Black Leaders Meet Over Consensus Candidate; Meeks Says He's Got it Locked Up

The Sun-Times is reporting that Chicago's black political leaders have been meeting to unite behind a consensus candidate for mayor, hoping to prevent a multitude of black candidates from splitting the vote this winter when Chicagoans will head to the polls to pick a new mayor. Complicating matters are recent revelations that Jesse Jackson Jr, long seen as a guaranteed candidate, is embroiled in a scandal involving both former Governor Rod Blagojevich and an extramarital affair. Those two events have effectively taken him out of the running for mayor. The City Council's Black Caucus has been meeting nearly every other day, according to the Sun-Times, to discuss which potential candidate to get behind, and the city's black business community has reportedly been running a parallel process.

With Congressman Danny Davis, State Senators James Meeks and Rickey Hendon, former state Senate President Emil Jones, Board of Review Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. and former U.S. Sen. Carole Moseley Braun all being bandied about as potential candidates, there's no shortage of candidates. But Sen. Meeks, who is also the pastor at Salem Baptist Church, in the South side neighborhood of Roseland, says that he's got the signatures to get on the ballot, and that he intends to keep getting signatures.

But Meeks also comes with baggage, some of which makes black leaders in Chicago nervous. Remarks that he's made from his pulpit about gays, as well as his use of the n-word in describing a "slave-master" relationship with Mayor Daley. "The front page, of the Sun-Times read, 'Meeks apologizes for the use of the N-word,'" Meeks told the Sun-Times. "That's the best thing an individual can do when they're wrong. I haven't used the words since then, so, no harm -- no foul."

Other candidates have said that they will not run if there is a consensus candidate. And And 27th Ward Ald. Walter Burnett says that the candidate they select may not even be black, meaning that black political, religious and community leaders might get behind a white or latino candidate. But with Meeks so far ahead with ballot-access petitions and suspicion of Rahm Emanuel's motives and how he'll govern, Meeks might end up walking away with the endorsement nonetheless.