On Tues­day, Chicagoans vot­ed them­selves a reprieve. With 45.4 per­cent of the vote, May­or Rahm Emanuel end­ed the first round of his first reelec­tion bid almost five points below what he need­ed to avoid a runoff elec­tion in April — and three points below his per­for­mance in the last major pre-elec­tion poll. ​“May­or 1%” will face sec­ond-place fin­ish­er Jesus ​“Chuy” Gar­cía, the soft-spo­ken, com­pas­sion­ate Cook Coun­ty board mem­ber who pro­claimed him­self with a Chicagoan lilt the ​“neigh­bor­hood guy” — who over-per­formed the poll.

In their way, these Emanuel messages, as misleading as they were, are heartening. This was Karl Rove’s trademark election strategy: attack, with brazen audacity, your opponents’ biggest, most taken-for-granted strength. In this case it was García and Fioretti’s unimpeachable probity, and the fact that they are out to help ordinary Chicagoans, not themselves.

Per­haps what turned some vot­ers against Rahm at the last minute — or moti­vat­ed them to go to the polls in the first place on a cold Chica­go day that start­ed out in the sin­gle dig­its — was an Elec­tion Day exposé that appeared in the British paper the Guardian by inves­ti­gate reporter Spencer Ack­er­man. ​“The Dis­ap­peared” revealed the exis­tence of Homan Square, a for­lorn ​“black site” that the Chica­go Police oper­ate on the West Side.

There, Chicagoans learned — many for the first time — arrestees are locked up for days at a time with­out access to lawyers. One vic­tim was 15 years old; he was released with­out being charged with any­thing. Anoth­er, a 44-year-old named John Hub­bard, nev­er left — he died in cus­tody. One of the ​“NATO 3” defen­dants, lat­er acquit­ted on most charges of alleged ter­ror plans dur­ing a 2012 Chica­go protest, was shack­led to a bench there for 17 hours.

It ​“struck legal experts as a throw­back to the worst excess­es of Chica­go police abuse, with a post‑9/​11 feel to it,” the Guardian report­ed. And for a can­di­date, Rahm Emanuel, who ran on a mes­sage he was turn­ing the page on the old, mal­odor­ous ​“Chica­go way,” the piece con­tributed to a nar­ra­tive that proved devastating.

Indeed, the may­or faced a drum­beat of out­stand­ing jour­nal­is­tic exposés all through­out the cam­paign. The Chica­go Sun-Times report­ed on Deb­o­rah Quaz­zo, an Emanuel school board appointee who runs an invest­ment fund for com­pa­nies that pri­va­tize school func­tions. They dis­cov­ered that five com­pa­nies in which she had an own­er­ship stake have more than tripled their busi­ness with the Chica­go Pub­lic Schools since she joined the board, many of them for con­tracts drawn up in the sus­pi­cious amount of $24,999 — one dol­lar below the amount that required cen­tral office approval. (Chica­go is the only munic­i­pal­i­ty in Illi­nois whose school board is appoint­ed by a may­or. But activists suc­ceed­ed — in an ardu­ous accom­plish­ment against the obstruc­tion attempts of Emanuel back­ers on the city coun­cil—to get an advi­so­ry ref­er­en­dum on the bal­lot in a major­i­ty of the city’s wards call­ing for an elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive school board. Approx­i­mate­ly 90 per­cent of the vot­ers who could vote for the mea­sure did.)

The Chica­go Tri­bune report­ed that of Emanuel’s top 106 con­trib­u­tors, 60 of them received favors from the city. Anoth­er in-depth inves­ti­ga­tion dis­cov­ered that City Hall had lied repeat­ed­ly about a sig­na­ture ini­tia­tive of the Emanuel years, auto­mat­ed cam­eras that issue tick­ets for the run­ning of red lights. The admin­is­tra­tion insist­ed the cam­eras led to a 47 per­cent decline in ​“T‑bone” crash­es, when the true num­ber was 15 per­cent — and they also caused a cor­re­spond­ing 22 per­cent increase in rear-end col­li­sions. That rein­forced sus­pi­cions that the cam­eras weren’t installed for the safe­ty of ​“the chil­dren,” as Emanuel sanc­ti­mo­nious­ly insists, but are a rev­enue grab, a regres­sive tax that falls dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the poor.

The Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times dis­cov­ered that Emanuel was evad­ing his own, much-trum­pet­ed exec­u­tive order ban­ning cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from city con­trac­tors by shov­el­ing $38 mil­lion in city resources to his donors via ​“direct vouch­er pay­ments,” a sketchy loop­hole that lets busi­ness­es get city mon­ey with­out bids or con­tracts — with­out, in fact, any way of doc­u­ment­ing what the mon­ey is used for.

And a joint inves­ti­ga­tion between pub­lic radio sta­tion WBEZ and the mag­a­zine Cat­a­lyst Chica­go demon­strat­ed that the Chica­go Pub­lic Schools CEO Emanuel hired, Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett, was able to juke the sta­tis­tics on high school grad­u­a­tion rates — which sup­pos­ed­ly went from 70 to 85 per­cent over the last decade — by con­tract­ing with for-prof­it online edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies that demand­ed very lit­tle work from stu­dents, while still allow­ing them to receive diplo­mas from the last school they attended.

All the while, Emanuel’s ubiq­ui­tous com­mer­cials — he spent $7 mil­lion of his $15 mil­lion war chest on tele­vi­sion—and mail­ers paint­ed Emanuel as a hero­ic reformer, an Eleanor Roo­sevelt respon­si­ble for show­er­ing poor­er Chicagoans with favors, and cast his two most promi­nent oppo­nents, each of them coura­geous reform­ers, as old-school Windy City grifters.

In the mail­ers, Alder­man Bob Fioret­ti, who became such a thorn in the administration’s side he was ger­ry­man­dered out of his own ward, was scored for vot­ing for the infa­mous deal to pri­va­tize Chicago’s park­ing meters — even though the pre­vi­ous May­or Richard M. Daley sold it to alder­men under scream­ing­ly false pre­tens­es and the cur­rent may­or has passed up an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sue to get the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al con­tract abro­gat­ed. Gar­cía was attacked for once owing the coun­ty back prop­er­ty tax­es — an error, Gar­cía coun­tered, that result­ed from get­ting a tax break he did not request on a home inher­it­ed from his dead moth­er. He prompt­ly fixed the error.

The way the Emanuel ad shame­less­ly put it? Gar­cía claimed an ​“ille­gal” favor for ​“two hous­es at the same time to avoid pay­ing over $8,000 in tax­es.” The tag: ​“Chuy Gar­cía: Out for him­self. Not us.”

In their way, these Emanuel mes­sages, as mis­lead­ing as they were, are heart­en­ing. This was Karl Rove’s trade­mark elec­tion strat­e­gy: attack, with brazen audac­i­ty, your oppo­nents’ biggest, most tak­en-for-grant­ed strength. In this case it was Gar­cía and Fioretti’s unim­peach­able pro­bity, and the fact that they are out to help ordi­nary Chicagoans, not themselves.

This is not just a back­hand­ed trib­ute to García’s integri­ty. It sug­gests a strat­e­gy for Gar­cía to slay Goliath when he and Rahm go head-to-head in the April runoff.

Look at it this way: hav­ing pur­chased the ser­vices of the best research dirty mon­ey can buy, what Emanuel’s focus group wiz­ards dis­cov­ered was that Chica­go vot­ers care about cor­rup­tion. They’re des­per­ate to get rid of the old sor­did ​“Chica­go way.” Which is why the Emanuel cam­paign spent so much time and ener­gy tag­ging his oppo­nents as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of that brand of politics.

It sug­gests Gar­cía has his work cut out for him in the six weeks he has left: to bela­bor what is increas­ing­ly becom­ing obvi­ous to Chicagoans — that Rahm Emanuel is a fla­grant­ly cor­rupt may­or, out for him­self, and nev­er for us.