Then-Chicago mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia shakes hands as he is cheered by supporters at a campaign office, Monday, April 6, 2015, in Chicago. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

This article was originally published as part of The Picayune Sentinel’s Sept. 22 issue.

Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet reported Monday on a poll showing Democratic U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia well positioned to take on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in next February’s election.

The poll, commissioned by Nuestro PAC — “a national political action committee focusing on Latino voters” that is urging Garcia to get into the race — showed Lightfoot and Garcia in a statistical tie at the top of a large field of announced and potential contenders.

(Amplifying the results of private polls conducted by advocates is a dodgy proposition, even when the source is disclosed. Former Tribune Metro Editor Mark Jacob lashed FOX 32 on Twitter earlier this week for reporting on a poll that emanated from the gubernatorial campaign of Darren Bailey.)

Garcia told Sweet he is aiming to decide by the middle of next month whether to run.

He could be a formidable candidate. He was a Cook County commissioner in 2015 when he ran for mayor, won 33.5% of the vote in the five-candidate general election field and forced incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff.

I voted for him in that election even though I didn’t believe he’d yet made the case that he was ready to run the city. My hope was that a runoff election would offer a bracing and enlightening contrast of visions on how Chicago should address the issues that confronted it.

But Garcia didn’t bring much of a vision to the runoff. He brought a series of gripes — the main one being that he needed more detail than the city’s massive (and public) budget books provided about where the money goes before he could come up with even a fantasy solution to the budget problems.

“There are many things that need to be on the table,” Garcia said in response to a question about property taxes during a debate. “However, you can’t move forward until you show Chicagoans where the tax dollars are going.”

About the CPS budget gap: “I can’t tell you right now how I would solve it.”

But, “I’m going to be collaborative and engaging,” he said. “What we will have under my administration will be a set of open books that everyone can make reference to know what the true state of our fiscal situation is and then be able to make decisions moving forward.”

Asked how he’d make up for the lost revenue if he was able to follow through on one of his concrete proposals and end the red light camera program, he answered, “That is part of the challenge.”

He branded his blueprint for the city’s future as “bold” and “innovative,” but it was little more than hopeful musings about the savings he might find by consolidating government services, limiting pensions of future employees and so on.

By leaving everything on the table, he put nothing on the table. Emanuel, who was rhetorically slippery himself, thumped Garcia by more than 12 percentage points in the runoff.

But that was nearly eight years ago. Garcia has served in the U.S. House since 2019 and presumably now has more robust notions about how best to address the various problems bedeviling the city and will have more to say than “I can’t tell you right now how I would solve it.”

Meanwhile, you’ll note that I have continued my effort to liberate his name from the cage of quotation marks.

Journalistic custom has been to refer to him as “Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia,” which carries with it the vague suggestion that it’s an affectionym rather than what everyone actually calls him.

Chuy is a very common Mexican nickname for men named Jesus. And it no more (or certainly no longer) belongs in quotes any more than Bob belongs in quotes when we refer to Ald. Robert Fioretti, Ted belongs in quotes when we write about U.S. Sen. Rafael Edward Cruz, R-Texas, or Jeb belongs in quotes when we refer to former Florida Gov. John Ellis Bush, should we ever need to do so again.

We’re still waiting to hear either way about mayoral intentions from:

  • Anthony Beale, 9th Ward alderman
  • Melissa Conyears-Ervin, city treasurer
  • La Shawn Ford, Democratic state representative
  • Judy Frydland, former Chicago building commissioner
  • Brian Hopkins, 2nd Ward alderman
  • Brandon Johnson, Democratic Cook County commissioner
  • Martin Nesbitt, local business leader and chair of the Obama Foundation
  • Patrick “Pat” Quinn, former governor of Illinois
  • Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th Ward alderman
  • Thomas “Tom” Tunney, 44th Ward alderman

You see what I did there?

Eric Zorn is the writer of the Picayune Sentinel newsletter and a former Chicago Tribune columnist. You can follow him on Twitter @EricZorn.