Consultant: Emanuel Has Become Sympathetic Figure
CHICAGO (CBS/WBBM) -- The back-and-forth over Rahm Emanuel's residency has achieved an unexpected result.
As WBBM Newsradio 780's John Cody reports, political analyst Don Rose suggests the battle may have backfired on financiers of the unsuccessful challenge.
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"Ironically, it took a guy who is known to have sharp edges, even among his fans, and made him into a sympathetic figure because he was looking persecuted by whomever; unknown forces," Rose said.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown agreed that the residency controversy had turned Emanuel into sympathetic figure.
"(T)he combination of the televised residency hearing in December and this week's surprise appellate court ruling that temporarily knocked him off the ballot managed to accomplish something Emanuel's commercials never could have done," Brown wrote in his Friday column. "They turned the swaggering Emanuel into a sympathetic figure for many Chicagoans."
Brown added that a mystery remains as to how the residency controversy got started in the first place.
Questions were circulating about whether Emanuel met residency requirements to run for mayor as far back as September, shortly after Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement.
