Obama And Rent Control

As somehow who lives in a rent-controlled apartment building in Los Angeles, and who voted against the recent Prop. 98 that would have eliminated rent control in California, this is heartening:

Chicago does not have rent control. In 1997, the Illinois legislature passed – and Republican Governor Jim Edgar signed – SB 531 (the Rent Control Preemption Act), which prohibited local jurisdictions from passing it. At the time, no city in Illinois had rent control – but the real estate lobby had a national effort to quietly stop it in places before it starts. SB 531 passed with little fanfare: the State House voted for it 96-18, and the State Senate approved it 46-6. One of the six senators who voted “no” was Barack Obama – although many liberal Democrats voted with landlords and the Senate’s Republican majority. Obama’s vote – when one considers how few people stood up with him – is an example of his core progressive principles. While it’s valid to say that he should have done more to defeat it, consider that Obama was a freshman in a very hostile climate – and as a community organizer had learned to pick his battles....

But Obama’s vote in 1997 is instructive for those following his current presidential bid – as they fear his perceived move to the center. Anyone who follows Obama’s record in the State Senate understands his background – where his vote against SB 531 was just one example. As a columnist for the right-wing National Review recently lamented, Obama worked closely in the State Senate with the Illinois chapter of ACORN to pass living wage legislation and curb banking practices. “You begin to wonder whether,” he writes, “in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as ‘the Senator from ACORN.’”

In 1995, the Chicago Reader wrote an instructive profile of Obama as he made his first bid for office, which offers more clues. “What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer,” said Obama, “who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected official, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than as a community organizer or lawyer. We would form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.”

Republicans are worried. As they should be.