At the CTU’s annu­al fundrais­er on Octo­ber 31, Gar­cia was intro­duced to a room­ful of pro­gres­sive alder­men, union lead­ers and edu­ca­tion activists as ​“Chicago’s new mayor.”

It’s offi­cial: There’s a new can­di­date in the race for May­or of Chica­go, and he could car­ry some weight. Cook Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Jesus ​“Chuy” Gar­cia threw his hat in the ring on Octo­ber 27, less than four weeks before the dead­line to get on the bal­lot. Gar­cia is pick­ing up the torch from Karen Lewis, the wild­ly pop­u­lar Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU) pres­i­dent who was seen as the most viable chal­lenger to sit­ting May­or Rahm Emanuel in the upcom­ing Feb­ru­ary elec­tion before she was forced out of the race by health prob­lems. Gar­cia has already won endorse­ments from Lewis, the Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU) and a coterie of oth­er Chica­go pro­gres­sive groups.

Garcia’s sup­port­ers tout the work he did as an alder­man in the 1980s, when he was a promi­nent ally to Chicago’s first African-Amer­i­can may­or, Harold Wash­ing­ton. Washington’s time as may­or, from 1983 – 1987, is wide­ly viewed by pro­gres­sives as a gold­en age in local pol­i­tics, one which many of Emanuel’s chal­lengers in the may­oral race have promised to resurrect.

But that age end­ed with Washington’s unex­pect­ed death of a heart attack in 1987. Soon after, orga­ni­za­tions allied with Chicago’s machine pol­i­tics, such as the now-dis­band­ed His­pan­ic Demo­c­ra­t­ic Orga­ni­za­tion and the long-time may­oral lin­eage of the Daley fam­i­ly, took advan­tage of the polit­i­cal vac­u­um to seize the reins of the city. For the next 30-odd years, they worked dili­gent­ly to stamp out inde­pen­dent pro­gres­sive politi­cians like Garcia.

In 1992, Gar­cia became State Sen­a­tor for the 1st dis­trict and soon after one of the first vic­tims of the machine resur­gence, when he was unseat­ed from the state Sen­ate seat by an oppo­si­tion can­di­date from the HDO in 1998. Anto­nio Munoz, who unseat­ed Gar­cia, still holds the State Sen­ate seat for the 1st dis­trict 15 years later.

Since he was unseat­ed, Gar­cia has made few­er head­lines, though he returned to pol­i­tics in 2010 as Cook Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er for the 7th district.

That’s in part because Chicago’s local media pays less atten­tion to state and coun­ty pol­i­tics than it does to city shenani­gans. But regard­less, a man whose name many new­com­ers to the city don’t rec­og­nize is now the can­di­date that the CTU is ask­ing the pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty to ral­ly behind.

As state sen­a­tor, Gar­cia rep­re­sent­ed a major­i­ty Lati­no dis­trict on the South­west side with no short­age of social prob­lems, includ­ing crime, school over­crowd­ing and lack of access to health­care. The same is true of the over­lap­ping, heav­i­ly Lati­no 7th Dis­trict he over­sees as Cook Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, where his job is ensur­ing that res­i­dents have access to coun­ty services.

Gar­cia sup­port­ed leg­is­la­tion in both roles that tack­led hous­ing, health­care and edu­ca­tion inequities, among oth­er areas. Most well-known was his cham­pi­oning, as com­mis­sion­er, a suc­cess­ful 2011 ordi­nance to require Cook County’s sher­iff to decline requests by Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment to detain immi­grants, unless the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would pay the deten­tion costs.

Dur­ing his time as com­mis­sion­er, Gar­cia was also one of the spon­sors of a coun­ty bill to safe­guard hold­ers of pub­lic hous­ing vouch­ers from dis­crim­i­na­tion by land­lords, which was signed into law in 2013.

Gar­cia spoke to In These Times by phone ear­li­er this week. His proud­est achieve­ment, he says, was his work bal­anc­ing Cook County’s bud­get. In 2010, the coun­ty was fac­ing a rev­enue short­fall of more than $480 mil­lion. In response, Cook Coun­ty Pres­i­dent Toni Preck­win­kle and the board of com­mis­sion­ers laid out a plan to lay off more than 1,000 coun­ty work­ers, as well as refi­nance the county’s debt and go after unpaid tax­es. In the end, after weeks of nego­ti­a­tions with local unions, the num­ber of lay­offs was reduced to 500.

“I am proud of our abil­i­ty to address bud­get deficits,” says Gar­cia, who was in his first year as com­mis­sion­er dur­ing the bud­get bat­tle. ​“The bud­get deficit we inher­it­ed was mas­sive, and to bal­ance it we had to lay off 500 peo­ple. That was prob­a­bly the most painful deci­sion we had to make.”

It’s a posi­tion that has come under some crit­i­cism. In an arti­cle on Social​ist​Work​er​.org, Lee Sus­tar called out Gar­cia for help­ing imple­ment what Sus­tar called ​“Preckwinkle’s aus­ter­i­ty bud­get” and ques­tioned what this would mean for his work as mayor.

“There’s lit­tle rea­son to expect that Gar­cia would take a dif­fer­ent approach as may­or of Chica­go, which faces its own loom­ing pen­sion short­fall after decades of under­fund­ing,” Sus­tar wrote.

Gar­cia is reluc­tant to say what he would do as may­or if Chica­go faced a sim­i­lar short­fall. ​“We are not quite ready to issue posi­tion state­ments on that; we have to look at what the finances are going to be,” he tells In These Times, not­ing that the may­or con­trols mon­ey col­lect­ed from Tax Incre­ment Financing.

On the ground, Garcia’s readi­ness to work on less glossy issues for his con­stituents, such as help­ing fundraise for local projects, has drawn praise from com­mu­ni­ty groups. Patrick Bros­nan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Brighton Park Neigh­bor­hood Coun­cil, which works on issues from health­care to gen­der equal­i­ty, says Gar­cia has been very sup­port­ive of the group’s work. As coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, Gar­cia helped the neigh­bor­hood coun­cil find spon­sors and orga­nize local fes­ti­vals to get fund­ing for a park ren­o­va­tion — park spend­ing is anoth­er area of inequal­i­ty in Chica­go, with Lati­no neigh­bor­hoods dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly under­fund­ed. He also helped get con­stituents enrolled in Oba­macare and Coun­ty Care, the county’s Med­ic­aid program.

It’s a stark con­trast to BPNC’s rela­tion­ship with Joseph Moreno, the com­mis­sion­er Gar­cia replaced, Bros­nan says. ​“Moreno was a dif­fer­ent kind of guy, and real­ly we had no inter­ac­tion with him at all on any lev­el.” Moreno is now spend­ing 11 years behind bars after fed­er­al agents record­ed him telling a busi­ness­man he want­ed to get ​“fat” on kickbacks.

Some voic­es from out­side Garcia’s con­stituen­cy, how­ev­er, say they’ve seen lit­tle rea­son to sup­port him in his work around city­wide issues.

Rouse­mary Vega, an edu­ca­tion activist based in the city’s Hum­boldt Park neigh­bor­hood, was root­ing for Karen Lewis even before she entered the race. ​“I was ask­ing Karen to run because I believed her vision,” says Vega. But when Lewis had to drop out, pro­gres­sives were expect­ed to switch their vote first to Alder­man Bob Fioret­ti and then new­com­er Chuy Gar­cia, Vega says, and she found her­self becom­ing less and less enthusiastic.

“It leaves peo­ple in lim­bo,” says Vega of the shift­ing can­di­dates. She also says that dur­ing one of the city’s most defin­ing fights — against the clo­sure of 49 schools — Gar­cia was nowhere to be seen. ​“They closed 50 schools, where was Chuy Gar­cia?” asks Vega, who had two chil­dren at a school that was closed on the North­west side.

Gar­cia, for his part, says he has shown his sup­port for pub­lic edu­ca­tion through his years in gov­ern­ment and that he pub­licly opposed the clos­ings. ​“I was the first elect­ed offi­cial on the South­west Side dur­ing the teacher’s strike to come out and speak at a ral­ly, and I spoke against the clos­ings because they were wrong,” he says. ​“If I didn’t get pub­lic­i­ty for doing it, that’s anoth­er thing.”

In 1995, he also vot­ed against the state-lev­el bill that many see as the source of some of Chicago’s biggest edu­ca­tion woes — leg­is­la­tion that gave the may­or of Chica­go author­i­ty to appoint the city’s school board with­out city coun­cil approval.

That Gar­cia is now run­ning for may­oral office in sup­port of edu­ca­tion jus­tice at the same time as a move­ment is gain­ing speed for an elect­ed school board in Chica­go high­lights just how long he’s been a main­stay of local pol­i­tics, and may explain much of the enthu­si­asm for Garcia’s can­di­da­cy from long-time progressives.

Ram­sin Canon, a for­mer union orga­niz­er, polit­i­cal con­sul­tant and edi­tor of the pol­i­tics sec­tion on local web­site Gapers Block, says he expects that for those who aren’t famil­iar with Garcia’s work under Wash­ing­ton, the sup­port of Karen Lewis and oth­er pro­gres­sives will high­light the bot­tom-up pol­i­tics that Garcia’s can­di­da­cy stands for.

“What Karen Lewis rep­re­sent­ed as a can­di­date was not spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy pro­grams but a dif­fer­ent approach to process,” says Canon, ​“and the process is that we need to have a revolv­ing door between com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­ment or labor orga­ni­za­tions, not business.”

“Gar­cia has fought a lot of very hard neigh­bor­hood fights,” Canon notes, call­ing Gar­cia a ​“liv­ing avatar” of the com­mu­ni­ty-before-busi­ness approach to gov­er­nance. This approach was one promise of Garcia’s cam­paign the Chica­go Teach­ers Union high­light­ed in its offi­cial endorsement:

May­or Gar­cia will invite more civic par­tic­i­pa­tion in his pol­i­cy deci­sions and offer a more demo­c­ra­t­ic, inclu­sive and trans­par­ent lead­er­ship style in con­trast to May­or Emanuel’s panache of closed-door, aggres­sive governance.

With Karen Lewis and the CTU’s sup­port, Gar­cia is seen as a fron­trun­ner in the may­oral race, which now con­sists of more than five can­di­dates run­ning against Emanuel.

Whether Garcia’s com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed out­look and ring­ing endorse­ments from well-known pro­gres­sives will be enough to over­come the name recog­ni­tion and $9 mil­lion-plus cam­paign fund of Rahm Emanuel remains to be seen.