Braun Aide Dishes on Campaign

By Chuck Sudo in News on Mar 11, 2011 7:08PM

Tom Carey, an adviser to Carol Moseley Braun's mayoral campaign, dishes some dirt with Chicago Magazine's Carol Felsenthal about the chaos that engulfed her campaign and makes one very interesting tidbit during the interview.

Carey told Felsenthal that Rahm Emanuel was getting some behind-the-scenes push by a certain Elective Majesty.

CF: I’ve heard rumors that President Obama called black business leaders and asked them to support Rahm, not Carol. I interviewed John Rogers, Jr. [head of Ariel Investments and Moseley Braun’s biggest financial backer] the other day and asked him if he received such a call from the President. He said absolutely not.
TC: Rich Daley was making all the phone calls behind the scenes. Daley probably did a great job of blocking Carol getting the money.

CF: Do you know Daley was making calls?
TC: Of course. Do I know the sun’s going to rise tomorrow? It’s part of the game. [When asked to comment on Carey’s assertions, Daley’s press secretary, Jackie Heard, responded: “The idea of Mayor Daley taking the time to make a round of phone calls to somehow hurt a candidate is absurd. I’ve worked closely with him for nearly 15 years and have never known him to do such a thing. It is so ridiculous it causes you to wonder what the motivation for this kind of storytelling is.”]

Veeery Interesting. And not unexpected, if true.

What we're still curious about are the e-mails obtained by Chicago News Co-Op from the Braun campaign that suggested Braun and her aides still believed they would be in a runoff, in stark contrast to polls prior to the election. Were the e-mails sincere? Or were Braun's top aides, like Carey, deluding her into thinking her chances were better than they were?