HYDE PARK — Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) came out in support of Rahm Emanuel’s re-election bid for mayor despite some disagreements.
Dowell said she was supporting the mayor because he has proved he’s “a man of his word” and supported improvements for the ward centered in Bronzeville, Grand Boulevard and Washington Park.
“With this mayor, his door has always been open,” Dowell said. “Yet he always says that talking to me requires that he brings his checkbook.”
She ticked off plans for a new XS Tennis facility and Mariano’s grocery store and street resurfacing for Martin Luther King Drive and Garfield Boulevard in the ward as reasons for her support of the mayor.
Dowell is a member of the Paul Douglas Alliance on the City Council, a group of progressive aldermen who frequently back the mayor, but she has more openly criticized Emanuel than some of her colleagues.
She did not back the mayor during the 2012 or 2013 school closings and sided with the Chicago Teachers Union during the first strike in 25 years.
The 3rd Ward has been hit particularly hard by school closings. The ward had already had six schools closed or turned around since Dowell took office in 2007, when the mayor proposed closing another 11 schools in the ward in 2013.
“He worked with me to keep open nine neighborhood schools out of the 11 schools threatened to be closed by Chicago Pubic Schools,” Dowell said.
Overton and Parkman elementary schools were closed and Attucks Elementary School will be phased out at the end of this year.
“Of all the candidates, I believe only he has the ability to fix our city,” Dowell said.
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