Race after Washington:
Greene, Preston
REPORT FROM CHICAGO RACE AFTER WASHINGTON BEIRUT ON THE LAKE Though some analysts date the decline of black political power in Chicago to Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer's defeat by State's Attorney...
...and in a shrinking economic base, as the private sector refuses to invest in a city where increasing numbers of its residents are functionally illiterate...
...Furthermore, Evans's slow response to the anti-Semitic diatribes of former Sawyer aide, Steve Cokely, severely damaged his credibility with Jewish voters...
...To the surprise of the entire political establishment, he won, bringing panic to the Daley camp, dismay to Republican Governor Jim Thompson...
...PRESTON GREENE Preston Greene is research associate at the Center for the Study of Values and lecturer in political science and law at DePaul University...
...For three-and-a-half years, Washington was effectively prevented from governing by the old guard's 29 votes (to his 21) on the city council and stifled in his attempts to make appointments to some of the most crucial municipal departments by the "29," led by Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, affectionately known in Chicago as "Fast Eddie...
...The Chicago school system (both the superin-tendency and the school board itself), the park system, the Chicago Housing Authority, the Library Board, the Police Department, and numerous lesser agencies are under black control...
...The courts ordered a special election, as state law seemed to require, and the old guard abandoned Sawyer and fielded three candidates of their own, all of whom quickly withdrew once the disinherited prince, Richard Daley, announced his intention to run against Sawyer in the Democratic primary...
...Recognizing the impossibility of choosing a "white ethnic" successor, the old guard got the next best thing: a black who could "play ball" with the machine, Eugene Sawyer...
...It was during this period that the term "Council Wars" was coined, and the Wall Street Journalf referred to Chicago as Beirut on the- Lake...
...In Chicago these elementary "reforms" have been the basis of long and costly court battles, and highly polarized election campaigns...
...At the very moment he was to meet his constituents, he was greeted by such a burst of public outrage, almost Elizabethan in its vulgarity, that he collapsed, and had to be rushed back into the inner sanctum for some serious talking with the masterminds of the coup...
...For all of his trouble, Sawyer was-not even allowed to serve the balance of Washington's term...
...Sawyer, to his credit, was a reluctant bride in this misalliance...
...If those blacks most victimized by crime, drugs, and senseless violence lose faith in the system, all Chicagoans will ultimately pay the price in higher taxes to provide the essential services of a community chronically unable to provide for its most basic needs...
...For black activists who fought for decades to reform the city and bring a long-needed measure of power to their community, the future seems bleak...
...And fight, they did...
...Unless...unless, Fast Eddie Vrdolyak- the Count Dracula of Chicago politics, as the Chicago Tribune calls him, arch foe of Harold Washington and Richie Daley, succeeds in derailing Daley...
...For weeks after his selection, he was referred to by whites as "Mayor Mumbles" in acknowledgement of his limited oratorical gifts...
...Changes in the city's economic infrastructure, the increase in black and Hispanic political power, the Shakman Decree (outlawing political patronage), and the social and economic problems facing the city, make a return to the machine-ruled practices of the past impossible...
...During Washington's tenure, they were effectively controlled and silenced...
...After Sawyer lost in the Democratic primary and announced his decision to remain neutral in the election, much of his staff announced their support for Daley...
...In selecting Eugene Sawyer over Tim Evans, the old guard achieved several objectives, especially dividing the black community...
...Yet, a deeper look at political realities suggests some reasons for hope...
...Washington was a reformer...
...and tears of joy to Evans, who sees a split in the ranks of the old guard, and the white vote, as his only hope of repeating Washington's squeaker victories in'83 and'87...
...After weeks of resisting the pleas of his ritew Republican allies to run for Mayor, he decided just four days before the February primary to launch what seemed to be a long-shot, write-in campaign...
...Vrdolyak, the "Instant Republican" and even more instant Republican mayoral candidate, has already done the impossible...
...in greater personal insecurity, as the underclass continues its descent into criminal behavior as the only visible means of economic survival...
...The stakes were extremely high: Would Washington's recent, yet unconsolidated "reforms" survive or be subverted...
...But it was Washington's actual death that opened vast new opportunities for the unreconstructed, white ethnic old guard and their heretofore silent black allies...
...Most other cities have long since abandoned the most blatant abuses associated with "big-city machine politics," and at least pay lip service to the credo of good government: efficiency in government, civil service and merit selection of municipal employees, ethics ordinances for public officials, and minimal adherence to ethnic and racial equality in drawing up of electoral districts...
...On that long night, the Chicago City Council assembled for nearly twelve hours in the most extraordinary session in its history, to choose a successor to the late Harold Washington, laid to rest barely twenty-four hours earlier...
...at DePaul University...
...They are angered at his self-righteous refusal to endorse Sawyer, even after he (Evans) had dropped out of the primary and formed his own third party for the general election...
...REPORT FROM CHICAGO RACE AFTER WASHINGTON BEIRUT ON THE LAKE Though some analysts date the decline of black political power in Chicago to Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer's defeat by State's Attorney Richard M. Daley in the February mayoral primary, it actually began the very night Sawyer was catapulted into the mayor's seat, December 1-2,1987...
...Blacks simply called him "Uncle Tom Sawyer...
...Contrary to what many believed, the support of the black leadership for Washington was never monolithic...
...Evans, a child of the black bourgeoisie (his father was a lawyer as is he, and his wife, a physician), is seen by liberal and thoughtful whites as a captive of militant blacks- an image that is partly the result of unfair media coverage and partly of his inability to rein in his most vocal and militant supporters the way Washington could...
...While the bulk of blacks strongly support him, some middle-class blacks and most of the black political establishment, including Jesse Jackson, are decidedly lukewarm...
...Harold Washington's true legacy was the glimmer of hope he gave to the city's underclass...
...While blacks may not get as receptive a mayor as Harold Washington, they will continue to be a potent force...
...With his surprise victory in 1983, Washington vowed to destroy the machine once and for all, and for the old guard, those were fighting words...
...It was clear that Alderman Tim Evans, Washington's floor leader and trusted confidante, was the appropriate choice to carry forward the "Washington legacy...
...But an Evans victory is unlikely...
...The danger that black Chicagoans face is not the temporary loss of power caused by Daley's probable victory, but the loss of hope among those most in need of it...
...Yet the forces of reform were outmaneu vered...
...Chicago blacks have gained actual and effective, not merely symbolic, control of crucial governmental agencies...
...He never gained the esteem of the citizenry...
...most of the black leadership was not...
...They lost a chance to alter permanently the political landscape of the city by continuing Washington's efforts to "reform" the city's politics in structural, not merely symbolic, ways...
...A great deal is at stake...
...Chicago blacks, and the progressive coalition that twice elected Harold Washington, lost more than a mayor when he was felled by a massive heart attack...
...To them, his election meant Chicago would have a black Daley...
...In the meantime, Tim Evans set up a third-party candidacy for the general election on April 11, which he seems destined to lose...
...So vast was Washington's influence with blacks that a mere hint from him that an alderperson was frustrating his wishes spelled political death for the offender...
...Their influence will be felt unless they continue the sectarian and reductionist politics of this campaign...
...With the support of this unholy alliance, the kind and gentle, but hapless Eugene Sawyer was pushed onto the stage as the city's Acting Mayor...
Vol. 116 • April 1989 • No. 7
