Dan Coffey knows he has almost no appeal outside the confines of Riverview Towers, where on a quadrennial basis, he assiduously harvests the votes necessary to reclaim his 1st District council seat. When you take the Wizard out of the West Side, the wheels fall off. When Coffey ran for county commissioner in 2014, the ensuing beat-down by Mark Seabrook was 1962 New York Mets-style terrible.
But Coffey also knows he can take a step up from generic to name-brand corn flakes if it's possible to wet his beak in a heaping portion of barbecued patronage bologna.
For the past three years, Jeff Gahan has enabled Coffey's exaggerated sense of self-importance. Gahan also has tossed a few scraps Coffey's way. Just think: If housing demolitions are on the increase, CCE is doing most of them, and Coffey is full of praise for the whole process ... well, you don't need the Amazing Kreskin to connect these dots.
Now Coffey has embarked upon a Pious Prayer Revival Crusade, and while it's true that his motivations are Fundamentally Bigoted as they pertain to raging homophobia, the conservative political ramifications require unraveling. The LGBT community hereabouts is left-leaning, and generally has expressed solidarity with Gahan's re-election campaign (mistakenly, in my view).
As such, Coffey is attacking Gahan supporters, and cajoling Gahan opponents. How can that be?
It's because we can't ever be reminded often enough that Coffey's only loyalty is to his own survival. Coffey's jumping ship. He doesn't think Gahan can win in the fall, and so he's finished with the mayor. It's time for Coffey to reinforce his bona fides with the Right, which probably will make the same mistake as the Left, and conclude that Coffey can be used.
At any rate, prayer is the wedge. Moreover, linking prayer with homophobic backlash provides Coffey with the best of all grandstanding worlds.
Fascinating and repulsive all at once, isn't it?
Previously (just this week) at NAC:
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