Only a few hours before appearing on our show, The Better Government Association’s  Andy Shaw had moderated a mayoral forum on education issues.  He re-capped some of the forum’s highlights, including the debate over James Meeks’ proposal to give 50,000 Chicago Public School kids a $4,500 voucher to attend schools outside the system.

Panelists Kitty Kurth, well-known political consultant and activist, and WBEZ’s Natalie Moore joined Shaw for some very spirited discussion about food deserts, Wal-Mart, cutting the City Council by half, and Toni Preckwinkle’s proposal to slash spending for public defenders, prosecutors and the Sheriff’s office.

Cindi Canary joins us today to talk about how new campaign finance laws will affect the municipal elections, come January 1. She’s director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, and she tells us that, especially in the runoff election, finance limits could play an important role.

Also on the program –  Tribune reporters Hal Dardick and John Byrne, both of whom cover City Hall for the newspaper and for the Trib’s Clout Street blog.  With so much focus on the mayor’s race, we take a look down the ballot at some of the more contentious battles going on at the ward level.

And when we asked the panel whether they could find one reasonable, logical argument for knocking Rahm Emanuel off the ballot for residency reasons, it got a good laugh. “How can you base the question on reason and logic?” asked the grizzled veteran Mr. Byrne.

We have a broad spectrum of political voices on the show this week, but they all agree on one thing : vast expansion of gambling in Illinois is simply bad public policy.  Oh, and they’re feeling pretty positively about Miguel del Valle.  And despite your host’s protestations to the contrary, they all agree that Rahm Emanuel may just not have been a Chicagoan for the past year or two. Want to see how Democrats and Republicans can agree on big issues? Watch here.

This week’s guests: Delmarie Cobb, prominent political strategist, owner of The Publicity Works; Achy Obejas, journalist, commentator, and author of Citylife at Vocalo.org;  and Chris Robling, political commentator for WGN-TV and well-known Republican strategist

Despite the host’s proposal to devote the entire half-hour to a discussion of Apple’s world-stopping acquisition of the rights to Beatles’ downloads, the guests insisted on talking about other things. Those included Terry Mazany’s appointment Ron Huberman’s emporary replacement at Chicago Public Schools,  Danny K. Davis as the “consensus” candidate who doesn’t have a consensus,  reports at Catalysts and on WBEZ that Chicago’s charter schools may be losing students at a faster rate than traditional public schools, and an assertion by seasoned journalists that the Mayor’s race is not yet over.

On the panel: Sarah Karp, Deputy Editor, Catalyst Chicago Magazine; Lou Ransom, Executive Editor, Chicago Defender – and Charlie Meyerson, News Director at 720WGN Radio.

On this week’s show we look at the impending filing of Mayoral and Aldermanic petitions.  Also in the discussion: did Bill Brady turn out to be too conservative for Illinois, even during this national republican sweep? And why weren’t any of the judges who were targeted for non-retention by legal watchdog groups defeated?

On the panel: Dave Glowacz, independent journalist; Sam Hudzik, political reporter, WBEZ;  Rummana Hussain, Criminal Courts reporter, Sun Times –  and Salim Muwwakil, In These Times and WVON Radio

We get a chance to look at Tuesday’s election with a two-day perspective on today’s show. At taping time the Joe Walsh/Melissa Bean race was still officially undecided, as was the Governor’s race. But Pat Quinn had what appeared to be an insurmountable lead.  We began the discussion with what we now know to be an erroneous report posted on HuffPo – that Bill Brady had said he wished Cook County would secede from Illinois.  After we finished recording,  we learned that it was a supporter, not Brady, who made the remark. We regret that we helped pass on this incorrect report.  Here’s the current version of the Huffington Post story.

Of course, we also kick around all the other races and look forward to the ever-shrinking field of candidates in the Mayoral race.

On the panel: Hoy’s Metropolitan Editor Octavio Lopez, Independent writer and columnist Monroe Anderson and Chicago Magazine Contributing Editor and political blogger Carol Felsenthal.

It’s our election preview show, and this week we turn to Rebecca Sanchez, political columnist for Extra Bilingual Newspaper, and  John Dempsey, morning news anchor and reporter for WLS-AM. Although there are so many state, county and national elections to talk about, Tom Dart managed to steal the headlines when he dropped out of the Mayoral race because he wanted more time with his family.

This week we turn to two veteran journalists and observers of the Chicago political and business scene. Dan Miller is currently a senior policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, and has been an editor at Crain’s and the business editor at the Sun-Times.  John McCarron has been an urban affairs writer and an editor at the Tribune, and has also worked for the Metropolitan Planning Council. He’s still a contributing columnist for the Trib.  With their deep experience and unique insights, we asked them what the relationship between the new mayor and the business community would be.  McCarron’s advice for the mayor’s first day? Have lunch with Eddie Burke.

This week we talk about the recent “New News 2010” report prepared by the Community Media Workshop. We also discuss the Lee Abrams/Randy Michaels controversy at the Tribune (recorded prior top Abrams’ resignation). The New News report was funded by the Chicago Community Trust.

Guests:

Ray Hanania, columnist, radio and TV host

Neil Tesser, jazz critic and activist

Esther J. Cepeda, Sun-Times columnist and blogger

Thom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop