Burnt Orange Report

Mayor Richard M. Daley is a pragmatist who has very good ties to the local GLBT community. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity.
But the timing of this pronouncement may be explained by his desire to divert attention from a scandal which involves the city hiring private trucks at relatively high rates to perform tasks (like snow removal) which could have been done by city trucks at a lower rate.
Similarly, the mayor, out of the blue, recently announced that he favored NM Gov. Bill Richardson as the Democratic nominee for VP. Daley has yet to endorse anybody for the top spot.

In any event, Daley loses nothing by declaring himself in favor of gay marriage. In fact, the mayor has nothing to do with the administration of local marriage laws. That honor goes to Cook County Clerk David Orr. Orr is a longtime liberal Democrat who was once an anti-machine alderman but who has since made a name for himself as a highly competent technocrat at the clerk's office. Much depends on Orr's willingness to clash with Democratic state officials. Gov. Rod Blagojevich has gone on record as stating his support for civil unions. The positions of Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Secretary of State Jesse White are probably similar. But injecting the word "marriage" into the equation would still set off a semantic firestorm.

One of Orr's duties is to administer elections in the suburban portions of Cook County. If he decides to act with caution, he will probably wait until after the March 16th Illinois primary to take a stand.

Thank heavens for gutsy county clerks!

Wonder what Bill Richardson will have to say about this? Especially if he's tapped to fill a VP slot on a Kerry ticket?

My oh my.

I jumped to the 'Daley can do anything' conclusion - thanks for delineating. I figured after the midnight tearing down of Meigs Field - the lakeside airport - that this would be old hat. Gotta love Daley - his press conferences are one big middle finger to the press.

Andy:
I still laugh whenever I think about Daley's midnight demolition of Meigs.
The local media tried to whip up a wave of indignation over the issue, but few people really cared about it.
Meigs was used mostly by those who were wealthy enough to own private aircraft. And since most of them were suburban Republicans, the mayor had little to lose by closing the airport down and converting it back to park land.

Since 9/11, Daley had tried to convince the FAA to make downtown Chicago a no fly zone. Except for some restrictions during orange alerts, the feds have been reluctant to do this.
Daley has little clout in DC these days, so he took matters into his own hands. Planes landing at Meigs had an approach path which had them pass just a few hundred feet to the east of the Aon Center, the second tallest building in Chicago. Since the Aon Center looks like a shorter cousin of the Twin Towers, Daley probably thought that this was tempting fate just a bit too much.

Of course, Daley has long wished to be rid of Meigs. But before he makes any controversial decision, he first makes sure he has several powerful, or at least vocal, constituencies to back him up. Friends of the Parks and other lakefront protection groups have always backed the mayor on Meigs. But the mayor thought that having only tree huggers in his corner was not good enough. Raising the issue of aviation security gave him more widespread support and allowed him to fully justify his goal.