Poll: Emanuel faces tough re-election

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces a tough re-election, according to a new poll. The mayor trails two potential challengers in the latest survey.

It is a poll the Emanuel campaign calls "laughable". Conducted for the Chicago Sun-Times, the poll shows Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle with a big lead over Emanuel. It also shows Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis beating the mayor. Despite the results, neither Preckwinckle nor Lewis has announced they are challenging Emanuel.

It's been almost two years since Emanuel and Lewis went head to head during the teachers strike. Now, the labor leader is thinking about challenging Emanuel again- this time by running against the first-term mayor. The Sun-Times poll suggests voters are taking Lewis' potential candidacy seriously.

"The most important thing about this poll is that Rahm Emanuel isn't invincible. He could be beaten, it doesn't mean he will be beaten," said Dick Simpson, political science professor at University of Illinois-Chicago.

The poll shows Lewis beating Emanuel by 9 points according to the Sun-Times. The poll was conducted by We Ask America on July 9, just after the violent Fourth of July weekend. It is based on a random sample of just over 1,000 Chicago registered voters. The Sun-Times says 28 percent of the respondents were reached by cell phone. The newspaper did not reveal the racial, gender, age or region breakdown of the respondents, nor did they report what questions were asked.

If anything, Simpson says the poll gives Karen Lewis encouragement to make a decision about running, a decision that must be made soon for anyone who plans to run for mayor.

"They have to raise the money, they have to get petition signed, they have to build a campaign organization. And a labor union is not a campaign organization," said Simpson.

Whether it's Lewis, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle or Alderman Bob Fioretti, or anyone else that has expressed interest in challenging Emanuel, the grassroots progressive organization MoveOn.org says its own membership survey concludes that the mayor should be challenged.

"The results we got back were pretty eye-popping. We saw that 85 percent of our members in the city of Chicago would like to see a progressive challenger to Rahm Emanuel this year, while just 15 percent think that Rahm is doing a fine job," said Matthew Blizek, MoveOn.org.

MoveOn.org says it has 75,000 members in Chicago. Karen Lewis is on vacation, but her union spokesperson says Lewis is surprised by the Sun-Times poll, although, her supporters are not. Lewis has put together an informal exploratory committee for mayor, but the union leader will not give a time table on when she plans to make a decision.