Joe Biden expected to nominate Pete Buttigieg for transportation secretary, dealing a blow to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is expected to be nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to serve as secretary of transportation, which if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, would make him the first openly LGBTQ candidate named to a White House Cabinet, sources familiar with the decision confirmed Tuesday.

The historic choice of Buttigieg, however, dealt a blow to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose behind-the-scenes pursuit of the transportation post was met with vocal opposition from top progressives and African Americans within the Democratic Party over his City Hall response to the 2014 police murder of Black teenager Laquan McDonald.

Emanuel, however, still could be tapped for another role in the administration. Biden is said to like the former mayor, and the two worked together closely as White House chief of staff and vice president in President Barack Obama’s administration. Emanuel also informally advised Biden and his senior aides during the 2020 campaign.

For Buttigieg, the nomination to become the nation’s next top transportation official marks the latest stop in the 38-year-old’s remarkable political ascension.

Nearly a year ago, Buttigieg shocked the Democratic establishment by rocketing from near political obscurity as the unusually named mayor of a midsize Midwestern city to winning the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, making him the first openly gay candidate to win a major party presidential nominating contest.

During the lengthy Democratic primary season, Buttigieg emerged as the major moderate alternative to Biden. But just as the former vice president’s strong support among African American people propelled him to the party’s nomination, Buttigieg’s lack of support among the key bloc of Democratic voters doomed his bid in the end.

His strong showing and bright political future, however, left little doubt whether Buttigieg would be asked to join the administration. It was more a matter of where.

The former Rhodes scholar and multilinguist was said to covet the position of United Nations ambassador, but that went to the more experienced Linda Thomas-Greenfield. He also had been rumored at various points for the posts of commerce secretary, ambassador to China, secretary of veteran affairs and U.S. trade representative.

In picking Buttigieg for transportation, Biden settled on a role more in line with the South Bend native’s experience. After all, what mayor isn’t well-versed in matters of infrastructure and the federal government’s role — or lack thereof — in funding major improvements?

The selection also promises to put Buttigieg at the center of what could be one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill — the need for a major national infrastructure program to shore up crumbling roads, bridges, airports and railways while creating jobs amid a national recession sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data-driven former mayor promises to bring an analytical approach to the position, which oversees roughly 55,000 employees and an $84 billion budget across nearly a dozen agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Highway Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration. As mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg oversaw more than 1,000 employees and a budget of around $380 million.

Emanuel loses out

If Emanuel does not land another prominent job in the Biden administration, losing the job to Buttigieg would amount to a political embarrassment for a Beltway veteran steeped in the who’s-up-who’s-down ways of Washington.

Buttigieg clearly has a larger national following and ran a successful and unlikely presidential campaign, and during his time as mayor became known for innovative programs that used data and analytics to improve the city’s streets and wastewater system. But Buttigieg has far less experience with mass transit or large-scale management than Emanuel.

Chicago is the nation’s rail hub, home to massive “L” and bus transit systems and has two major airports, including the nation’s busiest — O’Hare International Airport, where Emanuel struck a deal with airlines for a massive $8.5 billion expansion project. In South Bend, Buttigieg had no authority over the small airport outside the city where there is also a single rail stop along the South Shore Line. There are just 47 buses in the city’s fleet.

As mayor, Emanuel ran the nation’s third largest city and some of its biggest and busiest transportation systems. He secured hundreds of millions of dollars from the White House of fellow Chicagoan Obama for the city’s two airports, “L” lines, The 606 trail and the Riverwalk expansion. Plus, Emanuel had the D.C. experience of serving as not only chief of staff to Obama but as senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and as a Democratic leader in Congress.

But Emanuel’s D.C. “Rahmbo” reputation isn’t what it once was, and the tough-guy lore of him sending a dead fish to an enemy pollster has given way to his association with McDonald’s death — especially at a time when racial justice and police brutality are front-and-center issues for the party.

As such, Emanuel has faced headwinds from progressives, civil rights organizations — and even some unions — that Buttigieg has not. Even though the former South Bend mayor weathered a controversial, high-profile police shooting of a Black resident in his city, it has not proved as politically damaging long-term.

In fact, among all of Biden’s potential Cabinet picks, Emanuel has proved to be perhaps the most controversial in large part because McDonald’s killing has served as a lasting moment in the nation’s ongoing struggle with police brutality and systemic racism. Those issues have only been elevated following several high-profile police killings in the last year, including those of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.

Progressive dynamo Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the NAACP held up Emanuel’s handling of the McDonald killing as reason to disqualify him from serving under Biden, who owes much of his 2020 electoral success to the unwavering support of African American voters. Emanuel long has denied the assertion that he was behind a City Hall cover-up of the shooting to aid his 2015 reelection, but some progressives and Black leaders argued the chain of events surrounding McDonald’s death support that narrative.

“Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last month, as she argued Emanuel would be a “pretty divisive pick” and signal a “hostile approach” to the party’s progressives. “It is shameful and concerning that he is even being considered.”

Emanuel also drew opposition from NAACP president Derrick Johnson who told the Huffington Post that Emanuel’s “actions and approach to governing are detrimental to the Biden administration and, more importantly, the American people.”

“As the former Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has shown us that he is not a principled leader or person,” Johnson said. “His time in public service proved to be burdened with preventable scandal and abandonment of Chicago’s most vulnerable community. How can we expect him to do better on a federal level?”

Since leaving office, Emanuel has taken up investment banking again (a previous stint following his time in the Clinton White House earned him millions) and has worked as a TV pundit on ABC alongside his fellow Clinton veteran and friend George Stephanopoulos.

Throughout the verbal jousting over his cabinet prospects over the last several weeks, Emanuel upheld the Beltway tradition of staying quiet while under consideration for a Cabinet post. But there were plenty of moderate Democrats, Obama administration veterans and City Hall allies who spoke up in his defense.

On his side of the PR spin battle, Emanuel had some Obama administration veterans taking up his cause, including former Transportation Secretary and onetime Illinois Republican Congressman Ray LaHood, who told the Tribune last month “there is nobody better than Rahm” to pull together a massive infrastructure bill on Biden’s behalf.

“He’s very well respected throughout Congress,” LaHood said. “He has a lot of friends on the Republican side, and obviously a whole lot of friends on the Democratic side.”

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Among other Capitol Hill friends who publicly voiced support: Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Illinois U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley and Sen. Dick Durbin, who told WGN Radio earlier this month that he had spoken several times with Emanuel about the post.

“Selfishly, the best thing that could happen for the state of Illinois is for Rahm Emanuel to become secretary of transportation. We need help. We need investments in infrastructure and the jobs they create and the businesses that can survive because of them, and he’d be in a prime position to be helpful to us,” Durbin said. “He wouldn’t need an explanation about what the state needs or the city needs. I’m supporting him. He’d be a great transportation secretary.”

At City Hall, aldermanic allies Michelle Harris and Michael Scott vouched for Emanuel in national interviews. In all cases, Emanuel’s backers spoke of his wide-ranging experience and track record getting funding for transportation projects in Chicago while steering clear of the McDonald controversy.

Emanuel spent the better part of a year fighting against releasing a police dashcam video of the October 2014 shooting, arguing that the matter was under investigation. In November 2015, a Cook County judge ordered the mayor to release the graphic footage, which showed then-Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times in the middle of a Southwest Side street as the Black teen walked away holding a small folding knife.

On the same day Emanuel made the video public, then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez charged Van Dyke with murder, and it soon was revealed that several officers’ accounts of the shooting in police reports varied dramatically from the video. Those reports and the delay in the murder charge, combined with the fact that Emanuel’s administration and aldermen paid a $5 million settlement to the McDonald family before a lawsuit was even filed, led to accusations of a City Hall cover-up, calls for Emanuel’s resignation and weeks of street protests.

Emanuel was reelected before the settlement and the video was released, but the fallout played a major role in the mayor abandoning a bid for a third term. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder in 2018 and is serving a nearly seven-year prison sentence.

Even before the McDonald shooting, Emanuel had drawn the ire of many national progressives for his decision to close half of the city’s mental health clinics, undertake the largest mass school closings in American history — 50 schools mostly on the predominantly Black South and West sides. His pro-growth, pro-business sensibilities and sparring with the Chicago Teachers Union that led to the historic 2013 strike earned him more animosity among progressives — and the nickname of Mayor 1%.

That history also led to push back from some transit unions over the transportation post, as labor leaders cited his battles with the CTU and previous push to reduce public employee pension benefits as evidence Emanuel isn’t friendly enough to labor.

“DOT is effectively the labor department for aviation — 80% union,” flight attendant union president Sara Nelson tweeted. “We do not need a union buster setting the rules for workers in aviation.

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, told The Intercept an Emanuel appointment would be a “nightmare” and a “betrayal,” labeling him “anti-trade union” and “anti-worker.”

While Emanuel was in office, however, he enjoyed widespread support from the city’s unions, many of whom made major contributions to his reelection campaign. The two exceptions were the CTU and the Service Employees International Union.

Karen Kent, president of the Unite Here Local 1 union that represents hospitality workers, cleaning and maintenance workers at hotels and in Chicago’s airports, told the Tribune last month that Emanuel “worked with us to change the lives of thousands of Chicagoans who work in our airports.”

The union was among the many that endorsed Emanuel in 2015, and Kent said he would make a good transportation secretary.

“With his focus on people who work with their hands,” she said. “Rahm will rebuild lives as America rebuilds its infrastructure.”

Instead, that job has been left to another former city executive also well-known by his first name — Mayor Pete.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart