The candidates face off Dec. 6 in the final Senate contest of the 2022 midterms because neither surpassed 50% of the vote in the general election a little more than two weeks ago, which included a third-party candidate. If Warnock keeps the seat, Democrats will have a 51-49 advantage in the Senate. Should Walker prevail, the chamber would remain evenly split, with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote giving Democrats effective control.

Warnock raised $52 million in the period between Oct. 20 through Nov. 16. Almost half of his contributions came from donors who gave less than $200. He spent $33 million and entered the last 19 days of the race with $30 million cash on hand, roughly three times as much as Walker.

After raising $21 million and spending $16 million, Walker has $9.8 million in the bank. He raised $11.7 million from small-dollar donors. Former Senator Kelly Loeffler, who lost to Warnock in a 2021 runoff, was among those giving the maximum $2,900 to Walker’s campaign.

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Democratic donors continue to provide a big financial advantage to their candidates. The party’s Senate incumbents and challengers in key battleground states outraised their Republican rivals, all of whom were endorsed by former President Donald Trump, by an average of $36 million.

PLUS: The Chicago connection to the Warnock campaign

That’s allowed Democrats to dominate campaign advertising, including in the Georgia runoff. Warnock and allied groups are spending $37.5 million compared with $20.9 million by Walker and the GOP super-PACs supporting him, according to AdImpact, which tracks political media expenditures.

Warnock’s campaign is the biggest spender at $17.6 million, followed by Georgia Honor, a super-PAC funded by the Democratic leadership-aligned Senate Majority PAC, at $14.7 million. The Senate Leadership Fund is spending $16 million on the runoff, followed by Walker’s campaign at $6.6 million. 

The conservative super-PAC’s biggest source of funds was One Nation, an allied political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose donors, which contributed $20.6 million of so-called dark money.

Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, was one of the biggest donors to the super-PAC with $2.5 million, while Citadel’s billionaire founder Griffin gave $2 million. West Realm Shire Services Inc., better known by its trading name FTX US, donated $1 million on Oct. 27, about two weeks before the crypto exchange and related entities filed for bankruptcy. All three contributed before the Nov. 8 election.

Investment banker Warren Stephens and the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association of the oil and gas industry, each donated $1 million after the midterm. 

Walker has also gotten support from 34N22, a super-PAC named in part for the uniform number he wore as a standout for the University of Georgia Bulldogs in their 1980 national championship season. 34N22 raised $1.4 million and had $1.3 million in the bank. Home Depot Inc. co-founder Bernard Marcus gave $500,000 for the runoff.

Georgia Honor, which is supporting Warnock, didn’t file a pre-runoff disclosure with the FEC. The Senate Majority PAC, which sponsors Georgia Honor, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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While the upcoming Chicago municipal elections have recently captured the attention of mayoral and aldermanic candidates, another set of elections will be equally as important as Chicagoans decide for the first time ever who they choose to serve on their local Police District Councils.

All Chicagoans will now have a say in city’s policing and this new opportunity needs to include the right balance of crime prevention, effective partnerships and oversight that is conducive to collaboration and meaningful results.

Regardless of political affiliation, all Chicagoans need the same thing: safe communities and a public safety structure that can keep it that way.

Now more that ever, Chicago business owners, city shoppers, CTA users, students, parents, the elderly, tourists, homeowners, renters, taxpayers, civilians and police officers can agree on the urgency of fixing our public safety woes.

We can take a step forward in that direction by electing representatives to Police District Councils. These elected positions, three for each of the city’s 22 Police Districts, will have the opportunity to weigh in on public safety matters, including choosing a citywide commission to suggest policing policies, no-confidence votes and possible removal of the police superintendent, police board members or head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

While most elections naturally lend themselves to policy preferences and taking sides, it would be in the best interest of all Chicagoans if these new district councils focused on addressing public safety needs with balance.

Instead of pointing fingers and arguing about reaching levels of consent decree compliance, district council members should discuss solutions that empower both police officers doing their job and entrust members of the public that want effective policing.

A few areas where that can begin are in recruitment and retention of qualified officers, and training and cross-training on key public safety components including tactics, technology, social media, violence prevention and mental health professionals.

Other matters that will require district council collaboration include departmental understaffing, human resource management, proper amount of officers days off, officer well-being, overtime and other factors that often result in poor decisions and costly lawsuits.

Civilian input is necessary for decisions that if done effectively, can benefit both those that serve and protect as well as taxpayers that receive and fund those services. Finally, public safety and accountability doesn’t stop with policing. Crucial input is needed in coming up with solutions and recommendations for areas in public safety that are relevant but outside the scope of policing matters.

Another key component of our city’s public safety are the duties performed by the Cook County state’s attorney office. The public needs transparency and effectiveness when it comes to prosecution and has lacked input on the effectiveness of these services.

The district councils along with the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability should also ensure the interactions between policing and proper prosecution, especially those involving violent crimes are a top priority. Solely focusing on policing is an incomplete approach to public safety.

Chicago has long awaited a citizen’s voice on public safety. Now that the public won’t be guided by appointed civilians but rather by their own choice of district council representatives, our city stands to benefit from the opportunity to remedy public safety.

This important task is more likely to succeed if we remember that all of Chicagoans want the same thing: a safer Chicago. And no matter who gets elected their approach should be balanced and holistic.

Froylan Jimenez is Chicago Public Schools civics teacher.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Chicago Sun-Times or any of its affiliates.

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The Fed has acted forcefully in trying to curb the country’s nearly 8% inflation with four interest rate hikes totaling three basis points.

Retailers prep for Black Friday shopping as consumers are hit hard with higher prices at the Thanksgiving table.

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And it’s a big year for downtown real estate: Mayor Lori Lightfoot puts bets on Bally’s to build a Casino in River West and Google inks a deal to buy the Thompson Center.

This, as Chicago residents see a drop in home sales in October while prices of those homes rose.

Guests:

Talia Soglin, Chicago Tribune | @talia_soglin

Joe Cahill, Crain’s Chicago Business | @CahillOnBiz

Shruti Singh, Bloomberg | @shrutidatesingh

Dennis Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business |  @Dennis_Rodkin

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Years ago, the Metra Electric’s predecessor, the Illinois Central suburban service, operated what amounted to an independent rapid transit system south of 63rd Street. In a rational world, the Metra Electric city service would have been integrated with the el following public takeover, rendering the Red Line extension unnecessary.

It didn’t happen. City authorities never made any serious effort to use the Metra Electric to improve transit south of 95th or anywhere else. Instead, they’re about to spend an enormous sum building a duplicate line.

In the meantime, due to the lack of a low-cost transfer with the CTA and higher fares, Metra Electric city service withered. Today, except in Hyde Park and a couple of other places, few ride it. But the trains still run every day.

It’s not that no one noticed the Metra Electric was there. When Red Line extension planning began, the CTA considered using the Metra Electric right of way and Metra-type trains. But the idea was to run service into 95th Street. Integrating Metra Electric city service with the CTA was never on the table.

There were reasons. Relations between the two agencies were hostile. The CTA was controlled by Chicago’s mayor, Metra by the suburbs. With the South Side in decline, no one saw any future in Metra Electric city service.

But come on. The oft-stated goal of the Red Line extension is to do right by the underserved residents of the Far South Side. At some point the realization ought to have dawned: There’s already a railroad down here! We don’t have to build another one! We could massively improve service without waiting 20 years!

Finally, someone woke up. The Cook County Board under President Toni Preckwinkle decided to pursue a three-year Fair Transit South Cook pilot program to (a) reduce city fares on the Metra Electric and Rock Island lines to parity with the CTA, and (b) enable low-cost transfer with the CTA. From the rider’s standpoint, CTA and Metra lines would be integrated.

Reduced fares happened. Transfers—key to making it all work—didn’t. (Among other things, the CTA worried about the long-term financial burden.) Worse, the pilot launched during the pandemic, making it impossible to gauge the impact.

There’s been progress. Randy Blankenhorn, who as a county consultant helped work out the pilot’s details, says Metra, the CTA and Pace are working on a common fare platform. “The goal is to use Ventra,” he said. “I thought it would be easier than it is.”

Everyone I consulted agrees a common Ventra platform would be great. One hopes it leads to low-cost transfers. That might have saved us $3.6 billion.

Visiting the Far South Side

I toured the Red Line extension route using public transportation. Someday people will say: All that money and this is what we got?

Taking the el downtown, I reached Millennium Station via the pedway. My train left on time. Nothing against the CTA, but the Metra Electric is faster, smoother and quieter.

Upon arrival at Kensington-115th Street, a 10-minute walk took me to the nearest Red Line extension station site at Michigan Avenue and 116th Street. Other than being absurdly close to an existing Metra Electric station, the location was unobjectionable. Red Line extension tracks for much of their length will run on an elevated structure parallel to a busy Union Pacific rail line—no big deal here because the UP tracks are elevated, too. Elsewhere, that’s not the case.

I rode a Divvy bike to the Red Line extension station site at 111th. Here the UP tracks are at street level. As I approached the grade crossing, a train horn sounded, warning lights flashed and the gates came down. A man heading my way on a bike dodged around the gates. Seconds later, a northbound Amtrak train rumbled past.

The station at 111thwill be elevated, but the entrance will be at street level. The CTA expects 4,800 people to board here daily. Due to a curve in the tracks, northbound trains aren’t visible until they’re close.

You can see where that might be a problem. CTA documents say “mitigation measures, including pedestrian bridges, will be analyzed during preliminary engineering.” How many people will dodge around the gates is unknown. Guess we’ll find out.

After inspecting a similar site at 103rd, where at least the UP tracks don’t curve, I headed south. Zigzagging through a desolate industrial area, I reached 130th Street, where the Red Line extension will terminate.

The area is so isolated it’s creepy. There’s a residential pocket south of 130th, much of which consists of Altgeld Gardens. To the west and south, the neighborhood backs up on the Little Calumet River, which has few bridges. To the east is the Bishop Ford, with the Lake Calumet industrial area beyond. Stretching north from 130th to 115th is more uninhabited industrial land.

I rode to the Red Line extension terminal site. It’s in a narrow strip occupied by the South Shore commuter tracks, a freight rail line and a road used by trucks headed to and from a scrap yard. It was one of the least promising places for a passenger rail terminal I’ve ever seen.

Checking census data later, I found 1,127 workers live near the 130thStreet terminal, of whom 419 use transit. The rest mainly drive. 

Despite this, the CTA predicts 4,400 riders will board here daily. Plans call for 2,300 parking spaces. The thinking is, people will drive from the suburbs and northwest Indiana to take the Red Line.

Transit experts scoffed at the idea suburbanites would park their cars in an isolated location to take an el line considered dangerous, notwithstanding cheaper and more frequent service. They thought it more likely commuters would stick with safer—and expanding—suburban rail options. Indiana is spending $1.6 billion to upgrade and extend the South Shore, which has multiple stops in northwest Indiana. Those seem a better bet to draw Hoosier riders.

What now?

The transit experts I spoke with feared for the CTA’s credibility if the Red Line extension generates little ridership, but tossing it out and starting over seems out of the question. There isn’t time: Years would be needed to develop an alternative approach, and the extra funds appropriated by the infrastructure law expire in 2026.

“Chicago has been terrible at getting federal grants for new transit lines,” says Yonah Freemark, a former Metropolitan Planning Council staffer who’s now a senior research associate with the Urban Institute. “The last major project it opened was the Orange Line three decades ago. In the meantime, New York built two subway extensions and Los Angeles opened six rail lines.

“In Chicago, project after project gets discussed for years and then canceled. If I were to come up with the best investment for Chicago, it wouldn’t necessarily be the Red Line extension. But if the city doesn’t get moving on that project, it will likely lose out on another decade of federal funding for major new transit projects.”

Fine. But let’s get a few things straight:

• The Red Line extension funding plan must be revisited. If that means more money from downtown and less from Bronzeville, so be it.

• We should never do this again. If a transit expansion project won’t generate enough revenue to cover local costs, we shouldn’t do it.

• We need a rational transit investment plan. No more impractical schemes for extensions to thinly populated outlying areas. Expanded rail service needs to go where the people are, or will be. Best bets: Chicago’s waterfronts, including the river and lake.

• Another planning goal: knitting together the isolated transit projects proposed of late, some more sensible than others. Freemark recommended making better use of existing transit infrastructure, citing development opportunities along, yes, the south lakefront.

“Chicago has a great opportunity,” he said. “It needs to figure something out.” One can only hope.

Ed Zotti is a journalist, author and transit consultant.

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In his message to students, Dean Thomas Miles said the “ranking is not our guide” and that he’d prefer to “shine a light on the substantive attributes that make our Law School the home of the most intellectually ambitious faculty and the most powerful legal education.”

But most the data they give U.S. News is already public and “the rest is information we have no reason to withhold,” the dean said, adding that prospective students should “apply critical thinking and reach their own conclusions about what value the rankings add.”

The news comes a week after perennially top-ranked law schools Yale and Harvard announced they’d no longer participate in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, with Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken calling them “profoundly flawed.”

Other top schools quickly followed, including Berkeley on Thursday and Georgetown, Columbia and Stanford on Friday. On Sunday, the University of Michigan’s law school joined the growing list. The school’s dean, Mark West, said in a statement the “rankings no longer serve the public interest.”

On Monday, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law exited. In an email to its law community, the school’s dean said the rankings’ “approach does not align with our law school’s values.”

UChicago’s law school came in at No. 3 in the U.S. rankings this year, just behind Yale and Stanford, which took the first and second spots, respectively.

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The decision followed a ruling earlier this month from a federal judge in Texas finding the plan unlawful. The Department of Education has stopped accepting applications for loan forgiveness, thrusting millions of Americans into financial limbo. 

The fresh pause in loan payments would alleviate uncertainty for borrowers as the administration asks the Supreme Court to review lower-court orders preventing implementation of Biden’s debt-cancellation plan, the Education Department said.

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“We’re extending the payment pause because it would be deeply unfair to ask borrowers to pay a debt that they wouldn’t have to pay, were it not for the baseless lawsuits brought by Republican officials and special interests,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.  

Within the last week, White House senior staff coalesced around the idea of extending the student loan repayment pause as the challenges to the administration’s decision worked their way through the court system. 

Aides were just waiting to run the idea past Biden after he returned from a trip to Asia and then spent the weekend celebrating his 80th birthday and his granddaughter’s wedding.

The freeze on student loan repayments, first adopted in March 2020 under President Donald Trump, was extended multiple times by Biden. When Biden in August unveiled his broad debt-forgiveness plan, he announced that loan repayments would resume in January. 

The Department of Education previously acknowledged an extension could cost several billion dollars a month but warned that payments resuming before legal challenges were resolved could lead to mass defaults.

Twenty-six million borrowers previously applied for forgiveness in the weeks doing so was possible, and the Department of Education has approved forgiveness for 16 million.

The timing of the announcement–ahead of the the Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia–could provide a boost to incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock as he tries to fend off Republican challenger Herschel Walker. 

Warnock pushed the Biden administration to forgive student debt, and the fresh payment pause could give help energize younger voters.  

“We urge voters in Georgia, who still have a voice in the future of this fight, to VOTE,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement following Tuesday’s announcement. “Student debt is still on the ballot.”

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According to a release sent by Service Employees International Union Local 1, which represents 50,000 throughout the Midwest, the city has charged Swissport over 70 times this year for breaking rules and regulations. Fifteen of those violations are reportedly related to safety and health. 

The union also states that since 2015, Swissport has been investigated by OSHA 34 times for “insufficient investment in equipment and workplace safety and health policies.” 

The employees will be joined by SEIU Local 1 President Genie Kastrup and Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, who represents Midway International Airport. Also joining the action is Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th. 

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg met with workers Monday at O’Hare to announce new infrastructure investments and to hear concerns from airline employees.

“Needless to say, the health and safety of our colleagues both in the U.S. and all our locations worldwide is paramount, and we utilize a robust mixture of training and measures to ensure that everyone knows and can follow the procedures we have in place to keep each other safe,” Louise Steggals, a regional communications manager at Swissport said in a statement.

Steggals said a more detailed response could be made once claims are seen in full detail. 

Along with complaints about Swissport, workers are stating concerns of “fewer protections, poverty wages and worsening staffing” for aiport workers in general, according to a statement from SEIU.

This action comes after airline workers with the Transport Workers Union of America voiced its call for legislation to protect airline employees from unruly passengers at Midway. Workers with the union planned the action as holiday travel is expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels. 

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Ulta’s Black Friday sale started online Saturday and in stores today.

Spokeswoman Eileen Ziesemer said “exceptionally high demand” affected online operations and created delays.

“The Ulta Beauty team took immediate action to address and will continue to monitor, optimizing site conditions where needed to ensure all holiday shoppers can enjoy great beauty deals,” she said.

The retailer’s e-commerce sales have become vital to its growth strategy under CEO Dave Kimbell, who took the helm at Ulta last year.

Ulta’s “buy online, pickup in store” option is an example of how much traffic flows into the retailer via online channels. It was launched in 2019 and accounted for 25% of e-commerce sales last quarter. Ulta has also added tools online that will suggest what skin treatment a customer should get in-store, for example.

The National Retail Federation predicts holiday spending will increase this year, despite concerns about inflation. Holiday retail sales during November and December could grow between 6% and 8% over 2021 to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion, the group predicted.

“Many households will supplement spending with savings and credit to provide a cushion and result in a positive holiday season,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a recent statement.

In Chicago, the average consumer is expected to spend $719 this holiday season, according to data from Accenture. That’s lower than the national average of $770.

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“I’m not prepared to say I’d delist it,” Duffy, 64, said in an interview this week, in which he recalled his spat with Bankman-Fried at an industry event in March. “We’ve been at the cutting edge of innovative products, but what we don’t do is do it in a reckless manner.”

Executives at futures exchanges had expressed concerns about FTX’s business model before the collapse. The bankruptcy of FTX potentially caused billions of dollars in losses for millions of account holders and sparked investigations into allegations of wrongdoing. It has also ensnared one of the biggest lenders in the crypto industry, Genesis, as well as Gemini, which halted redemptions, and BlockFi — a lender previously bailed out by FTX. 

“These events reinforce our strategy,” Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer and chair of Cboe’s digital board, said in an interview on Friday. “If there is ever a time where trust in markets need to be built and reinforced in digital assets, it’s now. That’s what we’re committed to doing.”

Isaacson said Cboe will continue with crypto-futures trading. Jason Shaffer, executive vice president of product management at Trading Technologies, said his firm will stay the course as well, and that customers want to engage in crypto in the same way they trade other currencies. 

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At a Futures Industry Association event this week, conference goers compared FTX’s collapsed to energy trader Enron Corp., which went under in 2001 and became a symbol of corporate fraud. And Christy Goldsmith Romero of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission went as far as to draw parallels to the worldwide financial crisis.

“Opaque, complex, leveraged, unregulated products, highly interconnected market, concerns about the quality of underlying assets, high potential for contagion risk,” she said. “These are the types of things that existed in 2008 that I see parallels with now.”

Bankman-Fried was a driving force behind a failed campaign to penetrate traditional finance. He proposed handling every step in a crypto derivative transaction: clearing trades and eliminating the middlemen that in many cases help spread the risk. If approved by the CFTC, the plan could have increased risks for the traditional industry and disrupted business models like CME’s that have been around since the late 1800s.

The plan drew attacks from Wall Street firms and heightened calls for more oversight of Bankman-Fried’s firm and its rivals. The idea was “rubbish from Day 1,” Duffy said. “I’m surprised so many people were enamored by his nonsense.”

Another critic of the plan was ICE’s founder and CEO Jeff Sprecher. At the FIA event in Chicago on Tuesday, he said, “Generally speaking, you can’t have an exchange, a market maker and a clearing settlement organization under one roof.”

Bankman-Fried, 30, has been a key donor to the Democratic party. He gave nearly $40 million to candidates in the past two years, nearly all to Democrats, and has visited lawmakers in an effort to affect developing crypto regulations.

Duffy said he hoped politicians who received the donations from Bankman-Fried would return them, adding “I never bought into the whole thing.” Politicians who accepted his money will be quick to show “they are not influenced by that,” Sprecher said.

Regulators are probing whether Bankman-Fried and his associates misused customer funds, and his company’s collapse is adding urgency to a Washington push to transform the CFTC into a top crypto watchdog, the agency’s Chairman Rostin Behnam said in an interview at the FIA event. 

While the industry may take a breather for now, it will come back when confidence is restored, said Ram Vittal, North America CEO at Marex Group, a futures and options broker that has a partnership with Coinbase. 

“What is the ingredient that will be the spark?” Vittal asked. “The proper regulatory framework that allows everybody a lot more conviction so that some of these FTX-like things don’t happen.”

Rob Creamer, CEO of Chicago-based proprietary trader Geneva Trading and chairman of FIA’s Principal Traders Group, said there may also be opportunities ahead.

“It’s dangerous to say there’s no value in crypto or the underlying technology because Sam did X, Y or Z,” he said. “Seeing what happened post-Enron, there may be a lot of opportunity for a reputable company with strong governance to pick up the pieces of FTX.”

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Meanwhile, Tribune Publishing has exercised an option to extend its printing plant lease at Freedom Center, which is set to expire in June 2023, for another 10 years, the Trib reports. Tribune and Nexstar were in arbitration over the terms of the extension. As the new landlord, it is now up to Bally’s to resolve the lease dispute with Tribune.

The Freedom Center, which opened in 1981, prints the Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers. The plant was slated for demolition, but Kim has not ruled out the possibility of keeping it alongside the casino.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.

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