Asked why he wants to be mayor, Nino Noriega has an answer ready. “Plato, in his magnum opus, said a man is ready to rule when he’s in his middle 50s. Why? Because by then he’s faced all the trials and tribulations of life. He’s no longer posturing. He’s really living. He’s no longer pretending.” Noriega picks up a pad of graph paper, on which is drawn a time line. “That’s the chart,” he says. “That’s from 1 to 100. I put this black line that goes all the way to the edge of 60, which is where I am in age. Everything that has gone before–all the religious experiences, all the philosophical experiences, the aesthetic, the poetic, the family, the enemy, the violence, the happiness, the sadness–it’s all gone. That’s it. I’m right there. If I’m lucky and I live to be the age of the average American when I die, between 70 and 80, this yellow line here, that’s my net worth.” He points to a highlighted section of the time line, which goes from age 50 to about 65. “That’s all I have. I could have a zillion dollars, but once this big black ball descends, that’s forever. It will never happen again. Ever.”
In 1957, at age 17, Noriega started a two-year stint as a reporter for the town newspaper. After a turn in the army as a drill instructor, he was hired by the Associated Press to cover Latin America. He interviewed Fidel Castro and Che Guevara during the Cuban Revolution, and reported on the Cuban missile-crisis story in 1961. He also interviewed John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon when they visited Latin America in the 60s. “I’ve always thought that of all the people that I’ve met, there were three guys where you could just sense that you were sitting next to greatness. It was Nixon, Kennedy, and Guevara. You couldn’t have three men who were more different, but they had something. They had this greatness. So I learned a lot from those guys–I learned a lot what to do and a lot what not to do.”
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Past the fear of the unknown, to die
Maim, mutilate, evaporate
For his is the people’s way.
This philosophy, he says, could apply to any of the city’s problems, including public-school reform. “There’s nothing wrong with public schools that management of change couldn’t fix. No one saw fit to go to these neighborhood councils–who are not educators, who are not professional teachers, who are not academics–and gather them all together and say, ‘You now have a big responsibility. It isn’t one that’s going to be based on emotion. You’re not going to hire your neighbor and end up being as corrupt and bureaucratic as City Hall. Here’s what councils are supposed to do, and here’s your objective: to have Johnny read when he gets out of high school.’ Nobody told them that. Why? No creativity. So they’re out there scrambling and playing the Chicago corruption game, a lot of them.”
