CHICAGO — Rahm Emanuel’s campaign to become mayor of this city has looked like a perfectly orchestrated political play: cheerful morning hand-shakings at train stops, tours of neighborhoods as cameras whir, pronouncements on education, energy, the police.
Then came Tuesday.
Mr. Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff and a veteran practitioner of campaign imagery and messaging, found himself in a packed basement meeting room here, required to answer — under oath — a long day of fierce, pointed, personal, sometimes peculiar questions from Chicagoans who believe he should not be allowed to run for mayor.
The central debate at this hearing: whether Mr. Emanuel, who served President Obama in Washington until this fall, is eligible to run for mayor in February’s election, since the post requires that candidates be residents of the city for a full year before Election Day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/us/15rahm.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23