Bobby Rush’s enemies smell blood.
“We’re living in fantastic economic times,” says Trotter, who wants to use the skills he perfected as a Springfield wheeler-dealer to snare money for the district. “Bobby, what have you brought back to our community?”
From Rush’s personal pain has come political action. As an urban congressman, he’s always advocated gun control–he’s cosponsored 31 bills, including the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban. But after Huey died, he went on a media tour to condemn the “glorification” of guns. His was an irresistible story: the ex-Black Panther who’d posed with a pistol and served time on a weapons charge before learning firsthand the evil that guns do. Rush was in Newsweek and People, on National Public Radio, Queen Latifah, and Today.
(Rush’s opponents cried hypocrisy when a Washington fund-raiser for him was hosted by Representative John Dingell, who’s an ally of the National Rifle Association. Dingell is also ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, on which Rush sits. “We fight bitterly on the issue of guns,” Rush says. “I differ with him on that issue. I differ with him on other issues. They’re reaching for straws if they criticize me for that.”)
“My schools in the First District were some of the first to be wired,” he says.
“It’s not enough for us just to protest police misconduct without thinking systematically about how we’re going to change practice,” Obama said in measured, mellow tones.
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Rush’s campaign for mayor hurt him most by showing his opponents where he was weak. Rush did win his congressional district overall, but in the 19th Ward he received only 13 percent of the vote. A lot of cops and conservative whites live out there, in Beverly and Morgan Park, and they haven’t forgiven Rush his past, even after 30 years.
