For the first time in 22 years, the Windy City has a new mayor. Under crystal clear blue skies, Rahm Emanuel was sworn in as Chicago's mayor ushering in a new era in Chicago politics. 

Emanuel, who resigned as President Obama's Chief of Staff to run for the post, told the crowd at Millennium Park he has big shoes to fill replacing now-former Mayor Richard M. Daley, the longest serving mayor in Chicago history.

During his speech, Emanuel was quick to give credit to Daley for his lifetime of service, leadership and vision. "No one ever loved Chicago more or served it better than Richard Daley," Emanuel said.

Close friend and political ally, David Axelrod said "they (Emanuel & Daley) are both larger-than-life figures. Running a big city is a huge task...you have to be a larger-than-life figure to do it well."

Emanuel also publicly thanked his former boss for his support, "I want to thank President Obama, who turned our nation around and who loves Chicago so much, he understood why I wanted to come home to get our city moving again." (read more)

It's good to be Rahm Emanuel these days.

He beat the residency challenge to his candidacy for Chicago mayor. His lead over opponents in Chicago's Mayoral race -- Gery Chico, Carol Moseley Braun and Miguel del Valle -- is so dominate the question is not whether he will win, but whether he will garner more than 50 percent of the vote and avoid a runoff. And even though President Obama hasn't campaigned for his former chief of staff, Emanuel's got the president's backing.

The downside to his comfy position is that all of the other candidates have their sights set on him.

Carol Moseley Braun recently, with reckless insensitivity to Emanuel's Jewish heritage, compared him to the Hitler character from the famous musical The Producers.

Now rahmstoppers.com headed by outspoken conservative activist and sometime radio host William Kelly put up a new ad targeting Emanuel. The group doesn't have a ton of money, so it's only running on the internet, and it was written by former Clinton staffer turned conservative commentator (and Fox News contributor) Dick Morris. (read more)

Two seemingly crucial phone conversations between then Governor Rod Blagojevich and then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel are "mysteriously missing" from the collection of evidence held by prosecutors, according to Blago's defense team.

The calls were made around December 8, 2008, the day before Blago was arrested by the Feds.

Defense attorneys claim those phone calls would help bolster their case. Blagojevich still faces 23 counts of conspiracy, fraud and other charges at his retrial, after the first jury only agreed to convict him on one count of lying to federal authorities. His retrial, originally scheduled for February, has been pushed back to April of this year. (read more)

Tommy Hanson is lonely. There just aren't many guys like him in Chicago. He's a Republican. There's nobody like him in Chicago's race for mayor. In fact, he's not on the ballot even as he waves around a receipt from the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners saying he filed all of his nomination papers correctly.

"I got all the signatures. I filed all the documents on November 22," says Hanson. "About a week or so later, I got a letter in the mail from the Chicago Board of Commissioners. Although, they did receive the documents and gave me a receipt, they lost my statement of economic interest."

The letter, signed by chairman Neal Langdon, says, "Although the receipt prepared by the board staff for the filing of your nomination papers did seem to indicate that such a receipt (of economic interest) was filed with your nomination papers...a close examination of your nomination papers reveals no such receipt is contained therein. Therefore, your name will not be certified as a candidate..." (read more)

Immediately upon Monday's appellate court ruling that briefly -- and possibly permanently -- knocked Rahm Emanuel off the ballot in Chicago's mayoral race, the editorial boards at Chicago's two largest newspapers opened up their guns in defense of Emanuel.

The Tribune wrote:" Two appellate Judges ignored more than 100 years of legal precedent, invented a new definition of ‘residency' and ordered Rahm Emanuel off the February 22 mayoral ballot."

The Sun-Times wrote: "If this ruling stands, two appellate court justices, employing a rather narrow view of state law, will have decided that you, the voters, cannot choose Emanuel to be your next mayor - tough luck, folks."

All the way down in Springfield, the state capitol, where citizens don't vote but businessmen view themselves as inextricably tied to Chicago, the State Journal-Register wrote: "A shocking and, in our interpretation, curious ruling by an Illinois appeals court Monday that removes Rahm Emanuel from the ballot could significantly weaken the field in Chicago mayoral election. That's not good for Chicago or the state as a whole." (read more)

An appeals court in Chicago ruled Monday that Rahm Emanuel doesn't meet the residency requirements to run for mayor of Chicago and ordered his name be pulled off the ballot. The three judge panel voted 2-1 against Emanuel.

In a major blow to Emanuel's campaign, Monday's ruling overturned a Cook County Circuit Court ruling that upheld a Chicago Board of Elections decision to let Emanuel run in the February 22nd election.

The court agreed with Emanuel's contention that he met Chicago's voter residency standard but added that wasn't enough to allow his run for mayor.

"...a candidate must meet not only the Election Code's voter residency standard, but also must have actually resided within the municipality for one year prior to the election, a qualification that the candidate unquestionably does not satisfy," the ruling stated.

And the ruling may well keep Emanuel's name off the ballot. (read more)

The effort to endear Emanuel to Chicago's powerful minority voting block was pretty easy to see, even though it was never spoken. Of all the speakers at Emanuel's campaign rally in Chicago's cultural center, all but two of them were black: Rahm Emanuel and Bill Clinton.

Clinton, of course, once wore the moniker of America's First Black President. Without a formal headcount, most of the people in the room appeared to be either Black or Hispanic. That last point is to the great frustration of Emanuel's opponents.

Congressman Danny Davis, before he dropped out of the race, threatened to turn Chicago's black voters against Clinton if he supported Rahm. "Give us a break," Davis told me. "Let this thing play out and everything is going to be cool."

Davis left dropped out of the campaign and left Carol Moseley Braun to fight what is shaping up as a losing battle with Rahm for the Black vote. (read more)

The first televised debate in the closely watched Chicago mayor's race featured questions from city high school students, many of them too young to vote in February's election. Monday's debate included the top four candidates in the race: former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Chicago City Clerk Miguel del Valle, and former Chicago Public Schools Board President Gery Chico.

No groundbreaking policies came out of the hour-long taped forum. With a studio audience of 250 high school students, the candidates were on their best behavior and didn't ruffle any feathers. They agreed on key issues, including the need for more school funding, recruiting highly qualified teachers, and making investments to keep neighborhoods safe.  (read more)

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

-- Rahm Emanuel during a November, 2008 Wall Street Journal Forum

It is a comment former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel might wish he'd never made, in light of the fact that its being repeated in newspaper articles and editorials about Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The quote is being used to explain how some lawmakers and political pundits on both sides of the aisle may be trying to exploit the incident and place blame on their opponents.

Emanuel said the infamous comment was never intended to be about an incident such as the shooting on Saturday which killed six people and wounded 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was hosting a "Congress on Your Corner" event at a Tucson grocery store.

At a press conference in Chicago Tuesday, a very solemn looking Emanuel called Giffords a friend that he helped get elected, and said she was doing what she loved most; meeting with the public.

"First of all, what I said was never let a good crisis go to waste when it's an opportunity to do things you had never considered or you didn't think were possible," he told FOX News when asked about the quote. (read more)

Rahm Emanuel scored another victory today in the battle to keep his name on the ballot in the Chicago Mayor's race.

A Cook County Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday that Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff, is eligible to run for mayor of Chicago, thus his name can appear on the ballot in the February 22 election. The judge confirmed the decision issued from the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioner two weeks ago.

All the fuss is focused on whether Rahm Emanuel was a resident of the city of Chicago for a full year prior to election day, as required by Illinois law.

After moving to Washington, DC to serve as President Obama's Chief of Staff, Emanuel rented out his Chicago home in mid-2009, but he says he always intended to return to Chicago. He resigned as the president's Chief of Staff and moved back to the Windy City in October of 2010. (read more)