American Pharaoh (90 page)

Daley’s victory margin was, of course, inflated by the machine’s usual vote theft and other irregularities. In the 29th Ward,
a black “plantation ward” presided over by white committeeman Bernard Neistein — who lived outside the ward in a lakefront
high-rise — Friedman poll watchers and election judges were not allowed into seven voting precincts. When a twenty-seven-year-old
Friedman campaign worker showed up in the 29th Precinct of the 29th Ward to install a Republican poll watcher, they were both
arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. In the 49th Precinct, Dolores Bosley was allowed to remain but she could not
stop Democratic judges from walking into the voting booth with voters and pulling the lever for them. “I kept telling them
this was illegal, but they paid no attention to me,” she said afterward. In the 5th Precinct, a Democratic worker attacked
a
Chicago Daily News
photographer who tried to photograph the voting. And when a
Chicago Sun-Times
reporter with poll-watcher credentials tried to examine a voting machine in the 24th Ward, the Democratic precinct captain
shoved him against a wall. When the reporter pointed out that he was allowed by law to check the machine, the precinct captain
responded “You don’t come out here to get no law” and ejected him from the polling place. An investigation by the attorney
general would later reveal that 272 votes had been cast in the precinct, although only 259 voters had requested ballots. Daley
would have won without these improprieties, but the machine continued to resort to vote theft even in elections that were
not close.
⁵¹

Friedman’s attempt to put together an anti-machine majority — cobbled together from reform Democrats, Republicans, and blacks
— had failed dismally. Many blacks remained loyal to the machine because they regarded the small favors their precinct captains
handed out as better than nothing — which is to say, better than the reformers were offering. Many were also skeptical of
white reformers on questions of race. “Chicago blacks are all too familiar with reform candidates,” wrote black columnist
Vernon Jarrett, who noted that blacks had suffered when Mayor Ed Kelly was ousted in favor of racially insensitive reformer
Martin Kennelly. But there were nevertheless signs that the machine’s hold on black voters was beginning to erode. Voter turnout
was light — the lowest in a mayoral election since 1935. The drop-off in black wards was particularly sharp. In the 2nd Ward,
home of the Robert Taylor Homes and the heart of the old Dawson submachine, the Democratic vote plunged 21 percent from the
last mayoral election, in 1967. As he had been doing for the last eight years, Daley made up for these lost black votes by
picking up more votes in white wards on the Northwest and Southwest sides, where homeowners had decided that Daley was their
best hope of keeping public housing out of their neighborhoods. Many of these voters were Republicans who claimed they were
casting their first Democratic votes ever for Daley.
⁵²

In an uncanny bit of timing, it was just after the April mayoral election — when the political risks to the machine were least
— that Daley’s special state investigation of the Black Panther raid was ready to announce its findings. Sears told reporters
he might have a story for them later in the day. But Judge Power, who had oversight of the grand jury, ordered Sears not to
say anything, and the announcement was put off. Hanrahan went to the City Council chamber where Daley was presiding, and the
two men had a private talk. When a reporter asked about the conversation, Daley insisted Hanrahan had just stopped by to say
hello. Asked whether they had discussed the grand jury, Daley scowled and asked, “What grand jury?” Rumors spread that the
grand jury had wanted to indict Hanrahan, but that Judge Power had stopped it from doing so. What was clear was that Judge
Power had turned against Sears, the special prosecutor he himself had chosen, and had even appointed a “friend of the court”
to start investigating the conduct of the special prosecutor. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that a fix was on, and that
the machine was stepping in to protect Hanrahan. “Judge Power’s excessive activities on Mr. Hanrahan’s behalf serve no public
purpose other than to remind everyone that both he and Mr. Hanrahan are close friends of Mayor Daley and leading figures in
the Democratic machine,” the
Chicago Tribune
noted in an editorial. The indictment of Hanrahan that did not come earlier finally came in August. Hanrahan and thirteen
other law enforcement officials were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by engaging in a police cover-up and interfering
with the defenses of the seven surviving Panthers who were charged with attempted murder. The Chicago Bar Association suggested
Hanrahan take a leave of absence or resign to defend himself, but Hanrahan dug in his heels. Daley once again blamed the bind
he found himself in on the press. “We’ve got to stop this doctrine of guilt by association and accusation without proof,”
he said. “I hope this thing will be tried on the evidence and not through the news media.”
⁵³

But blaming the media did not get Daley out of his political bind. Hanrahan was now a deeply divisive figure — reviled by
many blacks, but still popular in the white ethnic wards. Daley could not afford to lose the state’s attorney’s office — Adamowski
had shown just how effective the position could be for launching a prosecutorial war on the machine. To win the race, Daley
would need the votes of both white ethnics and blacks. He initially reslated Hanrahan, hoping that the uproar would die down.
But within weeks, under pressure from blacks and white liberals, Daley dumped Hanrahan and slated Raymond Berg, chief judge
of Traffic Court. Berg, who was not much involved in politics, was a “blue ribbon” choice, designed to put the controversy
over Hanrahan and the Panther raid to rest. But Hanrahan had other ideas: he promptly announced that he was running for reelection
anyway. Daley’s support for Berg was lukewarm. He allowed most of the machine’s white ward committeemen to line up behind
Hanrahan, who remained popular with the machine’s white ethnic base. Daley’s handling of the state’s attorney race lost the
machine support among black voters: many resented that Hanrahan had been reslated, even briefly, and some suspected Daley
was still quietly on his side. The Panther killings, and the machine’s response to them, were for some black voters a political
turning point. As Bobby Rush explained with only mild overstatement: “The legacy of Fred’s murder was that the black community
totally and completely broke the chains that bound them to the Democratic Machine.”
⁵⁴

During the summer of 1971, Daley’s behavior seemed to be turning erratic and peculiar. His health and vigor were in decline,
and he was becoming more withdrawn. Unlike his early years in office when reporters gathered at his desk for daily press conferences,
Daley was now meeting with the City Hall press corps only infrequently. And an uncharacteristic bitterness was creeping into
his public statements. When his proposal for a $55 million lakefront stadium drew criticism from environmentalists and others,
Daley lashed out. He decried the “polluted and twisted minds” of his critics, and said to reporters covering the story: “It
is the nature of guys like yourselves that ruins everything. You great geniuses.”
⁵⁵
In Milwaukee for a meeting of the Conference of Mayors, Daley announced that he intended to nominate Milwaukee mayor Henry
Meier for vice president of the United States in 1972. No one was more astonished than Henry Meier, who called the announcement
“news to me.”
⁵⁶

Daley’s most bizarre outburst came at a City Council meeting in July. First-term alderman Dick Simpson of the lakefront 44th
Ward, a University of Illinois–Chicago political science professor and Singer ally, assailed Daley’s naming of Thomas Keane
Jr., son of Alderman Tom Keane, to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals. “We must end nepotism,” Simpson said. “There has to
come a time when we say that city government is open to all the people.” Simpson also objected that the younger Keane was
an executive with Arthur Rubloff ’s real estate firm. “Charges will be made that this represents big business and politics,”
Simpson said. Asked by Daley who would make the charges, Simpson said, “My students.” Machine aldermen lined up to defend
Keane and Daley from Simpson’s charges, and Daley read a treacly poem celebrating the father-son bond. The outcome was never
in doubt: the Keane appointment was approved 45–2. Daley was nevertheless livid at being challenged. After stepping down from
the podium and turning the gavel over to Alderman Claude Holman, the council’s president pro tem, he unleashed a tirade at
Simpson. “If you are a teacher, God help the students who are in your class,” Daley said. “I hope the halls of all the great
educational institutions will stop being places for agitation and hatred against this society. And talk about the young people!
With their cynical smiles and their fakery and their polluted minds!” Singer recalls that during the tirade Daley was “purple.”
Daley’s strangely vitriolic outburst was as hard to explain as it was frightening. Dr. Eric Oldberg, Daley’s friend and physician,
said, “This thing has been bottled up” in Daley since the 1968 Democratic convention.
⁵⁷

The increasingly thin-skinned Daley was soon the subject of another attack — the most withering of his career.
Chicago Daily News
columnist Mike Royko had long been one of Daley’s fiercest detractors. Royko was a crusading populist who had been taking
on Daley since 1964 for all of the usual reasons: that he was wrong on civil rights, too brutal at the Democratic convention,
and too mired in corrupt politics. The criticism was not original, but Royko’s words mattered in a way that attacks from Lakefront
liberals and Republican reformers did not. Royko, the son of a Ukrainian tavern owner and a Polish housewife, was a certified
Bungalow Belt white ethnic who spoke directly to the machine’s political base. He also had a way of lacing his barbs with
caustic humor. In a 1967 column about corruption in Daley’s Chicago, Royko suggested changing the motto on the city seal from
Urbs in Horto
(City in a Garden) to
Ubi Est Mea
(Where’s Mine). A 1970 column on Chicago’s high-rise public housing called Daley’s role in kicking off construction at one
site “a shovelful of bad thinking.”

In the fall of 1970, Royko published
Boss,
a scathing portrait of Daley. The book, which attacked the mayor as “arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless, suspicious, and
intolerant,” became an instant bestseller. What hurt the most, though, was that it was being snapped up in working-class white
neighborhoods — the machine’s political base. Royko reported in his column that Sis Daley had been spotted in a store near
the Daley home turning a cardboard advertisement for the book facedown, turning books on the shelves around so the title did
not show, and asking the store manager to stop selling the book.In fact,
Boss
was pulled from the shelves of two hundred Chicago-area stores, but customer demand was so great that most restored it. Daley
did not respond to Royko’s attack, but Sis delivered a retort that no doubt spoke for both of them. “When there is an odious
criticism of the mayor, I always consider the source,” she said. “I read the book one evening after we’d retired to bed. Mind
you, Royko never talked to any member of the family, so his information is shallow, secondhand, hogwash at best.” Sis was
not done with Royko. “He is a hater — a man who hates men in government, generally. The book is trash. I advised the mayor
it wasn’t worth his reading.”
⁵⁸