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So far they haven’t, but the exit of Jesse Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez from the mayoral race has only appeared to embolden Daley further. At a council meeting last month, when three aldermen dared to interrupt the chorus of acclaim for Daley’s 2007 budget by criticizing city corruption, the mayor ridiculed them. “The inspector general will be in your office tomorrow morning,” he sneered at 28th Ward alderman Ed Smith. “We’ll make sure.” After the 20th Ward’s Arenda Troutman offered a long list of ways the Daley administration had failed the black community, the mayor challenged her to vote against the budget. She didn’t. Then, once Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle was done taking her turn at ripping corruption in City Hall–“It’s not so much that there are a number of people being arrested; it’s that they’re connected, and that they’re part of the political operation of this administration”–he looked beyond her and pretended like she hadn’t spoken at all.
Of course, that was before John Resa, a city worker and Hispanic Democratic Organization coordinator, was charged with perjury for testifying to a grand jury that he wasn’t involved in any jobs-for-campaign work tradeoffs. The feds claim otherwise. Resa’s southeast-side HDO boss was, according to the charges, a former high-ranking city official. This Individual A, as the feds describe him, closely resembles former Streets and Sanitation Department commissioner Al Sanchez. To be fair, Sanchez wasn’t actually named, and Resa pleaded not guilty.
