For Emanuel, Temptation in the Form of a Dream Job (Mayor of Chicago)

[NX Express]

 

WASHINGTON — When Rahm Emanuel was running for Congress on the North Side of Chicago, he would often make calls while he was out shaking hands near the city’s elevated trains, with their distinctive rumbling sending an unmistakable signal that he was standing in his district.

 

Mr. Emanuel was born and raised in Chicago, but he has never been seen as one of the city’s towering figures. And that, his friends say, is one reason why being mayor of Chicago has long been among his biggest political ambitions.

 

But is it better than being chief of staff to the first president from Chicago?

 

To those who know Mr. Emanuel well, the answer is unquestionably yes, which is why they believe he is seriously weighing leaving the White House in the wake of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s abrupt announcement on Tuesday that he intends to step down next year.

 

“Something like that doesn’t come around a lot,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, doing little to douse speculation about Mr. Emanuel. “It’s no surprise that’s a job he’s been interested in.”

 

Yet the decision is complicated by the timing of leaving President Obama and the West Wing during one of the most trying periods for the administration. And there is an even bigger question for Mr. Emanuel to consider: Could he win?

 

In a year in which political races across the country are causing angst for the White House, the vacancy in Chicago’s mayoral race could touch off a dominolike series of personnel changes at the White House.

 

To keep the issue from becoming a distraction, Mr. Emanuel tried to set the tone on Wednesday by not directly mentioning it during his daily senior staff meetings. But less than two months before the midterm elections, as Democrats try to turn around their political fortunes with a batch of new economic proposals that Mr. Emanuel helped write, several aides said the prospect of a new leader in the corner office of the West Wing was hard for the rest of the staff to ignore.

 

Mr. Emanuel told friends that he had not yet made a decision about whether to run, but that he would probably make up his mind in the next week or so.

 

Read more at:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/politics/09rahm.html?ref=us