Outside the Beltway

Rahm Emanuel Likely To Leave White House Next Month

Doug Mataconis · Thursday, September 23, 2010 · 3 comments

Reports out of Chicago seem to indicate that Rahm Emanuel’s decision on the Chicago Mayor’s race is all but officially announced:

WASHINGTON — All signs point to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel running for mayor of Chicago.

Emanuel’s decision is all but made — he still has some family matters to consider — but if his trajectory holds, watch for him to step down from his White House perch sometime in October. It will be a quick transition for

The window for filing at least 12,500 valid signatures on mayoral nominating petitions opens Nov. 15 and closes Nov. 22. While Emanuel has $1.2 million in his political war chest, he still would need a few weeks to get his organization up and running. People whom I talked to whom Emanuel discussed a mayoral run with are convinced he will run — with eyes wide open that there will be a lot of competition in a crowded field.

On Tuesday night in Washington — at the Caucus Room, a restaurant — Emanuel huddled with Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), himself mulling his second bid for City Hall, to discuss the Feb. 2 mayoral contest for the job Mayor Daley is vacating.

“We drank water so our minds could be as clear as possible,” Davis told me. “We had a conversation about the possibility of both of us running for mayor.”

With the potential of a mayoral race being divisive — reopening racial fault lines in the city — Davis said they talked about the kind of campaign they each wanted, “not to be designed to fracture the city, not to polarize the city but to have it be as harmonious as it could be.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Emanuel met with Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) — who is also mulling a mayoral bid, but deferring a decision until after Nov. 2 when Quigley is up for election to his first term in Congress. They met for about an hour at the rooftop bar at the W Hotel. Quigley had lemonade. Emanuel had iced tea.

In addition to the signature deadline, Emanuel and the other candidates for Mayor are also facing a December 31st deadline that will impact fundraising. After that date, new state campaign finance laws go into effect that will make it more difficult for candidates to raise large sums of money from individual donors, so it’s expected that there will be a scramble for dollars in the last three months of the year as candidates try to build up warchests for what’s likely to be an expensive campaign in the first two months of 2011.

Time’s Michael Scherer is reporting that Emanuel is expected to step aside sometime early next month, and speculates on possible replacements:

The White House has already begun preparing a list of replacements for Emanuel, who could be replaced by an interim chief of staff if a suitable candidate is not decided upon in time. Names that have been floated as possible replacements for Emanuel include Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon; White House legislative strategist Philip Schiliro; White House counsel Bob Bauer; and Ron Klain, the chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden.

So, let the speculation begin !