{"id":286726,"date":"2010-02-06T13:12:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T18:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a86b39a5970b"},"modified":"2010-02-06T13:14:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T18:14:27","slug":"daley-wont-call-for-cohen-to-step-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/286726","title":{"rendered":"Daley won&#8217;t call for Cohen to step down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by John Byrne<\/em> at 12:11 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Richard Daley today declined to join the growing chorus of Democratic leadership calling on embattled lieutenant governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen to withdraw, saying voters elected him.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;People vote in elections. Everybody knew he was a pawnbroker,&quot; Daley said. &quot;You knew. The media knew. Everybody knew that, right?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Several top Democrats <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/elections\/ct-met-governor-race-0206-20100205,0,1975189.story\">have called<\/a> on Cohen to step down after revelations that he has been accused of abusing women, failing to pay child support and spending lavishly on extramarital affairs. In Sunday&#8217;s editions, the Tribune <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/elections\/ct-met-lt-governor-0207-20100205,0,6077513.story\">looks at<\/a> Cohen&#8217;s tax troubles and other issues. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;So anybody who&#8217;s allegedly &#8212; who&#8217;s arrested and the case is thrown out, should not run for public office. Is that right? You want that done? I&#8217;m just saying, it&#8217;s a very complicated issue. It&#8217;s much more complicated than you think it is. Just because I don&#8217;t like a person, he or she should not,&quot; Daley said. &quot;If I did that, you would write editorials that the mayor is a boss, he&#8217;s a dictator. That he&#8217;s telling people who got elected in the primary that they should not be going to the general election.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Daley would not say Cohen should remain on the November statewide Democratic ticket, but warned that it is a slippery slope to start trying to force candidates not to run because &quot;you don&#8217;t like them.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><\/br>&quot;You have responsibilities. This is not a game. People go to the polls and vote,&quot; Daley said at an event to dedicate a new police satellite office at a library in the Clearing neighborhood. &quot;So you don&#8217;t like so-and-so, so we should maybe &#8212; not for another reason &#8212; take that person to not run for office.&quot;<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Daley said he has long favored a system in which candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run as a team instead of separately in the primary and added that would be the proper way to prevent this kind of situation in the future.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>&quot;He&#8217;s already elected, that&#8217;s your dilemma,&quot; Daley said. &quot;It&#8217;s a constitutional dilemma. Once you get elected in the primary, no mayor, no newspaper, no citizen can ask you to resign because I don&#8217;t like you anymore.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by John Byrne at 12:11 p.m. Mayor Richard Daley today declined to join the growing chorus of Democratic leadership calling on embattled lieutenant governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen to withdraw, saying voters elected him. &quot;People vote in elections. Everybody knew he was a pawnbroker,&quot; Daley said. &quot;You knew. The media knew. Everybody knew that, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}