanked Daley for his
service to the city, noting how the "world class" park where he was
speaking had once been an abandoned rail yard and "nagging urban
eyesore."
"A generation ago, people were writing Chicago
off as a dying city," the new mayor said. "They said our downtown was
failing, our neighborhoods were unlivable, our schools were the worst in the
nation, and our politics had become so divisive we were referred to as Beirut
on the Lake."
When Daley took office in 1989, "he challenged
all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city
today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did."
Emanuel's swearing-in completed an interesting role
swap between City Hall and the White House: Emanuel's replacement as Obama's
chief of staff is the outgoing mayor's younger brother, William Daley.
In a mark of Emanuel's continuing ties with
Washington, Vice President Joe Biden attended the inauguration, as did William
Daley, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner and two other cabinet
secretaries.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
