An Emerging Racial Edge in Chicago Mayoral Race

(Politics365) — The battle for Mayor in the windy and very chilly city of Chicago has been heating up in recent weeks as the campaign rhetoric is noticeably more racial in edge.  Many political junkies watching the closely contested race were mainly focused on the residency eligibility dispute involving former White House Chief of Staff and former Chicago-area Congressman Rahm Emanuel.  Another side to the brewing primary emerged, however, as the race’s crowded field of African American candidates became much more competitive and louder in recent weeks.  Many longtime observers of the Midwestern city’s political history are recounting the days of sharpened racial tensions between the city’s competing ethnic communities, with the sizeable Black demographic, which constitutes 35% of Chicago’s population, eager to make a play for greater political influence in the nation’s third largest city of nearly 3 million people.

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