The mayor's millionaire club

Who has access to Rahm Emanuel’s inner sanctum

By Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke

The third week of July was a busy time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel—he was working with police brass to reassign cops, announcing a competition between city workers and private firms to provide recycling pickup, and, of course, battling teachers over implementing a longer school day. 

But he still found an hour to slip away for breakfast at the exclusive Chicago Club with a couple of millionaire bankers—Bill Downe, the CEO of the Bank of Montreal, and Mark Furlong, the CEO of Harris Bank.

That might not seem like much time. But it amounted to one of the longest meetings of the week in the dusk-to-dawn schedule of the mayor who can't sit still.