American Pharaoh (95 page)

Daley began 1975 facing something he had never had seen in his twenty years as mayor: what appeared to be significant opposition
in the Democratic primary. All three of his opponents were formidable candidates — hard-driving independent alderman Bill
Singer, black state senator Richard Newhouse, and former prosecutor Ed Hanrahan, who was trying to stage a political comeback.
Singer had been the first to enter the race, a full sixteen months before the election. Singer made the poor state of the
city’s 584 public schools a central part of his campaign and vowed to visit every one of them. He blamed Daley for Chicago’s
loss of 200,000 jobs, and vowed to start bringing jobs back to the city. Singer drew his heaviest support from the city’s
two most liberal areas, the affluent lakefront and Hyde Park. He had put together a strong grassroots organization of reformers,
and had raised about $600,000. Singer also had the endorsement of Congressman Metcalfe, who had disappointed many voters when
he decided not to run for mayor himself. “Daley’s had 20 years to run this city,” Metcalfe said at a South Side appearance
with Singer. “My neighborhood looks like it’s been hit by a bomb.”
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Many blacks had hoped Metcalfe would run himself. Chicago’s black community had come a long way from the days of Dawson and
the “silent six.” There was now a small but growing contingent of black independents, including South Side alderman Anna Langford
and state senator Charles Chew. Months earlier, Metcalfe had taken some tentative steps toward running for mayor, and had
even begun to raise money. When Metcalfe bowed out, Newhouse jumped in. Newhouse’s chances were diminished considerably as
the black community splintered among three candidates. Newhouse had the endorsement of Jesse Jackson and PUSH. Daley had the
support of John Johnson of Johnson Publications and the
Chicago Defender
. And he was still able to call on his traditional Dawson-style supporters. A group of 250 black ministers, the Volunteer
Ministers Committee for the Reelection of Mayor Richard J. Daley, called on their followers to turn out for Daley. Urging
other ministers to support Daley, Bishop Louis Ford said, “We believe he has the spirit of God, it moves him and revenerates
[sic] him daily.” Singer had Metcalfe, and many of Metcalfe’s followers. Without the support of Chicago’s leading black media
or its leading black congressman, Newhouse’s candidacy would be an uphill struggle. Finally, there was Ed Hanrahan. The black
community was united in its hatred of him. Hanrahan had shown in the state’s attorney primary in 1972 that he still had a
following among whites, although he was defeated two years later in a race for Congress. In the mayor’s race, Hanrahan had
a chance to appeal directly to the white-backlash vote. Throughout the campaign, Hanrahan attacked Daley for his “arrogance
of total political power.”
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It was clear during the course of the campaign that Daley was by now a shadow of his former self. He had grown increasingly
out of touch with the city and with the times he was living in. Singer introduced an initiative at the City Council to provide
incentives to businesses to locate in Chicago. “Daley went ballistic,” Singer recalls. “Daley shouted at me, ‘Alderman, we
shouldn’t have to pay anyone to come here. This is a wonderful city.’” But the race would not be decided on policy initiatives.
Daley refused to appear on the same platform or in the same broadcast studio with his challengers. He limited his public appearances
to uncontroversial statements in highly controlled settings. Several days before the primary election, 3,000 elderly voters
were taken in city buses to the McCormick Place convention center to receive coffee, cookies, and Daley campaign paraphernalia.
As he entered the vast room, the senior citizens sang a variation on “Honey” that went: “Loved you from the start, Daley;
bless your little heart, Daley.”
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The
Chicago Tribune
did not make an endorsement in the primary. The choice presented by the Democratic field, the paper said in an editorial,
was “whether to stay about the rudderless galleon with rotting timbers or take to the raging seas in a 17-foot outboard.”
The editorial was a break from the
Tribune
’s years of support for the mayor. But Daley professed to be unconcerned about the defection. “That’s for the
Tribune
to decide.” he said. Both Singer and New-house expressed delight with the paper’s position. “Now, everybody has deserted
Richard Daley and has said that he is no longer fit to run the city,” Singer said. “That’s the most significant factor.” In
the final days, it was clear that the race had, as a practical matter, narrowed to Daley and Singer. Daley continued to believe
in the power of his machine, but he relied more heavily than ever before on television. Singer imported media consultant David
Garth, fresh from his successful work on New York governor Hugh Carey’s campaign. Daley made Garth himself an issue, and used
him to tar the East Coast–educated Singer. Daley warned of “carpetbaggers” with “striped pants and patent leather shoes.”
The advantages of incumbency extended even to the battle for the airwaves. Daley was able to air, without cost, his traditional
half-hour “Mayor’s Report,” a sort of travelogue starring gleaming Chicago, days before the primary election.
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It was only on election day that it became clear how little of this really mattered. Daley won with 58 percent of the vote
against Singer’s 29 percent, Newhouse’s 8 percent, and Hanrahan’s 5 percent. The mayor’s surprisingly large victory margin
showed that rank-and-file Chicagoans were not particularly concerned by the corruption in City Hall and, in fact, rallied
to Daley. “They couldn’t throw him out of office,” Singer said later. “They couldn’t vote against him.” The results of the
election illustrated that even a popular and well-funded reformer like Bill Singer could not attract the middle-class majorities
necessary for a victory. The failures of both Singer and Newhouse also showed how difficult it was to crack the machine’s
grasp of the black wards. Most notable of all, it showed that Daley had once again managed to hold on to the black wards without
making the kind of concessions to blacks that would hurt him — and had hurt him in 1963 — in the white wards. Daley carried
all of the South Side and West Side black wards. In over thirty of the city’s fifty wards, he received more than 80 percent
of the vote.
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The general election was a mere formality. John Hoellen was so ambivalent about the race that he insisted on campaigning to
retain his City Council seat at the same time. Hoellen, like so many Daley opponents before him, received virtually no support
from his fellow Republicans. Daley carried all fifty wards and won the April 1 election with 78 percent of the vote. Hoellen’s
strategy of running for city council at the same time as he ran for mayor was also a failure. Daley cut off services to the
ward, and a machine Democrat took the seat Hoellen had occupied for twenty-eight years. “You can’t stop a Sherman tank with
a flintlock rifle,” Hoellen said philosophically. With Hoellen now out of the City Council, the fifty-member body had no Republicans
at all.
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Daley was sworn in, for the sixth time, by his old friend Judge Marovitz. The two men looked gray and small in a City Hall
crowd that was so big that many had to watch the ceremony on a television at a movie theater across the street. In May, for
the first time in twenty years, Daley insisted that his birthday not be celebrated in City Hall. He was thinking less of himself
these days and more of the next generation of Daleys. His desire to leave a political legacy to his sons appeared to play
a role in his slating decision when John Kluczynski, Daley’s own congressman from the Southwest Side, died of a heart attack
in January 1975. Since the district was a machine stronghold, Daley’s choice would be rubber-stamped in the May special election
and head to Washington. Alderman Edward Burke of the 14th Ward, a politician in his thirties, was regarded as the front-runner
for the nomination, particularly after Daley asked Burke to perform the very public act of serving as a pallbearer at Kluczynski’s
funeral. This was generally regarded as a symbol of anointment. “I had visions of myself sailing on the waters of the Potomac,”
recalled Burke. “As Daley was wont to do, he led me to believe that I was going to be the successor. He had a great way —
when you went to him and entered your supplication, he said, ‘Oh, you would be a wonderful congressman. Do you think that
is the best thing for you and your family?’” Just before the slating, Burke heard that Daley had tapped John Fary, a Polish
alderman, for the seat. The speculation was that Daley had made this decision to please Polish voters. Burke and others interpreted
the decision differently. For Daley, family came before everything. “There was a sense that he didn’t want to commit to making
me a congressman and foreclosing the possibility that he could send one of his kids to Congress,” Burke said. “It was clear
that John Fary was a temporary seat warmer.”
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Daley was also less able to shape the city than he had been earlier in his mayoralty. Since the mid-1960s, he had been promoting
the Crosstown Expressway, a $1 billion road that would go north-south and then east-west to connect to the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Daley declared that the Crosstown would be a “New Main Street for Chicago,” the first highway that would improve rather than
destroy the communities it ran through. The expressway’s planners issued press releases contending that it would “add elegance”
to the neighborhoods it crossed. But even by Daley’s own figures, the 6.5-mile east-west stretch alone would displace 1,390
homes, 371 businesses, two schools, and 37 factories that employed 1,134 people. According to some estimates, the entire Crosstown
would destroy almost 3,500 homes and displace more than 10,000 people. Residents of the middle and working-class neighborhoods
along the Crosstown’s proposed routes came out strongly against the expressway, objecting that it would end up destroying
their homes and neighborhoods. Blacks objected that planners had chosen to place the east-west segment at 75th Street rather
than 59th Street, as was originally being considered, because the new route would destroy black neighborhoods rather than
white, Catholic ones. This grassroots opposition was helped considerably when Governor Daniel Walker added his voice in opposition
to the Crosstown. The Crosstown would have meant considerable disruption, but not much more than the siting of the University
of Illinois campus or Hyde Park urban renewal — both of which Daley had been able to force through despite considerable opposition.
It was an indication of Daley’s declining power that he could not make his dream of a Crosstown Expressway a reality. “It
was the older Daley versus the younger Daley,” says William Singer. “The younger Daley would have developed a coalition of
good government and young Democrats in favor of the Crosstown. But old Daley was in charge.”
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By the spring of 1975, word had begun to leak out about the activities of the Red Squad, the Chicago Police Department unit
that had been keeping dossiers on an array of civic leaders, politicians, and journalists, particularly liberals and blacks.
It turned out that the group had been spying on an incongruous group of people, from Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre
Dame University, television commentator Len O’Connor, and Alexander Polikoff, the lawyer who brought the
Gautreaux
case. Civil rights groups were another significant target. One memo from the Chicago Police Intelligence Division — labeled
“Security Analysis Unit (Subversive)”— reported that the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League was holding a benefit dinner honoring
Hesburgh, Congressman Ralph Metcalfe, and special prosecutor Barnabas Sears. These documents confirmed some liberal and black
groups’ suspicions that Chicago was just a bit more like a totalitarian police state than most other American cities. Daley
responded that the spying was regrettable, but he assured the targets that “if you don’t do anything wrong, there’s no need
to worry.”
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New information also came out about the shady dealings of CHA chairman Charles Swibel. When Swibel’s private Marina City project
was in trouble, it turned out, Continental Bank had taken title to the property, took over the development, and hired Swibel’s
management company for $79,000 a year to run it. Around the same time, Swibel was involved in switching a significant part
of the $100 million the CHA handled annually to Continental Bank. Some of these funds were placed in non-interest-bearing
accounts that cost taxpayers $44,000 a year. It also turned out that Swibel had switched the CHA’s guards contract to Wells
Fargo after the company installed and maintained a burglar alarm in his suburban Winnetka home without charging him. And Swibel
was charged with directing his staff to admit his friends and relatives into elderly housing ahead of applicants on the waiting
list. The Better Government Association, equating Swibel’s actions with those of an “out-and-out crook,” demanded that Daley
remove him. “There is little hope of improving the housing authority if its chairman is more interested in using his office
for financial benefit than in providing services for CHA tenants,” the group declared.
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