A win by Jesús “Chuy” García in the Chicago mayor’s race this week would have sent a signal that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would be a decisive force in 2016, and that Hillary Clinton better do what they want or get out of the way.

But Garcia lost. Big. And Rahm Emanuel, the combative former chief of staff to President Barack Obama who spent the race being hammered for caring more about big donors from Big Business than unions or working people, will be sworn in again next month for a second term as mayor.


To many Democrats, there are two possible lessons: First, that the professional left talks a much better game than it delivers even as it starts to make big promises about the presidential race. And second, that focusing voters on the progressive elements of a candidate’s record, as Emanuel did during his runoff, can blunt a challenge from an ineffective opponent.

“Rahm Emanuel is a progressive mayor, period,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Bill Clinton adviser and a friend of Emanuel who advises the pro-Hillary Clinton Priorities super PAC. “I don’t think people should say a right-wing Democrat won. I think you’ve got to actually look at what he did and what he ran on.”

“That’s the lesson for Hillary Clinton: You can run comfortably on a progressive agenda and win,” Begala said.

Ben LaBolt, a former spokesman for both Emanuel and Obama, said progressive groups tried to assert themselves but ignored Emanuel’s record on everything from raising the minimum wage to expanding community college access, efforts that have become a partial model for the White House.

“There was a roadshow of national progressive groups that came into Chicago and tried to use the race to send a message about the issues and messages they cared about, but in some ways, they misjudged the race,” LaBolt said. “For all the discussion there’s been about ideological warfare within the party, ultimately it’s more of the bread-and-butter issues that affect people’s lives that are going to determine their vote.”

The progressive groups that got involved in the race disagree about Emanuel’s record. But they insist they showed themselves and their agenda to be just as powerful losing to Emanuel as if they’d won.

“The headline would have been unmistakable and the clarity would have certainly been there,” said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, which weighed in heavily for García. But “if any of these campaigns had anybody on the ground in Chicago and seen the level of energy around Chuy’s campaign and around the aldermen who were running, they would understand this.”

Instead its “populist groundswell gave Chuy García a fighting chance,” as Reclaim Chicago of the National People’s Action Campaign put it Tuesday night.

García was, at best, an imperfect messenger for progressives: Unlike Bill de Blasio who became a national progressive hero by winning a much different New York City mayor’s race in 2013, García was often short on both policy detail and political skill. De Blasio took heat for pledging to raise taxes on the rich for his ideas. García repeatedly ducked questions of how he’d pay for his.

The Chicago runoff never got close enough for Obama to seriously consider a last-minute visit to push his former chief of staff over the top, according to a White House aide. Instead, Emanuel’s campaign spent millions on an image-softening push that closed with a final commercial of the mayor, sporting an open-collar shirt and with soft piano music playing in the background, touting his all-day kindergarten program and the new jobs he brought to all neighborhoods — and acknowledging he could try being a better person himself.

Although a presidential race will mean everyone’s paying a lot more attention to every position Clinton takes and every element of her record, she’s not expected to have a progressive primary opponent such as Elizabeth Warren to draw off votes. Unlike Emanuel, she’ll also have a Republican opponent, one elected out of a field that’s sure to produce a candidate progressives won’t be able to stand and will rally against even if their hearts aren’t with Clinton.

That’s not the only difference.

“She doesn’t have the problem that he does — the ‘asshole’ factor,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with both the Emanuel and de Blasio campaigns. “If I were Hillary Clinton looking at Chicago, I would say Rahm found himself in trouble largely because of personality clashes, and he survived because he was laser-focused on making his campaign an expression of his progressive successes.”

But it’s clear that progressives are less than enthusiastic about Clinton, and unions and other lefty groups are likely to start popping off soon about how this really might be the year when they’ll sit out, or vote for someone else.

“This is a new era. There is a much more progressive bench of this party, and the energy of this party is in the progressive party. That is going to be the key to voter turnout and voter engagement in 2016,” Dean said.

But as one measure, Dean’s brother, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, endorsed García but has already endorsed Clinton. De Blasio is taking pains to stay close to her.

García’s 43 percent “even as he was dramatically outspent and despite the challenges he faced shows the power of the idea that government and the economy should work for everyone, not just those at the top,” said Nick Berning, communications director of MoveOn.org. “The lesson elected officials should draw from Chicago is that they ignore this hunger at their peril.”

Begala said he’s not concerned. If anything, he thinks Democrats should come out of Chicago feeling good about the unity within the party that produced a low-impact challenger for Emanuel and a seemingly untouchable front-runner for president, unlike the giant ideological rifts that Republican 2016 candidates are trying to navigate.

“It’s really hard for people to confront this reality,” Begala said, “but Democrats are in array.”