A Glimpse into a possible future for Rahm Emanuel

[Mira]

Emanuel wants to succeed Daley as mayor
April 20, 2010 4:16 AM | UPDATED STORY
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He has been equivocal on the subject in the past, but Monday night White House chief of staff and native Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel made no bones about it: He wants to be the mayor of Chicago.

"I hope Mayor Daley seeks reelection. I will work and support him if he seeks reelection," Emanuel told Charlie Rose on the host's PBS talk show, in an interview to be broadcast at 11 p.m. "But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor of the city of Chicago," Emanuel continued. "That's always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives."

In January, after the Washington Post published a story that said Emanuel, a one-time Daley aide and longtime supporter of the mayor, was mulling a mayoral run, Emanuel did not deny the report, instead saying in a statement he was "100 percent focused on the job at hand: serving President Obama as his chief of staff."

At the time, Daley himself dismissed the report as gossip.

But tonight, Emanuel said he missed the regular contact he had with constituents as a representative of Illinois' 5th District. "You learned a lot," he told Rose, according to a transcript of the interview.

Emanuel has long been rumored to covet the job of Speaker of the House, but he said in the interview that hope was "over."

Emanuel was a chief fundraiser for the mayor's first election campaign in 1989 and later served as an aide to Daley. He was a White House staffer during the Clinton administration and after a brief career in investment banking, was elected to Congress in 2002.

-- Katherine Skiba and Andrew L. Wang

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/rahm-emanuel-mayor-chicago-richard-daley-election-white-house-chief-staff-barack-obama-president.html