The end of an era

Rico says it wasn't quite his mouth to God's ears (as if He would be listening), but it happened anyway, according to an article in The New York Times by Susan Saulny:

Moments after Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that he would not seek re-election, a text message popped up on Mary Williams-Taylor’s mobile phone: “Hallelujah!” it read. “Did you hear the good news?”
Just ending her shift as a hospital laboratory technician, Ms. Williams-Taylor, 50, was instantly struck by feelings of sadness and dread. “Don’t joke,” she wrote back. “This is awful. What are we going to do without Daley? I’m afraid to even think about it.”
The two friends and their quick exchange capture the primary emotions that have swept over Chicago since Mr. Daley, 68, said he would bow out of the office he has held since 1989: enthusiasm about an opportunity for real change for the first time in decades, alongside a real fear of the unknown.
Because of Mayor Daley’s enormous influence over almost every aspect of city life, as well as the length of his tenure, his exit will leave a significant void; imagine if a strong mayor like Rudolph W. Giuliani or Michael R. Bloomberg held the reins in New York for twenty years. All power radiated from Mr. Daley, so there will almost certainly be a new power structure here, from the neighborhood level to the City Council and city agencies and all the way to the mayor’s office. Mr. Daley has not groomed a successor, leaving no guarantee that the transition will be smooth or that the end result will look anything like what Chicagoans have grown used to over the last 21 years. The political waters are already churning, as though a dam broke, releasing a flood of pent-up would-be mayors.
“There are meetings going on from every creed, clique, race group, and gender in every part of town,” said State Senator Rickey R. Hendon, a Democrat. “It’s the wild, wild West, every man for himself. I’m a candidate myself at the moment. Everybody I know is running. The doorman in my building is running.”
But some people wonder who would have the vision and coalition-building skills to follow Mr. Daley and keep the local government steady, particularly in a time of dwindling resources and continuing economic uncertainty. There are hopes that whatever replaces Daley administration will be more transparent, more of a technocratic meritocracy, built around professionalism and strong institutions rather than patronage and personality politics. There is a fervent hope that this time will be different from the last time City Hall had no Daley. Those old enough to remember the years between Mr. Daley and his father, Richard J. Daley, who died in office in 1976, do not do so fondly.
The city stalled, and at one point in the mid-1980s, the government broke down into what was known as the Council Wars, where white aldermen blocked the reform agenda of Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, turning City Hall into a tumultuous battleground of coarse racial politics. Even Mr. Daley’s critics concede that he did much to calm the racial strife, promoting minorities and women and gaining a reputation as someone who believes in diversity.
“I’m already worried about the next guy,” Ms. Williams-Taylor said.
The Chicago mayoralty has the name Daley stamped so prominently across it that “some people think it’s the name of the office,” said Dick Simpson, head of the political science department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “They’re just not used to thinking about a post-Daley era. There is some trepidation.”
The city itself wears the bold stamp of the younger Mr. Daley, who presided over Chicago’s shift from a manufacturing economy to one based on the service industries and finance, keeping the city afloat and thriving as others in the Midwest faltered. He cloaked downtown in green, creating parks and environmentally friendly roofs, and planting flowers with a gardener’s touch.
Still, many are looking forward to a change. Mayor Daley could be short-tempered, given to malapropisms, and, some would say, dismissive of neighborhoods beyond the glitz of the lakefront. His administration was also tainted by scandal in patronage hiring and contract fraud, although he always managed to stay above the fray.
“I’m glad he’s going,” said Amber Terrell, 21, a South Side resident. “He’s been mayor all my life, and in my neighborhood, I don’t see anything so good. Potholes, the schools are bad, it’s dangerous, there’s new parking meters everywhere. It’s a shame. I’d like to know what this city would be like under somebody else.”
But who? A sheriff who casts himself as a reformer, like Thomas Dart of Cook County, who has said in the past he has interest in the job? Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who is a former Daley strategist, who said in April that he would like to run for mayor one day? Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., who has made no secret of having his eyes on the post-Daley period? Or any number of aldermen? What about David Hoffman, the former federal prosecutor who made an impressive showing in the recent Democratic primary for the Senate seat once held by President Obama?
The nonpartisan primary election, on 22 February, is likely to be a free-for-all, said Larry Bennett, a political science professor at DePaul University. “This is new ground,” he said. “We have not had an election like this is in any of our experience.”
Ms. Williams-Taylor said she already knew how she would vote in the primary. “I’m going to write in Daley,” she said.

Rico says some people, like Ms. Williams-Taylor, amaze even him...