CHICAGO – President Barack Obama may have been the biggest winner Tuesday, but for the next four years, at least, Chicago is going to be nobody's Second City.

With Obama's last election behind him, Chicago residents hope he can help his hometown more now that he no longer has to worry about any talk of his ties to "Chicago-style politics" and the images of the backroom deals that phrase evokes, or how what he does for the city plays in Ohio or Florida.

"This re-election ... doesn't take the lid off things, but for Chicago it allows the president to be less concerned about those nasty comparison or nasty innuendos that were out there [about Chicago-style politics] and basically allow him to continue to help us on a merit basis," said Alderman Patrick O'Connor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's floor leader on the City Council. "If he was reluctant to do things for us in the past because he thought people would say it was favoritism, now all other things being equal he can help us."