Pugnacious and ever confident, Rahm Emanuel never has been one to back away from a political fight.
But on Tuesday, he did just that, abruptly dropping a bid for a third term as Chicago’s mayor to instead write an undetermined “next chapter” of his life.
After 23 years in politics, Emanuel said he had asked many sacrifices of his wife, Amy Rule, and their three children. In an interview, the mayor described his personal and professional lives as two planes preparing to land on separate runways, making the timing right to step away from public life.
So after months of discussions with his family and a long holiday weekend spent dropping off his third child at college, Emanuel summoned reporters to his City Hall office on short notice and dropped a surprise that shook Chicago’s political landscape.
“I’ve decided not to seek re-election,” said Emanuel, who took office as Chicago’s first Jewish mayor in 2011. “This has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime.”
Sources close to Emanuel said the family considerations were key, but so, too, was the reality that he would spend the next eight months in a bruising campaign that would feature him getting attacked from all sides. And while Emanuel and his top aides said they were confident he could win, the mayor increasingly acknowledged the need to muster up the energy for a third term that still would be filled with challenges, from needing to find even more money for the city’s financially beleaguered pensions to having a federal court enforce changes to the city’s Police Department, the sources said.
