Rahm Emanuel has opened up a double digit lead in the Chicago mayoral race, largely as a result of his new found appeal to African Americans.

Politico reports :

Emanuel has the support of 44 percent of likely voters surveyed in a Chicago Tribune/WGN poll released late Thursday - a jump from the 32 percent he had last month.

[...]

Emanuel now has the support of 40 percent of blacks, compared with 19 percent in last month's survey.

Since last month, two African-American candidates, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and state Sen. James Meeks, have dropped out of the race. They both endorsed former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who the poll shows has 39 percent of the African-American vote.

Overall, Braun trails Emanuel badly with 21 percent of the vote - up from 6 percent in last month's poll - and former city board of education president Gery Chico at 16, the Tribune poll found. Other candidates are further back and 9 percent of voters said they are undecided.

Braun has performed poorly and made the tone deaf gaffe of telling reporters she would not release any more financial information because she "didn't feel like it." There are questions swirling around several companies she owns and this may have caused her standing among African Americans to fall.

But there may be a simpler reason; the Machine. Fairly or not, Emanuel is seen as the inheritor of Daley's mantle as regular Democratic party leader. What the Machine does better than anything else is dole out goodies to favored groups; jobs, contracts, political power. The realization may be setting in among blacks that Carol Mosely-Braun might not be able to deliver and therefore, sticking with the Machine will insure that the black community gets their share of the pie.

With the Hispanic vote split between two candidates, Emanuel looks like a winner if he can avoid a major gaffe or some embarrassing revelation from his days in Washington.