If Bernie Sanders gets his way, Tuesday's Illinois primary will turn into a referendum on embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The Vermont senator’s campaign has begun unleashing stinging attacks on the former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama White House aide — who has become a lightning rod for criticism from African-Americans and progressives in his two terms in City Hall — with the aim of painting him as a close political ally of Hillary Clinton.


Top campaign surrogates have been dispatched to Chicago, and Sanders is running two separate television ads critical of Emanuel in an attempt to highlight Clinton’s connections with the mayor.

By placing the spotlight on Emanuel, whom the Clinton campaign has consciously kept at a distance after a scandal surrounding the alleged coverup of a video in the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald last year, Sanders is hoping he can draw attention to his own criminal justice reform plan and perhaps gain traction among Chicago's African-American population.

The focus on the mayor also serves as a subtle reminder of Clinton’s support for the 1994 crime bill signed by her husband, and worked on by Emanuel, which many have argued led to the mass incarceration of African-American males — and which has become a flashpoint in the primary. (Sanders voted for the bill as a member of the House of Representatives at the time.)

This latest front in the battle for Illinois began in the hours after a chippy debate in Miami on Wednesday, even before the Sanders campaign unveiled its ads targeting Emanuel the next evening.

“You have this horrendous, horrendous problem with police violence and the whole Laquan McDonald situation. These are very important issues to the people of Chicago,” Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, previewing the line of attack that will animate Sanders’ final arguments before voting begins. “Bernie Sanders has been very strong in condemning the Emanuel administration, Secretary Clinton has stood by him over the interest of the people of Chicago."

Sanders’ brain trust believes that if the senator’s argument in the final days before voting is successful, he could peel off about one-third of the black voters in the state where Clinton grew up — a repeat of the dynamic that helped him to victory in Michigan. A strong showing in Illinois, in addition to his Michigan victory and victories in places as varied as Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma, would support the senator’s argument that he is expanding his national coalition while the front-runner’s base remains rooted in the South.

In one of the new Sanders advertisements, Cook County Commissioner (and unsuccessful mayoral challenger) Chuy Garcia walks around Chicago, insisting “this is a year for transformative change.”

Another, starring Chicago Public Schools principal Tony LaRaviere, goes even further. “In Chicago, we have endured a corrupt political system, and the chief politician standing in the way of us getting good schools is our mayor,” he says in the 30-second spot that highlights Chicago’s educational funding problem. “If you have a presidential candidate who supports someone like our mayor, you have a candidate who’s not willing to take on the establishment."

An active surrogate for the Sanders campaign for months, Garcia — who lost to Emanuel last year — has also invoked the mayor’s White House work under Presidents Clinton and Obama as reason to distrust Hillary Clinton on issues of criminal justice reform and immigration, insisting to reporters on a conference call this week that Emanuel’s hand is “an important part of the reason we haven’t seen comprehensive immigration reform."

“Let us be clear as the Illinois primary and Florida primary approach where people have been, and the doublespeak and dishonesty, and playing very loose with the truth, that seeks to advance Hillary Clinton’s candidacy by distorting truths and covering up important historical facts as it relates to immigration reform and our community,” he added.

Clinton’s campaign has swiftly pushed back on the implications of Sanders’ pitch, noting that Clinton in January said it is “going to be up to [Emanuel] and the people of Chicago” to prove his credibility, while insisting he be held to the standard of “complete and total reform."

"The secretary was the first person out there calling for a comprehensive civil rights investigation to be done by the civil rights division of the Justice Department, of the Chicago Police Department, following the release of the videotape,” said Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, after learning of Sanders’ plans.

And senior Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney added that the candidate’s first policy speech of the campaign was on criminal justice reform, and that “she’s the only one who has forcefully talked about systemic racism, the need to make new investments in communities of color, white privilege and the intersectionality of these issues in today’s America."

Still, Sanders is betting is that black Chicagoans' antipathy toward Emanuel runs deep enough that they would mobilize against the mayor in the national race, even as the mayor has carefully avoided becoming a major figure in the Clinton-Sanders fight.

The senator — who, like Clinton, has not specifically called for Emanuel’s resignation — said in December that any official who knew the McDonald tape was being suppressed should lose his or her job. He has yet to escalate his own attacks on the mayor on the campaign trail, but that’s expected to come this weekend.

The office of Emanuel, who has kept a low national political profile while dealing with the controversy, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

With just days before Illinois votes, it might be too late for the last-minute throw-Rahm-under-the-bus approach to work. When Sanders appeared at the financially strapped Chicago State University last month, for example, the candidate's main target was Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

And it's not like Emanuel's ties to Clinton have been a major issue for her yet: None of Clinton’s recent interviews with major African-American news outlets have touched on the topic of the mayor — her endorsement from the Chicago Crusader, a small African-American newspaper, even highlighted her work on police reform without mentioning the mayor’s name. The Chicago Tribune’s recent editorial refusing to endorse either Clinton or Sanders ignored Emanuel, as well.

Despite the fact that the former secretary of state had a famously contentious relationship with Emanuel — and wary of Sanders' political momentum coming off his win in Michigan — the Clinton campaign has started to forcefully respond, unveiling a three-minute ad of its own featuring the mothers of African-American famously men killed by gun violence or law enforcement on Friday morning, and organizing a news conference with Chicago leaders about “Sanders’ record on issues important to communities of color" in the afternoon.

“In Chicago, we’re smart enough to see through that kind of foolishness which does nothing to solve the problems we are dealing with. My friend Hillary Clinton is the only person in this election who genuinely understands and has a plan to deal with systemic racism starting with a comprehensive reform of our criminal justice system,” said Chicago resident Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland and one of the mothers of black victims who’s campaigned with Clinton, in a statement to POLITICO.

“She stood with me when it mattered most, that’s why I stand with her," she said. "Anyone seeking to use another’s actions to try and tear Hillary down should instead come to our community, listen like she did, and tell us what they would do to deal with these problems."

Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.

