He took "Queen Sister's" best shot and did not lose his cool.
Whether he meets the requirements to run for Chicago mayor ultimately will be decided by the Cook County and Illinois court system.
But in the court of public opinion, candidate Rahm Emanuel may have won a victory with his temperament during his testimony at the Chicago Election Board's hearing on challenges to his residency.
Around two dozen "objectors"--all but three of them non-lawyers--fiercely and sometimes unfairly interrogated the former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff for nearly 12 hours.
The vast majority of the inquisitors were clueless about courtroom procedure and confirmed their utter foolishness repeatedly during their direct and cross "examinations" of Emanuel.
The 51 year old candidate--with a reputation for having one of the shortest fuses in American politics--was verbally chastised by self-crowned (really) objector Queen Sister Georzetta DeLoney, conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Black and others.
The fact Emanuel remained calm and smiled his way through the marathon was at least one day's testament that if elected, he has it in himself to hear out Chicago's entire political spectrum from the mainstream to the "fringe".
As the tortuous hearing continued, I thought about Emanuel's journey since I watched his resignation "ceremony" at the White House on October 1st.
Here's a guy who only ten weeks ago was the top adviser to the leader of the free world. He was a major player in meetings with the cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was President Barack Obama's point man in the START nuclear arms negotiations with Russia and the companion stateside effort to get U.S. Senate approval of the deal.
On Monday, he sat on a makeshift witness stand in a basement conference room of 69 West Washington just off the underground pedway. The balky public address system squawked too much as passers-by wondered "what's going on in there?".
Rahm Emanuel was having his patience tested.