Election day for mayor of Naperville is just 688 days from now (April 7, 2015). If the election was held today (May 19) we know who the winner would be….and we can guarantee it. Absolutely no doubt about it. You could bank on it.
Our current mayor, George Pradel, said quite some time ago that he is not running for re-election. He said it, so it must be to be true….right? As we all know, politicians are some of the most trusted people in the country. George has taken himself out of the running, and can you blame him? I mean, a person can only deal with so much ‘oxen fertilizer’, and George has been surrounded by it for years and it’s only getting deeper, to the point he is swimming in it. Chicago’s Mayor Daley decided not to run for re-election, and he left Chicago’s new Mayor Rahm Emmanuel with the gift of a horrendous parking meter contract. Mayor Pradel will leave our next mayor with a plethora of “parking meter contracts” including Smart Meters, Water Street Projects, traffic flow, and a rising number of liquor licenses resulting in occasional mayhem in downtown Naperville.
So who wants to deal with these problems and be the next mayor of Naperville? The answer is Naperville city council member Steve Chirico. How does Mayor Chirico sound? If the election was held tomorrow, the guaranteed winner would be Steve Chirico; no doubt about it. “Why?”, you ask, and the answer is simple. Councilman Steve Chirico is the only human being in the world who has publicly announced he is running for the office of mayor of Naperville. That makes him the winner at least until someone else enters the race.
Like him or not, you have to give councilman Chirico credit for being the first person to announce his candidacy. There may be, and likely will be, others to follow, however being a follower is easy. Chirico had the courage to be the first. Maybe he’s the most confident, maybe he’s the most over-confident, or maybe he’s the most foolish, but one thing is for sure…he is the most proactive. That gives him a talking-point (being proactive) that other ‘wanna-be’s’ won’t have. Additionally, “Mayor Chirico” has proven he can use a gavel to throw a resident out of a city council meeting faster than a city of Naperville employee with police escort can forcefully slap a unwanted Smart Meter on a resident’s home.
