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Many of his biggest contributors live outside Chicago. He received large checks from New York (the financiers Roger Altman, Ronald Perelman and Donald Trump each gave $50,000); Silicon Valley ($50,000 from Steve Jobs); and especially Southern California, where Emanuel’s brother, Ari, a powerful Hollywood agent, raised money on his behalf. David Geffen gave $100,000, Steven Spielberg $75,000.

Yes, get used to that title. In just 72 hours, election day dawns in Chicago. And most likely, Rahm Emanuel will become mayor of the Windy City; the former White House chief of staff draws 58 percent of the votes

It took an almost incoherent and incomprehensible opinion from the Supreme Court of Illinois to restore Emanuel to the ballot. It was supremely ironic that Michael Kasper, one of Emanuel’s lead attorneys, had the audacity to argue that the same one year residential requirement for municipal candidates that was in controversy in the challenge to Emanuel’s mayoral candidacy ought to have barred an aldermanic candidate from the ballot in the 27th Ward. As the Irish cynic and scholar, Jonathan Swift, famously observed there are lawyers who can argue “White is Black and Black is White” according to how they are...

Chico Supporter Stirs Controversy, Calls Emanuel “Judas”UPDATED 2/16/11 7:32 p.m. CHICAGO (CBS) – A key supporter of mayoral candidate Gery Chico has raised some eyebrows by saying something about Rahm Emanuel that the Emanuel campaign called blatantly ugly. Jim Sweeney, head of of Operating Engineers Local 150, was endorsing Chico Tuesday night at a labor rally when he called Emanuel a “Wall Street Judas.” **SNIP** Emanuel’s campaign didn’t like any of it. In a statement Wednesday, Emanuel – who is Jewish – said “I have absolute confidence that the people of the city of Chicago will see this comment for...

To exclude Emanuel, to throw him off the ballot because he had the temerity to go to Washington to serve the president, would have been an outrage against this inclusive spirit of democracy. And, according to Thursday’s slap-down of the state Appellate Court’s Monday ruling, it would have tossed out 150 years of settled residency law. We have defended Emanuel’s right to be on the ballot in two earlier editorials, leading some to question whether we would have so forcefully run to the defense of a less prominent candidate. In truth, probably not, though the same legal and common-sense arguments...

In a unanimous decision, which revealed divisions within the Supreme Court, released yesterday, the court ruled that Rahm Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor and that he was a resident of Chicago for one year next preceding the election. The Court held that the candidate’s intent to return after being absent from the city for twenty months and having leased his residence to tenants for approximately two years, through and including June 30, 2011, trumped the fact that he had no permanent abode in the city during the relevant time frame for determining candidate eligibility. The majority opinion written...

Did anyone really doubt that the Chicago fix was in all along? The Illinois Supreme Court just announced a 5-2 decision to allow Rahm Emanuel on the ballot for the February 22 Chicago mayoral election. Earlier today, former IL Republican Gov. Jim Thompson and other members of the state GOP establishment came out in favor of giving the former Obama ballot access.

Politics: Rahm Emanuel thought he was above the law, but an Illinois court says he can't run for mayor of a city he doesn't live in. At least he can vote for someone else. It's been said that through redistricting and gerrymandering we no longer live in an era where voters choose their leaders, but one in which leaders choose their voters. Sometimes you can even pick the state you want to be senator from, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did in New York. At least she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, made an effort to meet...

Former Southwest Side Alderman Frank Stemberk provided my first lesson on residency law as applied to Chicago politics, not that he did so by choice. Although he represented the 22nd Ward, which encompassed Little Village, Stemberk was living with his wife and children in a nice house they had purchased in suburban Riverside when I became aware of the arrangement in 1985. Stemberk’s Riverside home overlooking a quaint park was a short drive from a building in the city where the alderman maintained his legal voting address, but it was far removed from the urban problems faced by his constituents,...

The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of a court decision that knocked Rahm Emanuel out of the mayoral race. Earlier, the Supreme Court ordered the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners to put Emanuel’s name back on the mayoral ballot while it considered Emanuel’s appeal of Monday’s Illinois Appellate Court ruling that tossed him out of the race to replace Mayor Daley. The Supreme Court said it will not accept any new legal briefs or even hear oral arguments on the case. Instead, the court will rely on the briefs already filed at the appellate court level.

Developing.

The Illinois Supreme Court has granted Rahm Emanuel's stay. Which means he's back on the ballot. Earlier today Emanuel's spokesman Ben Labolt said he had plans to turn to the U.S. Supreme Court if Emanuel doesn't receive a favorable ruling from the state. Emanuel's lawyers filed an emergency appeal with the Illinois Supreme Court, asking to have him re-added to ballots. Today, ballots are being printed without Emanuel's name after an Illinois Appellate Court residency decision on Monday booted him. Some believe Emanuel will look at a First Amendment question for the U.S. court to weigh in if a state...

As the Rahm Emanuel Chicago mayoral residency case heads to the Illinois Supreme Court--an Illinois Appellate panel knocked him off the Feb. 22 primary ballot on Monday-- the question folks are asking is: What is Anne Burke going to do? There are seven members of the Illinois Supreme Court and the one with the most political ties is Justice Anne Burke, married to Ald. Edward Burke (14th) the most powerful alderman in Chicago's City Council--and one of the biggest backers of Gery Chico's mayoral bid. She may want to argue that she is a judge in her own right, has...

As soon as Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement, Washington D.C. resident Rahm Emanuel handed a resignation letter to his boss, packed his bags, and headed back to Chicago. Throughout the ensuing battle to enforce the Illinois election code, the Rahm Emanuel for Mayor campaign has been chanting the slogan “Let the People Decide!” They collected enough signatures; surely that should be enough. A pesky little thing like not being a Chicago resident for half of the statutory requirement of one year shouldn’t be a roadblock if a majority of the people of Chicago – living, dead, and fictional...

President Barack Obama wants former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to stay on the Chicago mayoral ballot, a top presidential confidante said Tuesday. “I think that [Obama] believes that [Emanuel] is eligible, and that he believes that Rahm will pursue his appeal in the courts,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama and fellow Chicagoan, on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” As the president said when Emanuel left the White House last fall, Obama still “thinks Rahm will make a terrific mayor,” Jarrett said. An appellate court ordered Monday that Emanuel’s name be removed from the ballot because he did...

One of the most useful ruses used by skilled magicians is called misdirection. If the audience can be distracted momentarily, the prestidigitator can engage in some sleight hand maneuvering to make a trick appear real. Emanuel has been doing that for weeks and months until the appellate decision was released. Emanuel and his spin doctors have planted stories about his grumpy tenants and how Rahm the white knight nobly answered the call to serve President Obama as a matter of patriotic duty and chivalry. Rahm stressed how he paid property taxes and owned a building in Chicago without acknowledging that...

The two Appellate Court judges responsible for tossing Rahm Emanuel from the ballot in February's mayoral race both won their jobs after being anointed by a Chicago political power broker who openly supports an Emanuel opponent. Longtime Appellate Court Judges Thomas E. Hoffman and Shelvin Louise Marie Hall — who on Monday ruled that Emanuel's stay in Washington precludes him from running for mayor this year — were both judicial candidates slated for election by the Cook County Democratic Party judicial slating committee chaired by Ald. Edward Burke, 14th. Burke, one of Chicago's most powerful politicians, holds huge sway in...

Former President Barak Obama White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel who left that position to run for the Mayor’s political office in Chicago got the shock of his life when an Illinois Appeals Court ruled today (January 24, 2011) that because he did not live in the city full-time, and for one year his name cannot get on the ballot.

Rahm Emanuel's residency fight just took a turn for the worse. The Illinois Appellate Court ruled 2-1 to overturn a Chicago Board of Elections decision to allow Rahm Emanuel on the mayoral ballot. Rahm's Attorney Kevin Forde says "its a surprise." More to come. Check back for details.