ON THE last day before Chicago’s mayoral election on April 7th, Jesús (Chuy) Garcia darted across the city’s poorest quarters in an effort to mobilise last-minute supporters for his attempt to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In the afternoon, he stopped at a campaign headquarter in West Englewood, an especially hard-up neighbourhood on the South Side, where he and his wife Evelyn were warmly welcomed by a group of around 50 fans chanting “Chuy, Chuy” and “si, se puede” or “yes, we can”; a handful of members of the SEIU, the service employees’ union, clad in yellow-and-purple jackets, waving “SEIU for Chuy” signs; and a band with a harp, violin, several guitars and a tambourine jollying up everyone with a spirited rendition of “La Bamba”. “Tomorrow history will be written”, promised Mr Garcia. “Let’s take Chicago!”

Even on the day of the election, Mr Garcia was out at 6:15am greeting commuters at a bus stop−and reminding them to vote−and he continued his punishing “Get Out The Vote” drive throughout the day. Mr Emanuel, meanwhile, had stopped public appearances after taking part in a couple of egg hunts and a service at Monument of Faith Evangelistic Church on Easter Sunday. The last polls had predicted that the mayor would be re-elected with a comfortable margin and despite Mr Garcia’s Herculean efforts to get last-minute and undecided voters to cast their ballots for him, he was. With three-quarters of the votes counted, Mr Emanuel had received 56% of the vote against 44% for Mr Garcia. Turnout was low, with only 40% of voters bothering to go to the polls.

Mr Garcia, a Cook county commissioner, had not been the first or even second choice of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to challenge the centrist, business-friendly Mr Emanuel. He was handpicked by Karen Lewis, the head of the powerful teachers’ union, after Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook county board, decided to stay in her job and Ms Lewis had to abandon her own mayoral ambitions for health reasons. He was chosen for his solid record in local politics and his pleasant manner that enables him to get on with most people, but he had to be talked into going for the city’s top job.

In the first round of the election, on February 24th, Mr Garcia did better than many expected, receiving 34% of the vote and forcing Mr Emanuel into a run-off. But in the seven weeks since, he failed to persuade a majority of voters that he has the skill and stamina to tackle the city’s disastrous finances, which the Rahm camp, helped by the millions it was able to pump into its advertising drive, skilfully made the main theme of the battle for city hall. In the last of three televised debates before the run-off, Mr Garcia insisted that he needed to audit the city’s books before he could say anything specific on expenditure cuts or tax increases. He also refused to reveal who would be on the commission of financial experts that he was planning to appoint. His only concrete proposal was the introduction of a luxury tax on the sale of expensive jewellery and fancy cars.

Mr Emanuel earned some laughs among the debate’s audience by comparing Mr Garcia to “Hanukah Harry”, who promises everything to everyone. He made several specific proposals on how to avert financial Armageddon for his city, such as a sales tax on services, the establishment of a casino and the use of TIFs, public-finance tools called tax increment financing that allow the city to finance economic development in a designated area by tapping into the future tax revenues it is expected to generate. He estimated that the casino alone will generate $1 billion for Chicago’s coffers over the next ten years.

With unfunded pension liabilities of more than $20 billion, an operating-budget deficit of more than $300m and a payment of $550m for the respective pensions funds of police and firemen due at the end of this year, America’s third-largest city is veering toward insolvency. In February Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, downgraded Chicago’s creditworthiness to two notches above junk. Analysts say that Mr Emanuel will almost certainly need to raise property taxes, in spite of pre-election promises, because his other measures will not suffice to right the sinking ship. “Once the vote is over, economics will dominate the agenda,” predicts Paul Green at Roosevelt University, who thinks both candidates avoided talking about the painful measures in store for Chicagoans.

Yet the mayor can hardly neglect the city’s public schools and violent crime. The high-school graduation rate is nudging up and the rate of expulsions and suspensions is going down thanks to improved discipline, but too many public schools are still performing poorly. And the city’s murder rate rose by 29% and shootings increased by 40% in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the Chicago Police Department. In one recent week three 16-year old boys were murdered in Englewood.

Against the backdrop of these needs and the looming financial emergency, Mr Emanuel will have little time to enjoy his victory. During his second term the future of Chicago will be at stake. It could become the next Detroit or the next New York—a big city that successfully pulled back from the financial abyss.