Last thoughts on the Chicago mayor's election.

Random tidbits:

1) Social media shows that in the past 1-2 weeks Garcia's had meetings with Arab and South Asian community leaders, but Rahm hasn't.

2) Yesterday, a(n African-American) woman said her Facebook is half-and-half with people for Rahm or Chuy, though people I talked to on the street were 2-to-1 Chuy over Rahm and Twitter was heavily pro-Chuy.

3) Yesterday, a (young) (African-American) woman said she was pro-Rahm, then I talked to her for five minutes and she said she was going to vote for Chuy - which is good, but it made me wonder why she hadn't had a similar conversation with someone else until the day before Election day.

4) Yesterday, I ran across a paid Rahm canvasser, a(n African-American) woman who said she'd been out for 5 weeks, and 2 Rahm volunteers, two (African-American) women who were just going up and down streets and hanging doorhangers on every door knob and gate knob they saw without even stopping to knock...

They said they were doing it for their alderman, and one was doing it since she hoped it'd lead to a job.

5) Yesterday morning like 8am, an art school student saw Rahm at the Belmont redline stop, right in the heart of the north side, Rahm's bastion.  They said very few people stopped to shake his hand and many refused, and the whole thing was "super awkward", though they also said that it may have just been people in a rush on the morning commute and not wanting to stop.

6) Two days ago, the Hyde Park alderwoman endorsed Chuy, though she'd been taking $ from Rahm's super PAC.  She sees the writing on the wall, perhaps...?

7) Two days ago at a restaurant-bar in an "old Chicago" part of town, the (old) (white-haired) (immigrant Italian) restaurant owner and two of the (lower class) (white) (female) workers said they were voting for Chuy, though it later came out that the owner and one of the workers (who had a sticker collection of Looney Toons [sp.?] and Disney) had both voted for the victorious Republican candidate Rauner in the last governor's election...

Each said that Rahm was too much like recently voted-out Democratic governor Pat Quinn, too much waste in the budget b/c of favors to friends.

The (old) (white-haired) (immigrant Italian) owner also asked me for my Chuy button and I gave it to him if he'd wear it, which he said dramatically that he'd do "from the moment that I get up in the morning to the moment that I go to bed at night."

He also said that Rahm's people the Jews stick together, but Italians don't, that's why they're so bad at politics.

. . .

Overall, I'm very nervous for this election.   Guess we'll see what happens!

The other night I was telling my one (hippie) friend from Michigan that I was getting too emotionally invested in this election and that I shouldn't be so attached, and she was like, "No, don't apologize, that's normal," then she told me how after Kerry lost to Bush she and her mom were crying, then when she got home she curled up on the couch and cried an hour more.