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Patrick Daley Thompson: I Have 'Real Ideas' for City Hall, Halsted Street

By Casey Cora | January 20, 2015 5:42am
 The candidate for 11th Ward alderman offers up some ideas about Bridgeport's future.
The candidate for 11th Ward alderman offers up some ideas about Bridgeport's future.
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Facebook/ Patrick Daley Thompson

BRIDGEPORT — Patrick Daley Thompson has something to clarify.

The husky, blue-eyed Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner, former lobbyist and real estate lawyer said he's running his campaign for 11th Ward alderman on the strength of his government experience and the gravitas of his family name.

"My name is Patrick Daley Thompson. When you look at my diploma, when you look at my law license, my formal documents. ... I'm not hiding or running from my name. I'm very proud of it," he said, rebutting any speculation that the "Patrick D. Thompson" listed on his campaign literature is an attempt to distance himself from the oft-criticized Daley family legacy.

"If I used Patrick Daley John Thompson, I'd have to have an airplane flying with a banner behind it," he said.

Thompson, 45, is in the throes of one of the most highly watched races in Bridgeport in recent memory.

Longtime Ald. James Balcer, appointed to the seat by Thompson's uncle Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1997 after a Bridgeport-centered political scandal tanked the tenure of former alderman Patrick Huels, announced his retirement last summer.

Balcer's abrupt announcement set the stage for the race between Thompson, law student John Kozlar and progressive activist Maureen Sullivan.

In an interview with DNAinfo Chicago, Thompson said his experience — he's a zoning attorney, commercial property broker and elected official who has the ear of the city's power base — gives him the background to get things done.

"There's a difference between an alderman and aldermanic candidate and perhaps I'm thinking more as an elected official, somebody who is a lawyer. ... I talk about ideas that are real, that are credible," he said.

Like his famous uncles Richard D. Daley and John Daley and grandfather Richard J. Daley, Thompson has the gift of gab, or at least an uncanny ability to tumble from one topic to the next.

But what's clear through all of the unexpected turns in topic is that he's a Bridgeport expert.

He knows where the local homeless sleep at night, the borders and zones within the Chicago Police Department's Deering District, the number of cyclist fatalities in the ward, details of recent robberies, locations of parcels of land that are primed for development or redevelopment, the size of the waiting list for an old folks' home.

Elected as MWRD commissioner in 2012, Thompson counts that agency's handling of its pension problems — lawmakers approved the agency's ship-righting reform measures in 2012 — as a potential model for the crisis ailing City Hall, where the $37.5 billion in unfunded pension obligations looms large over virtually all decision-making.

"It all comes back to money doesn't talk it screams. The fact is we need to get our financial and fiscal house in order," he said.

To help quell the problem, Thompson said nearly everything's on the table, including a suburban commuter tax, an increased city sales tax on purchases or more than $100 or $150 and the creation of a city-backed casino that could reap anywhere from $440 million to $1 billion.

He opposes, however, a tax on financial transactions at Chicago's financial exchanges, saying it could further damage the city's shaky credit rating.

Massive and daunting as they are, City Hall's fiscal challenges are only part of what's on an alderman's plate.

Thompson said he has a number of ideas to improve things back in the 11th Ward, which now includes parts of Pilsen and University Village.

Some of them start with constituent services — Thompson wants to create a request database system and expand the ward office hours, historically a 9-to-5 operation, to include weeknights and Saturdays.

He sees the area of 35th and Halsted Streets as one of the key catalysts for economic development, with a special focus on jump-starting entertainment retail — that's bars and restaurants — by using tax increment financing to create an "aesthetically pleasing" business district, complete with welcoming entryways festooned with public art, outdoor cafes and street parking spaces overtaken with benches.

A bustling, walkable area there would accommodate the baby boom at the nearby luxury homes and lure even more families to the area, Thompson said.

"You're going to have a lot of the moms and dads walking the strollers with the babies, either on the weekends or during the day ... so we want to be able to have places for people to walk to," he said.

Those growing kids will also need to go to school, and Thompson talks a lot about investing in local schools and teachers, public and private.

He said he's "not necessarily a fan" of charter schools, saying "I don't think that they proven a lot of what people predicted they would be as the solution." He's open to the idea of an elected school board.

Until last week, Thompson had the endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union sealed up but the membership voted to throw its support instead to Sullivan.

The union's decision was a "disappointment," Thompson said, but two other big labor groups, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Chicago Federation of Labor, have formally endorsed him.

Inevitably, it's Thompson's family ties that voters, the press and the political set will always refer back to when talking about his candidacy.

But there's also another looming question, too, one that's bound to come up if he wins in February: Would becoming alderman of the 11th Ward be stepping stone to the big chair in the Mayor's Office?

Seated in the back room of his campaign office, Thompson just laughs at the question.

"In terms of ambition, I have a lot of work to do. I want to make this the most livable, best community and the best ward in the city.

"It doesn't happen overnight and there's a lot of work that needs to get done and so from that perspective, I don't see anything further than four years," he said. "My goal is to do a nice job, first winning in February. So we've got a lot of doors to knock on."

This is the first in a three-part DNAinfo Chicago series looking at aldermanic candidates in the 11th Ward. Interviews with John Kozlar and Maureen Sullivan will soon follow. 

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