Black Power in Chicago

...As he was working on the teeth of a long-time patient, Partee said, the dentist mentioned idly that he didn't intend to vote for Washington...

...Washington piously blamed Epton for the incident, then went on to exploit it iff television ads...

...One of those moments may be happening in Chicago right now.'' Guilt worked...

...This explanation was disingenuous, however, because the slogan was also used in ads that didn't mention Washington's record...

...Until the last week of the campaign, Washington campaigned sparingly in white neighborhoods...

...Somewhere down the line, it is conceivable that if this thing gets out of hand some innocent person, a month from now, walking down the street, may wind up dead because someone triggered an irrational moment, a hate thing that got out of hand...

...A more plausible candidate might have overcome the media blunder...

...Jackson has little but disdain for white Democratic leaders, and this has become a safe stance to take in Chicago...

...White bigots facilitated the coverage by sometimes displaying their prejudice publicly...

...There were plenty of non-racial reasons for rejecting Washington, but they drew less attention...

...In Bridgeport, the home turf of the Daleys and a reliable Democratic stronghold, Washington lost to Epton by 74 to 26 percent...

...With the organization disintegrated and blacks gaining at least temporary hegemony, the future does not seem bright for the Democratic party...

...A similar experience befell a black barber, Partee said...

...Racism was not defeated in Chicago, which is 40 percent black, nor was the Rev...

...Former Governor Richard Ogilvie, a Republican backing Byrne, signed a letter to white residents arguing that votes for Daley would tip the election to Washington...

...Washington was lucky to be wrong...

...And black political leaders of less demagogic bent than Jackson are now far from likely to slip back to the semi-obscurity of the middle and rear ranks of the Democratic party, where they have spent so much time over the years-just the opposite...

...The fear among white politicians is that blacks will become a majority there within a few years...

...Something, but not everything...

...Though Washington had failed to endorse Daley in the 1980 race for state's attorney and was resolute in his vow to uproot the Democratic organization's influence at City Hall, he claimed that ward leaders were obligated to back him...

...There were plenty of nonracial reasons for rejecting Washington, but they drew less attention...

...The hear-no-evil sentiment was put into poetry by a young PUSH volunteer, Doreen Charles...

...Support for the Democratic nominee has been based on continuation of the existing [party] structure," explained Cecil Partee, the city's treasurer and a black supporter of Washington...

...He organized both the successful black boycott of her Chicago-Fest celebration last summer and the registration drive that brought out 100,000 new black voters...

...During an Irish parade, as Wash-ington's Republican opponent Bernard Epton marched by, one woman opened her jacket, exposing a T-shirt with the message, "Vote Right, Vote White...

...This came in the form of plain white buttons and ones showing a watermelon with a black slash across it...

...McGovern carried the city...

...Nonetheless, Rolle likened picketers who raised the tax issue to "the same forces that I saw as a child in Florida that were dressed in sheets...

...The patient leaped from the chair, her dental work unfinished, and announced peremptorily, "You'll never work on my mouth again...

...Besides, she said, Ronald Reagan didn't pay any tax one year (she neglected to say this was because of legitimate deductions) and he was elected President...

...That coalition depended on black votes, but not on black power...

...Because they are organization Democrats, they never would have won the Democratic nomination...

...The organization supported George McGovern in the 1972 presidential race, even after the McGovern forces at the Democratic convention had ousted the Illinois delegation headed by Richard J. Daley, the Chicago mayor and political boss...

...But if they get the feeling that this is going to turn into a race war, then it might turn bitter, evil, angry and you've got a mess on your hands...

...There are moments in our history of which we are thoroughly and profoundly ashamed," the announcer said...

...Epton got a far bigger percentage of their vote, signaling more loudly still the breakdown of the Democratic coalition in Chicago...

...On the weekend before the primary, Edward (Fast Eddie) Vrdolyak, the chairman of the Cook County Democratic party, told white ward leaders that "the race thing" was paramount and that Washington could be stopped only if whites got behind Byrne...

...In any meaningful political sense, the machine is dead...

...At a tense session with skeptical reporters on election eve, members of Washington's campaign staff took the tack that his legal problems were private matters and therefore had no bearing on his suitabilfty for office...

...Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...

...But racial feelings were encouraged and mobilized in the Washington-Epton contest-by both sides...

...Nor was the party given a meaningful national boost by the victory of a black Democrat in a racially troubled and still predominantly white city...

...Blacks, Hispanics, women and the working class Labor, youth, the unemployed said in one mass They said when they chose Harold over Mayor Byrne We've been excluded long enough...

...Byrne, of course, had faced a similar situation in 1979, having beaten the organization's man, incumbent Michael Bilandic, in the primary...

...Jesse L. Jackson rebuked...

...And reporters underplayed Washington's exploitative use of the racial issue in his own behalf...

...White politicians and reporters are given to sneering at Jackson, particularly because he is a relentless and unabashed publicity hound, but he is tireless and influential...

...With a black Democrat as mayor, whites may find that voting Republican in Chicago is habit-forming...

...If that happens, black political control would go unchallenged, as in Detroit...

...In any case, the lesson that blacks are likely to take from the Washington victory is that racial solidarity works...

...The lure was racial bigotry and discord, always a good story and easy to write...

...But there was a conservative conceit in the Chicago campaign, too...

...The second reason was race...

...But there is a catch here...

...whites didn't need to be reminded of Washington's color...

...He sort of changed the rules...

...What ever happened to individual freedom...

...Now it's our turn...

...What's wrong with that...

...A black dentist and friend of Partee encountered pro-Washington intolerance in the primary...

...And this strategy was enormously aided by the heckling that a crowd of placard-brandishing Epton supporters directed at him and Mondale when they visited a Catholic church in a white neighborhood on Palm Sunday...

...Even if they lose, they will be in a strong bargaining position...

...Washington was sliding toward defeat until the church incident, pollster Patrick Caddell said, but he managed to stabilize and even pick up a few percentage points in the closing days of the race...

...Nothing, if one were to judge by Washington's effort in the black wards...

...He threatened to dismantle the organization's cherished patronage system...

...Some white ward leaders inclined to stick with the party's nominee found they were unable to sell their followers on Washington, especially in ethnic Catholic neighborhoods...

...At a rally staged at the headquarters of Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, actress Esther Rolle (Florida in the TV series, "Good Times") declared it un-Christian and reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan to harp on Washington's background...

...a Reagan clone would have beaten him...

...Unanimous support for Washington was promoted, to say the least...

...In 1970, he was stripped of the right to practice law after numerous clients reported he had taken money from them, pathetically Small amounts in all cases, and then refused to provide any legal service...

...Even when white Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek announced, two days before the election, that he was resigning, blacks saw a racial motive...

...And Washington's rhetoric was not exactly reassuring to whites, either...

...Epton's bid to capitalize on Democratic defectors by concluding his television commercials with ''Vote for Epton, Before It's Too Late" actually backfired by galvanizing the black community...

...If they were Christians, where was their "sense of forgiveness...

...A campaign cache of $10 million wasn't enough to protect its incumbent (Byrne) this year...

...I've been in this business a long time and I know people vote along racial lines and ethnic lines...

...He also needlessly antagonized the press, once telling a TV correspondent, "you're a disgrace to your camera crew...

...Two weeks before election day, he denounced Epton for "playing with fire" by touching on racial matters...

...John Deardourff, the political consultant who came up with the slogan, claimed it was injected in the TV spots only to punctuate the point that a man with Washington's record-36 days in jail for failing to file tax returns, temporary disbarment for cheating clients, a history of unpaid bills- should be kept from the mayor's office...

...I know Bernie .Epton and I kind of like him,'' said one black leader...

...Brzeczek is hoping to stir up whites even more by saying, 'Washington is about to win, therefore I'm going.'" Any citation of Washington's legal troubles was deemed racially motivated...

...In the polarized racial environment, blacks dismissed any criticism of Washington as racist...

...Chicago pols have never been fastidious about backing only ie candidates they find personally palatable...

...HOW Low much did race have to do with the 30 percentage-point disparity...

...Blacks were outraged by what they viewed as an openly racist appeal...

...Sixteen others (out of 50) and Vrdolyak were said to have worked privately to aid Epton...

...There are people in this city who are on a tremendous high, a good positive thing," he said...

...The warnings by Ogilvie and Vrdolyak were not heeded, but their advice helped set the raw racial tone for the contest between Washington and Epton...

...The election of Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor was a significant political event, but not for the reasons that have circulated ostentatiously since his April 12 victory...

...She wrote: People of Chicago, we have got to unite Stand up for Harold Washington because he's right Eet's save this city from its racist fear Say no to Epton, say no to Reaganomics here When Harold won, old Bernie did a song and dance Cause whites began to panic, he thought here's my chance Since it was clear that Jane and Richie missed the boat He said if nothing else, I'll get the racist vote To try to get attention, he distorts the facts By making fun of Harold and insulting blacks He'll try to win the white vote any way he can Don't wait, Push 8, and vote the people's man...

...Blacks have parted company...

...Reagan got many ethnic Catholics to side with him in 1980...

...Positive or not, that is racism...

...A snowstorm doomed its candidate (Bilandic) in the 1979 Democratic primary...

...said Alderman Roman Pucinski, one of eight ward leaders who endorsed Epton...

...While a state legislator in 1972, he was jailed for failing to file income-tax returns for four years, though the federal prosecutor said he hadn't filed for 19 years...

...Nobody understands this better than Jesse Jackson, who played a major role in the downfall of Jane Byrne...

...For sure, the press tended to exaggerate the degree to which undiluted racism was a factor in white hostility to Washington...

...She wooed the ward leaders and got 82 percent of the vote against a no-name Republican...

...By this absurd standard, Richard Speck could run for mayor, telling voters that his murder of Chicago nurses should be ignored because he committed the crimes on his private time...

...Washington didn't and got 52 percent...

...So did the conduct of Washington and his allies, including Jackson...

...Washington was different for two reasons...

...He got 86 percent of the black vote, winning with a mere 36.3 percent of the total primary vote (Chicago does not require run-off elections...

...One TV commercial showed photos of a Klan rally, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev...

...It's as simple as that...

...That attempt never came, and some Democrats felt that Washington feared overtures to whites would jeopardize his appeal in the black community...

...Rather than court whites, Washington sought to mau-mau them into voting for him out of guilt...

...Washington ignored phone calls from former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and local party leaders for days, insisting that Mondale had "some explaining to do" because of his primary endorsement of Daley...

...Instead, the Democratic coalition, already punchy after the bout with Ronald Reagan in 1980, took another damaging shot, once more with the whole world watching...

...In the predominantly Irish ward of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, he lost by 94 to 6 percent...

...Blacks may no longer have to worry about appeasing whites in Chicago...

...It was not the demise of a political anachronism, though, that brought scores of reporters to Chicago...

...They led directly to Washington's victory...

...The liberal conceit is that the 97 percent was an expression of black pride- "positive racism," the New Republic called it-while the 18 percent was a result of white racism...

...Did you ever hear the admonition, judge not that ye be not judged...

...Jackson actually stands to gain considerable political clout as a result of Washington's triumph...

...Epton ignored the black community completely...

...He's said he doesn't want to operate that way...

...What can the organization do to him...

...Why should I give him [Washington] the guillotine to chop off my head...

...Epton was persuasive only when denying that he was, as Washington alleged, "a Reagan clone...

...John Geocaris, a ward committeeman, defended racial bloc voting...

...But if I said anything nice about him in public, that would be suicide for me...

...This is an underhanded attempt to help Epton," asserted Alderman Danny Davis, a Washington supporter...

...Since Washington attracted few white votes, the obvious step for him was to attempt a reconciliation with white Democrats...

...Certainly Partee, the city treasurer, or Illinois Comptroller Roland Burris or Alderman Wilson Frost would have been more acceptable to whites, notably because they are organization Democrats...

...For a black, the only way to win the primary is to go outside the organization and try to pull together the burgeoning black vote, which is what Washington did...

...And the way to mobilize black voters and maximize their political influence is to run black candidates...

...Washington had run virtually a blacks-only campaign in the primary, trumpeting the slogan "It's Our Turn" and promising both to fire the white police chief and install a civilian review board...

...He got 18 percent of the white vote and an astounding 97 percent of the black vote...

...It holds that any number of other blacks would have won the mayor's race by a comfortable margin and that Washington's past and his liberal agenda, not his race, forced white Democrats to defect...

...And not to be underestimated...

...The people in my area just don't want a black mayor," explained Alderman Anthony Laurino candidly...

...White Democrats began worrying about Washington even before the February 22 primary in which he won the Democratic nomination by topping then-Mayor Jane Byrne and State's Attorney Richard M. Daley...

...Finally, forget about reports that the old Democratic machine in Chicago is lingering near death but may revive...

...But all Epton had was his criticism of Washington, often expressed snidely, and this was partially offset by the disclosure that Epton had undergone psychiatric treatment...

...The fact is, though, that most black voters never for a moment considered casting their votes for Epton, solely because he was a white running against a black...

...Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam war, followed by shots of the jeering crowd at the church...

...He also had his salary garnisheed to cover unpaid bills, and he and his partners owed back taxes on a piece of slum property as recently as this year...

...That, in turn, makes the black unpalatable to organization whites...