CHICAGO — Even if 2015 was your worst year ever — say your dog died, your sweetie left and your car broke down for good — there’s a bright side.
At least you’re not Rahm Emanuel.
Chicago’s mayor had a most horrible year.
In January, Rahm was the most famously powerful mayor in America — a guy who chatted up Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show" and got bro hugs from President Barack Obama on the regular.
Now, with a few days left on the calendar, the New York Times says he should resign, and GQ magazine ranked him as a slightly more palatable sociopath than the Cleveland Browns' star-crossed backup quarterback, Johnny Manziel.
“Rahm is one of those sociopathic career politicians who probably has a secret room filled with carved figurines of all his rivals, and he spends all night moving them around on a marble chessboard and cackling maniacally to himself while s--- burns outside,” GQ wrote in ranking Emanuel No. 26 on its “The Worst People of 2015.”
Even “Da Coach” doesn’t like Rahm.
In January, NFL Hall of Famer Mike Ditka decided to endorse a Ditka restaurant regular instead of Emanuel for mayor — then-Ald. Bob Fioretti, that is — and told the Sun-Times “anything is better than what we have.”
“Chicago is a great city. You deserve leadership and straight-up people to operate it. You know, shame on you,” Ditka said of the mayor.
Getting dissed by Ditka has gotta sting for any Chicagoan — even for a former ballet dancer who grew up in Wilmette.
And things didn’t get any better for Emanuel in February.
Despite spending millions on campaign commercials, our mighty mayor didn’t win re-election outright the first time around.
And getting shoved into that runoff election with Cook County Board Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, forced Emanuel to scramble to change his bully image.
That had to really stink.
Everybody knows that at some level our mayor loves being a bully — just ask the guy that Rahm sent a dead fish to.
To soften his image, Emanuel had to put on a V-neck sweater, look directly into the camera and admit — on a TV campaign commercial that lives in infamy on YouTube — that he knows he can be a jerk and he’ll try to stop talking when he should listen and rubbing people the wrong way.
For a power broker like Emanuel, that might have been more painful than the time he lost half his middle finger.
But it was worth it. The image softening — and that cute sweater – did the trick.
By eating a little crow Rahm successfully turned the election into a political chess match that Garcia didn’t have the strategic savvy — or the campaign cash — to win.
Things were fine for a while. But in September, the mayor ran into a little trouble making good on his promise to do less talking and more listening.
A tactical error by the mayor’s City Hall spin machine put Emanuel out on a “listening tour” stop in South Shore to hear any suggestions Chicagoans might have on how to handle the city’s looming financial crisis at the same time the mayor’s plan for a historic property tax increase to cover the city’s budget gap got leaked to reporters.
To a lot of people, that made it seem like even if the mayor was listening, he didn’t care what anybody had to say. And a few angry folks in South Shore chased Emanuel off the listening tour stage that night.
Things got even worse a month later.
That’s when Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett — the woman he hired to handle the most simultaneous school closings in American history — got indicted on federal charges of being involved in a bribery, kickback scheme that would have put $2.3 million of a $23 million no-bid contract directly in her pocket.
Some people were calling for Emanuel to get indicted as well. After all, the mayor’s hand-picked School Board signed off on the $23 million contract, and his staff backed down from asking questions about the deal when Byrd-Bennett barked at them to stop questioning her decisions.
But Byrd-Bennett’s almost immediate guilty plea put that scandal to bed quickly. That gave the mayor time to focus on putting the screws to aldermen so they would vote for his historic property tax increase and $100 million garbage collection fee.
The mayor publicly demanded that aldermen find the “political courage” to meet the city’s “moral” obligation — not to mention a court mandate — to fund city worker pensions by voting for his unpopular budget.
Privately, he cut deals to win budget votes. And he even told reporters of his plans to run for re-election in 2019, a thinly veiled hint that aldermen should fall in line if they know what’s good for their political future. And it worked.
For a moment, it seemed that Emanuel had all his power back, and was poised and ready to return to "The Tonight Show" at a moment's notice.
By late November, the mayor’s schedule was packed with a fun business trip to Paris to talk about climate change with world leaders, and we would later learn, a secret family vacation to Cuba, too.
Then everything changed.
A Cook County judge ordered the city to release dashcam video that showed a Chicago Police officer shooting and killing a black teenager with all 16 bullets in his gun in October 2014.
Since the video of the shooting death of Laquan McDonald was released 13 months after it happened — and two days before Thanksgiving — protesters have consistently held demonstrations in the streets and at City Hall, calling for Rahm to quit every time.
Emanuel immediately attempted to calm tensions by firing police Supt. Garry McCarthy, creating a task force on police accountability, replacing the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, and promising to make further reforms.
When that didn't quiet protesters, Emanuel canceled his climate change trip to Paris.
Instead, he agreed to have a chat with Politico reporters about the fallout from the Laquan McDonald video at a public forum.
Before the interview, Emanuel mentioned the secret family trip to Cuba to reporter Mike Allen, who blabbed about the trip on stage.
That really got Emanuel’s blood boiling because he knew it would anger someone more powerful than even him — his wife, Chicago’s first lady, Amy Rule.
"If my wife doesn’t kill me now because of what you just did, we will take our kids to Cuba. ... Can you give me your cell number, because I’d like you to listen to Amy," Emanuel said.
To make matters worse, local and national politicians — including Emanuel’s longtime political ally, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and fellow Chicago Democrat Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan — called for a U.S. Justice Department probe of the Chicago Police Department.
Then came more bad news.
After Emanuel said a federal probe wasn’t necessary given ongoing investigations — U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch actually launched an investigation into the Police department.
Suddenly, the mayor changed his mind about a federal investigation of the Police Department and actually decided that he “welcomed” it.
So, before the feds officially arrived in town, Emanuel called a special City Council meeting and delivered an emotional speech that included words Chicagoans aren't used to hearing from their mayor.
“I’m sorry,” Emanuel said.
When reporters asked Emanuel what he was sorry for, the mayor — appearing tired, emotionally battered, uncharacteristically humble and not entirely himself — answered the question.
The mayor told reporters he was sorry because he should have questioned the decadeslong practice of keeping police-shooting videos secret.
Meanwhile, protests and calls for Emanuel’s resignation haven’t stopped — not even when the Emanuel family left Chicago for their Cuba vacation. On Christmas Eve, marchers disrupted shoppers on the Magnificent Mile chanting “Resign Rahm.”
On Monday, Emanuel cut short his family vacation due to another police-involved shooting that killed two people, including a 55-year-old woman who police say was shot accidentally.
Plus, there are still a few days left on the calendar.
So, before you write off 2015 as a complete bust, consider how it went for Rahm Emanuel.
You just might realize it wasn't such a bad year after all.
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