WHEN Rahm Emanuel announced his re-election bid as mayor of Chicago on December 6th, he avoided talk of violent crime and pension liabilities, two of the city’s most pressing problems. Instead he crowed about the Chicago’s rising minimum wage, which will reach $13 by 2019 (from $8.25), and he empathised with the squeezed middle class, whom he says he is trying the help. Speaking at a film-production studio on the city’s west side, and against the faint chants of some protesters beyond the crowd (a couple of whom were dressed as $100 bills), he touted a record that includes introducing city-wide recycling and full-day kindergarten, and placing more police officers on the street. Since he assumed the office in May 2011, more students have begun graduating from high-school, too.



Mr Emanuel faces nine challengers in the election on February 24th, including Jesus Garcia, a Cook county commissioner, and Bob Fioretti, an alderman. He is not popular. A poll in August by the Chicago Tribune, a local daily, found that his approval rating was down to 35%. He lost a lot of support in the city’s poorer areas after he closed 47 schools last year, largely underperforming ones in depopulated neighbourhoods on Chicago’s west and south side. He then further alienated Chicago’s Teachers Union by pushing for more charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run. The mayor has also come under fire for making changes to the city’s traffic laws, which have increased the number of $100 tickets handed out to drivers. A new red-light camera vendor, hired by Mr Emanuel’s administration, has been punishing drivers with tickets even when yellow lights dip below three seconds (the standard previously set by the city). This seemingly small change yielded around 77,000 more tickets and nearly $8m in city revenue over a six-month period, according to an investigation from the Chicago Tribune earlier this year. Reports that Mr Emanuel’s motorcade violated speeding and other traffic laws at least 20 times in 2012 have hardly helped.

Violent crime remains a pressing problem in Chicago, and one Mr Emanuel has failed to affect in a meaningful way. His first full year in office was particularly bad: in 2012 Chicago registered 500 murders, more than any other city in America, even though the Windy City has only a third as many inhabitants as the Big Apple. The murder rate has been inching down since then, but there are streets where no one feels safe—particularly during the summer months, when people are murdered in Chicago every day.

Yet by far the mayor’s biggest problem is the looming public-pension crisis. Thanks to unfunded public-worker pension liabilities of $22 billion, Chicago has the worst credit rating of any major American city except Detroit. Illinois, with unfunded pension liabilities of $110 billion, now has the worst credit score of all 50 states. It was recently crowned America’s worst-run state by 24/7 Wall St, a financial news and opinion firm.



In his recent budget, which is otherwise fairly sensible and conservative, Mr Emanuel doesn’t address a $600m shortfall in the pensions of police and firemen, due at the end of next year. If he gets re-elected, he will have little time to find a solution. At the end of November John Belz, a judge in Illinois, rejected the pension-reform bill crafted by the state’s outgoing governor, Pat Quinn, which Mr Emanuel had backed. The judge argued that the bill violated a clause in the state constitution that makes pensions an “enforceable contractual relationship”. The state’s attorney general

is planning an appeal at the state’s Supreme Court.



Unfortunately for Mr Emanuel, the problem is too urgent to wait for the courts. In order to cover the $600m shortfall, “the mayor will either have to reduce public workers’ pension benefits or increase taxes,” says Laurence Msall of the Civic Federation in Chicago.



But for all his unpopularity, Mr Emanuel seems destined for another term. None of his competitors have his national clout, electoral machine or campaign war-chest, which is reportedly around $10.5m. As a former chief of staff in President Barack Obama’s White House, Mr Emanuel’s campaigning and fund-raising skills are legendary.



The mayor’s new website, chicagotogether.org, lists Mr Emanuel’s considerable achievements in improving education, infrastructure and art in his hometown. But if his tenure as mayor is ever to be judged a success, he will need to reduce violent crime and defuse the city’s pension time-bomb as well.