Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's departing mayor, in his own words

In a flurry of interviews and appearances in recent weeks, Emanuel insistently made what amounted to a closing argument for his policies, his legacy and his city.

He rattled off statistics of a city transformed over the last eight years, with the arrival of corporate headquarters and technology companies, longer hours for children in public schools and higher graduation rates, improvements to the city’s public transit system, the hiring of 1,000 new police officers, millions of dollars in grants for development in struggling neighborhoods, and the unveiling of a reimagined riverfront.

Those things came in counterpoint to the tumultuous chapters that Emanuel will also be remembered for: school closings in Chicago’s black and Latino neighborhoods, the first teachers’ strike in the city in nearly a quarter-century, a period of increased street violence and mounting tension between the police and black residents. Last fall, as a growing cast of potential challengers emerged, Emanuel announced that he would not seek a third term.

Emanuel left his City Hall office on Friday night to a crush of clapping city workers and passers-by, who watched him climb into a vehicle and pull away. What is next for him? Emanuel, 59 and a former congressman and adviser to Democratic presidents, won’t really say. Or at least, not specifically — just that a vacation is ahead, and then back to work.

Here are portions of a recent interview with Emanuel, edited for length and clarity.

Is Chicago safe?

“Robberies, burglaries and auto thefts are at a 20-year low. Those affect your sense of safety. Our shootings have a two-year decline, and our homicides. That’s not at the place I want to see — because it affects the quality of life, let alone your life. I do know this: We have fundamentally changed the philosophy and approach of community policing. It used to be an office — now it’s an approach and philosophy.”

What’s the difference between Chicago and larger cities, which have fewer homicides?

“The police are taking a gun off the street here every 50 minutes. That means, A, the police are working, and B, they’re drowning. Everyone says, look at New York. New York’s got Connecticut and New Jersey. You want Indiana and Wisconsin next to you? Here, give me Connecticut’s gun laws and I’ll give you Indiana’s.”

Education is where he sees his biggest achievements ...

“Every year for seven consecutive years, our graduation grew, and it grew four times faster than the national average. We outpaced the country in college acceptance and attendance.”

“We’ve added four years to a child’s education. If you were born a decade ago versus today, you get four more years. You get pre-K. You get full-day kindergarten. You now get a 7-hour-and-15-minute day, versus a 5-and-a-half-hour day.”

... And his biggest mistake.

As the teachers’ strike was unfolding in 2012, Emanuel said, he should not have canceled a pay raise that teachers were expecting without first discussing the issue with the leader of the teachers’ union:

“It made me the opponent. I should have given her a shot, even if she said, ‘It’s your problem.’ I didn’t give her a chance at the table. That set off a series of dominoes.”

How was he misunderstood?

“Mayor 1 Percent,” he said, alluding to a nickname some Chicagoans gave him to suggest that he catered to rich downtown interests and not to the ordinary residents or struggling neighborhoods.

“I know my personal background, and I get it,” he continued. “But when you look at the battles I took on longer school days, the battles I took to make kindergarten free and full-day, the battles to make pre-K free, the battle for free community college, you name me who in the 1 percent benefited from any of those.”

How do you rebuild struggling neighborhoods?

“For a long time our urban policy was housing. If you want to build something in economically challenging neighborhoods, you’ve got to build neighborhoods. By aggregating the five essential public investments, the private sector will then follow; they won’t lead. That is: safety, schools, parks, libraries and transportation. You put those together, and now you have not one, not two, not three, but four to five separate examples that are bucking the trend.

“So we have a model, and it’s worked. Would I like to do more? Yeah, I’d like to have a federal government that starts funding things.”

Was there too much attention on downtown?

“People say, ‘Oh, downtown’s doing well.’ You want it to do well. It becomes the engine for all the other investment strategies and funds the investment strategies.”

Why walk away now?

Emanuel said that he was concerned that he might not have another four years as mayor in him, not after a run of back-to-back political posts. “Here’s the thing I know: I know what that job requires,” he said. “I had a year and a half in me,” he guessed; “I didn’t have four. I had spent two years with Obama on the front end, eight years as mayor. I didn’t have four full years. And the city of Chicago deserves a mayor for four years.”

Any advice for Mayor-elect Lightfoot?

“I don’t talk about the advice I’ve given Clinton. I don’t talk about the advice I’ve given Obama. And I’m not going to talk about the advice if Lori Lightfoot wants mine. Otherwise, you can’t be trusted.”

What’s next?

“I am never short of an opinion,” Emanuel said, adding that he intends to stay in Chicago and write a magazine column.

“I’m going to have a lot of different things. I’m going to have my hand in the public policy debate and the political debate. And I’ll have my hand in the business world.”

“I’m fine.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's departing mayor, in his own words

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