Teachers strike puts Emanuel on spot

Chicago teachers struck yesterday, closing classrooms for nearly 400,000 students and prompting Mayor Rahm Emanuel to stop fundraising for President Barack Obama to instead devote time to settling the city's first such walkout in 25 years.

Months of tension broke into open hostility Sunday night when Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, called for the work stoppage in the nation's third-largest district.

The teachers' contract expired in June, and negotiations broke down over health benefits and job security. Picket lines formed as the sun rose; talks with the union, which represents 26,000 teachers and other workers, resumed later in the day.

"Don't take it out on the kids of Chicago if you have a problem with me," Emanuel said at a church providing child care. Children stood behind him, while strikers in red T-shirts chanted outside. One held a sign picturing the mayor with horns.

The strike leaves Emanuel, 52, former chief of staff to Obama, caught amid conflicting interests.

Unions have been among the strongest supporters of Democrats nationwide, and are crucial to Obama's prospects. At the same time, some of Emanuel's wealthiest supporters have pushed for changes to the city's education system. They include Penny Pritzker, a board of education member who is part of a Chicago real-estate dynasty, and Bruce Rauner, who is chairman of GTCR Rauner Llc, which manages equity investments.

Emanuel is putting his money-raising super-PAC activities on hold and didn't make a scheduled appearance at a U.S. House Majority political action committee event yesterday.

"The mayor's first priority is the residents of the city of Chicago," Thomas Bowen, director of Emanuel's own political action committee, said in a statement. "He is committed to re-electing the president, but he must focus on his job as mayor right now." Emanuel, who didn't participate directly in contract negotiations, called the walkout "unnecessary, avoidable and wrong," and "a strike by choice."