Next Chicago mayor faces weight of Daley's legacy

The election is expected to bring in a big cast of new aldermen, who won't be as beholden to whoever is elected mayor. In the years before Daley was first elected in 1989, a council ensnared by racial division earned the city another nickname: "Beirut on the Lake."

That ability to lead a city as diverse as Chicago might just come down to the new mayor finding a way to become as likable as the old mayor.

Carlos Tortelero, president of the National Museum of Mexican Art in the city's Pilsen neighborhood, said Chicago liked Daley because he mangled sentences and still teared up when asked about his 2-year-old son three decades after the boy died.

And residents liked the fact that the mayor was up at 6 a.m., riding around the city looking for lots filled with seagulls, rats running through alleys and any other thing that needed to be fixed to keep Chicago "The City That Works."

"It's a city where a person will brag that my father worked at the steel mills. That whole family connection is important in Chicago and Mayor Daley exudes that," he said. "Whoever the next mayor is, they need to connect to that."