Daley Says Goodbye

By Chuck Sudo in News on May 14, 2011 3:00PM

Richard M. Daley capped 22 years as Mayor of Chicago yesterday with one final round of congratulations and kudos before riding off into the downtown fog in his standard Lincoln Town Car. Sun-times columnist Michael Sneed reported that Daley will set up an office at 900 N. Michigan with his son Patrick where the two, who have had an uneasy professional relationship, hope to bring some foreign investment for infrastructure projects to Chicago. Sneed also reported that Daley's post-mayoral security detail will be larger than his successor, Rahm Emanuel.

For many Chicagoans this will be their first time experiencing a Chicago without a Mayor Daley. For those of us who lived through Michael Bilandic, Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, David Orr and Eugene Sawyer, this is like Halley's Comet passing Earth twice in a lifetime.

Now the task of tackling the problems facing the city Daley left behind (many of them created by MayDay) fall to Emanuel. The Sun-Times looks at the parallels between the buildups to Daley's 1989 inauguration and Emanuel's Monday swearing in. Carol Marin looks at the immediate challenges facing Emanuel like underperforming schools and a massive budget deficit.