I'm Running for President

Illinois Review ^ | December 27, 2010 A.D. | John F. Di Leo

[jfd1776]

Rahm Emanuel is indeed a citizen of the United States, and he previously served as a Congressman from Chicago, the city he seeks to rule as mayor for the next few decades.

But the fact remains that he didn’t live in Chicago for the two years prior to the election, disqualifying him from running under the only significant requirement for the office under the law.

There are plenty of rules about the filing process – how many petitions you file and when, who circulated them and whether the signers were legitimate, whether the pages are all numbered correctly and whether there’s enough of a surplus cushion to survive a challenge that finds a lot of unregistered, duplicate, or otherwise ineligible signatures (all common problems in Chicago campaigns) – but before you can file that stack of paper at all, you just have to have “resided in the municipality at least one year next preceding the election.” Is that really too much to ask?

The Board of Elections has based their decision on a fascinating concept. The question is not whether the candidate resided there during the prior year at all, but whether or not the candidate, once having held residency, whenever it occurred and however long ago, had ever renounced it.

An interesting idea, and quite reasonable in certain cases. But not this one, because the law doesn’t say that. It says “one year next preceding the election.” Not “one year”… not “any one year in his life”… not “a whole bunch of years, whether broken or unbroken.”

Continue reading "I'm Running for President"...

[jfd1776]

This bit of analysis of Illinois election law may only be interesting to people who live in Illinois... or to people who aren't crazy about seeing Rahm Emanuel elevated to Mayor of one of America's greatest cities, especially if he isn't a legitimate candidate...

[Farmer Dean]

I don't even want to think about Rahm running for President.That insidious prick is every bit as bad as Obama,if not worse.

[kbennkc]

There is the option of beating him at the ballot box instead of crying in court for an unreasonable interpretation of the statute, in an effort to disenfranchise voters, like Coleman and Miller.

[Hoodat]

Rules are for the other guy.

[jfd1776]

To Kbennkc:

Ah, but that’s my point... that it’s an unreasonable interpretation of the statute to allow Emanuel on the ballot, that the reasonable interpretation is to let him run after moving away for a year and a half.

I would never dream of running for office in a city from which I had moved away... and I don’t believe in highly wacky “technicality” disqualifications. But I don’t believe this is a technicality, by any stretch of the imagination.

[SecondAmendment]

Rahm shoud have lost his US citizenship as well, when he “volunteered” in the IDF (losing part of a digit too).

[Hugin]

OTOH, there are plenty of instances of people in politics officially “residing” other than where they actually live. Bush 41 was officially a Texan while president, despite not having an physical abode there (his address was a Houston hotel). And Dick Cheney was able to be VP because he was officially a “resident” of Wyoming despite having lived in Texas for years. For the political class, residency seems to be a somewhat elastic concept.

[jfd1776]

Hugin -

True re Bush 41 and Cheney, but it wasn’t a problem in either case. Both were natural born citizens of the USA, and that’s all that matters to their offices. They could have lived in any state of the Union, and could have moved the day before they filed, and still qualified fine.

Rahm’s is a different case: being a citizen of the USA isn’t enough; he’s running for mayor of a city within the USA, so he must be a resident of that city, for as long as its laws require. And in this case, its laws require the full year immediately preceding the election.

[Hoodat]

Rahm didn’t lose a finger serving in the IDF. That’s a big lie. Rahm lost it from a fast food restaurant job he had. He accidentally cut his finger on a slicer, but didn’t have it treated. The finger became badly infected after swimming in a lake. He ended up losing it.

[SecondAmendment]

ok, but what about the IDF?

[jfd1776]

To Hoodat:

I personally have no problem with Emanuel’s service to the IDF. Israel is our greatest ally in the world community, so I’m comfortable with an American citizen joining their military to help them in their time of need.

Remember how many US citizens - especially good patriotic Hollywood types — joined the RAF and other British units in 1939-1940 to help our friend England in their war effort, before the US was part of WWII. Helping an ally is something to praise, not to scorn.

Rahm Emanuel has a lot of drawbacks — he’s nasty, leftist, anti-Constitutional, and Obama’s chief enforcer. All reasons to oppose him in any campaign. But not reasons to bounce him from a ballot.

The residency requirement, however, is a good reason to bounce him from the ballot, and it’s driving me nuts that they’ve interpreted the rules so strangely as to allow him to run despite having lived in Washington for half the required Chicago residency period!