“Beware the blizzard!” Chicagoans are being warned, a warning politicians have ignored at their peril in the past.
Take 1979—please.
I heard Tom Skilling, WGN-TV’s venerable weather guy, comparing the coming storm (14-22 inches expected by Wednesday) to great snowstorms in city history. He referred to the blizzard of ‘79 as the “Bilandic-Byrne storm”.
That one brought us 16.5 inches of snow on January 13th, still a single-day Chicago record. The snowfall fallout devastated the re-election hopes of Mayor Michael Bilandic. Unplowed streets, uncollected garbage, and unhappy commuters turned out big against Bilandic, and Jane Byrne was elected. The 1979 blizzard even has its own Facebook page.
Currently, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is deep in the throes of a winter of discontent, because of snow. Bloomberg had to apologize for city crews’ performance during a December blizzard. That mea culpa, viewable here, is one of the few times where the phrase “chagrined billionaire” really seems appropriate.
Apology not accepted by a lot of New Yorkers— the mayor’s approval ratings dropped 13 percentage points between October and January.
The pollster certainly blamed the snow. “Mayor Bloomberg clearly will need a big shovel if he wants to dig himself out of this political storm ,” quipped Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, Director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
Mayor Rich Daley’s approval ratings are already down to Bloomberg-esque levels (only 35% approval in a Tribune poll last summer). Daley’s not running for re-election, of course, but getting blizzard response right may help him get back some mojo, for legacy purposes.
After all, his dad Richard J’s reputation survived the Blizzard of ’67— still the Chicago snowfall champ, with 23 inches coming down over a couple of days. Not that things weren’t rough, according to the Trib:
“Looting was rampant. Long lines formed at grocery stores, and shelves were emptied in moments. As a result of the record snow, 26 people died, including a 10-year-old girl who was accidentally caught in the cross-fire between police and looters and a minister who was run over by a snowplow. Several others died of heart attacks from shoveling snow.”
The imminent big snow will certainly cut into early voting turnout over the next few days. It’s possible that mayoral candidates will weigh in on how they’d cope with blizzards of the future:
Rahm Emanuel might argue he was at the president’s side when most of 140 Federal emergency declarations of 2009-10 were issued. Certainly, Barack Obama’s Federal Emergency Management Agency has fared better than George W. Bush’s FEMA. Unfortunately for Emanuel, the President was never taped saying “Heckuva job, Rahmie.”
Gery Chico will almost certainly regale us with stories of his boyhood adventures in the snow, to underscore his status as a lifelong Chicago resident (unlike a frontrunner who’s been in Washington a lot in the last two decades). Chico may point out that none of Chicago’s 10 worst snowstorms took place while he was at City Hall, as Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, perhaps pointing to Storm Prevention Measures he drew up.
Carol Moseley-Braun might take issue with calling a big storm a crisis, saying that creates fear— that’s pretty much her position on the city’s dire finances. Perhaps she’ll reference other candidates’ problems with snow, which critics will perceive as a veiled slap at an opponent’s drug history.
Miguel del Valle could complain he’s having a hard time making his views on snow removal known, since his campaign’s desperately underfunded.
Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins and Dock Walls will be mad nobody’s asked them.
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