American Pharaoh (88 page)

The city’s 1970 Saint Patrick’s Day parade was held three days early, to avoid conflicting with the upcoming primary day.
Daley stood on the reviewing stand as 500,000 people thronged to State Street on March 14. The machine’s candidates ran strongly
in the congressional primary on March 17. In the most important race, Alderman Ralph Metcalfe, the machine’s nominee to replace
the retiring Bill Dawson, defeated anti-machine candidate Alderman A. A. “Sammy” Rayner. In another important congressional
race, on the racially mixed Southwest Side, white machine candidate Morgan Murphy Jr. defeated civil rights activist Gus Savage.
But not all of the news for the machine was good. Voter registration figures showed that Chicago was continuing to lose voters:
enrollment in the city was 1,552,434, down from 1,656,445 in 1968 and 1,701,088 in 1966. Most of that decline was occurring
because of the flight of the machine’s base — white ethnic voters — to the suburbs. At the same time, enrollment in the Cook
County suburbs had surpassed one million for the first time.
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The eighty-member Cook County Democratic Committee reelected Daley as county chairman on March 31. Daley’s machine supporters
gave him a standing ovation for several minutes and made their usual efforts to outdo each other in praising the boss. Congressman
Rostenkowski, chairman of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, called Daley “the greatest political phenomenon
in the country.” It was widely agreed that Daley would be running for reelection in 1971. In his remarks to the group, Daley
let loose another classic Daleyism. Noting that the Democratic Party needed to have faith in itself, he reflected: “Today
the real problem is the future.” A few days later, the Chicago Civil Service Commission reported that while the city’s population
was declining, the number of temporary or patronage employees in the city had risen to a record 15,680, up from only 3,478
when Daley was elected in 1955.
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On May 15, 1970, a federal grand jury issued a 249-page report that was highly critical of the Black Panther raid, of the
subsequent police department investigations, and of Hanrahan. Although the police had claimed that six or seven Panthers had
fired at them, the grand jury found that only one of the 82 to 99 bullets recovered at the scene could be traced to the Panthers’
weapons. The grand jury also found evidence of a law enforcement cover-up. The police firearms expert testified that he had
initially lied about the results of ballistics tests to keep his job. And the coroner’s office had misre-ported Hampton’s
wounds in a critical respect. It turned out that Hampton had actually been shot from above while lying in bed, circumstances
that were inconsistent with the official account of a tense shoot-out with police. The city’s investigation of the incident
was “so seriously deficient that it suggests purposeful malfeasance,” the grand jury reported. Daley pronounced himself “shocked”
by the findings, and said the new report would be “given the most serious consideration.”
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Two weeks later, Daley declined to reappoint a member of the Chicago school board. Jack Witkowsky had done a “fine job,” Daley
said, but he had decided to appoint a politically connected lawyer who had worked as an adviser to several elected officials
because of his “better understanding of the legislature.” It seemed clear that Daley’s real motivation was to ensure that
board president Frank Whiston would be reelected, foiling an attempt to replace him with the more liberal Warren Bacon. In
the end, Bacon withdrew and Daley ally Whiston had no opposition. But Daley’s dumping of Witkowsky was just another indication
that he had been less than honest, during the Willis crisis, when he repeatedly claimed that he did not meddle in school politics.
³⁴

The summer of 1970 marked another milestone for the Loop: plans were unveiled to build the world’s tallest building, Sears
Tower, on South Wacker Drive. Daley’s hard work encouraging companies to build in the Loop had been paying off handsomely.
The previous year, 1969, had been the most successful yet — eight new buildings opened, adding 4.6 million square feet of
office space. Daley had played a critical behind-the-scenes role in many of them. One of the recent gems was the First National
Bank Building, a sixty-story granite skyscraper that opened in 1969 on Madison Street, between Dearborn and Clark streets.
The bank held title to almost all the land it wanted to build on — everything except a small sliver of land owned by the city.
The bank had tried for some time to purchase this remaining piece, but there seemed to be no way to accomplish this until
Daley became mayor. When the bank approached him, Daley agreed to sell for just $77,500. “The deal was done quickly, over
the phone, directly with the mayor,” writes historian Ross Miller. “No committees, no reports, no lengthy deliberations, no
glossy plans.” The First National Bank Building quickly became a popular addition to Chicago’s downtown. The granite skyscraper’s
design is distinctive — it tapers upward from a broad base — and its enormous sunken plaza along Monroe Street provides much-needed
open space in the heart of the Loop.
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Daley’s work on the Sears Tower called on more of his powers of persuasion. Daley knew that Sears, Roebuck and Company, the
world’s largest retailer and a Chicago institution, was considering building a massive new world headquarters in the suburbs.
He made a personal appeal to the company to instead locate the $100 million building in the city. Sears was willing to consider
a location just west of the Loop, but it ran into a problem: the two-block parcel it wanted to build on was divided by Quincy
Street, which was owned by the city. Sears’s chairman, Gordon Metcalf, met personally with Daley to discuss the situation.
Daley believed that giving up a city street that dead-ended in the Chicago River was a small price to pay for having the tallest
building in the world. He told Metcalf that there would be no problem. Corporation counsel Raymond Simon drew up a bill to
sell the street to Sears at a modest price. The city also ended up assuming the cost of relocating water and sewer lines that
lay under the street.
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On July 27, Daley and Metcalf held a joint press conference at the Sherman House to announce plans for the new Sears Tower.
The massive tower, which would allow Sears to consolidate employees who were scattered in seven locations around the city,
would soar 1,454 feet, making it 104 feet taller than the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Its 4.4 million square
feet of interior space would make it second in capacity only to the Pentagon. “I want to thank Sears for the confidence they
are showing in the future in planning and designing the building which will adorn the West Side,” Daley told the press conference.
In a time when older cities were being abandoned by big business — Detroit, for example, was reeling from Chrysler’s decision
to build a new 1,700-acre complex in a suburb seventeen miles north of the urban core — Daley was scoring one of Chicago’s
greatest triumphs.
³⁷

On the eve of the 1970 general election, Daley was particularly worried about the prospects of two candidates: county assessor
candidate P. J. “Parky” Cullerton and state treasurer candidate Alan Dixon. Cullerton was being opposed by Benjamin Adamowski,
who was, as usual, running an aggressive anti-machine campaign. Adamowski was charging that Cullerton routinely gave large
tax breaks to developers and property owners who contributed to the Democratic machine. At a closed meeting of the Democratic
Central Committee at the Sherman House, Daley told the ward committeemen that electing the entire machine slate was important
but that they should work particularly hard for Cullerton and Dixon. Daley was also counting on the magical name of Adlai
Stevenson at the top of the ticket to help Democratic candidates statewide.
³⁸

On election day, November 4, Daley voted in his Bridgeport polling place, taking just under eight seconds to cast his ballot.
Asked how he voted, Daley left no doubt that he had pulled the Democratic straight-ticket lever, which registers a vote for
the whole Democratic slate at once. “I guess you could tell from the length of time I was in there,” he told reporters with
a smile. “That’s the way I’ve been voting ever since I began.” Stevenson ended up winning his U.S. Senate race by a landslide,
taking nearly 60 percent of the vote against the Republican incumbent. Cullerton and Dixon also won handily. Daley waited
until after the election to announce that he was submitting yet another record city budget. The new city spending, including
raises of up to 10 percent for police and firemen, would require a property tax increase of 18 percent. Republicans noted
that in the past ten years, Daley had raised the city’s operating budget by 125 percent while the city’s population had declined
by 8 percent. “It’s politics as usual,” Republican alderman John Hoellen said. “The budget still has the evil of too much
patronage.”
³⁹

In December 1970, Daley ended the speculation that had overtaken the city and announced at a hastily arranged news conference
that he would be running for a fifth term. He then went to the Sherman House where the ward committeemen — some sporting buttons
reading “Daley is the one in ’71”— officially slated him. It was yet another occasion for Daley to bask in the effusive praise
of his machine followers. Claude Holman, City Council president pro tem, declared that lauding Daley was “a joy and a pleasure
for a black man.” Daley responded with his usual assertions that he was “fighting for the cause of the people” and that “no
one walks through life alone.” In what had become a campaign-time ritual, Daley earnestly declared that he dreamed of “a city
in where there are no slums.” In a concession to the growing strength of the black vote, the slate-makers named Joseph Bertrand,
a black bank president, for city treasurer. He would, if elected, become the first black to hold a major office in city government.
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To run against Daley, the Republicans nominated lawyer Richard Friedman, a former executive director of the Better Government
Association. They were hoping that the reformist Friedman could assemble a coalition of Republicans and independents that
would give Daley and the machine a strong challenge.
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