The Mechanical Genius of Mayor Daley
Blatehford, Frank W. III
The Mechanical Genius of Mayor Daley Frank W. Blatcbford HI Mayor Daley of Chicago is the last of an almost extinct breed of big city machine mayors. Curiously too, at the time when Daley's style...
...Today Chicago's bonds, rated AA, outrank all others...
...Daley also provides superb city services...
...The police force is one of the best in the country and total crime in Chicago declined slightly last year while it rose eleven per cent nationally...
...John Lindsay will tell you that you can't run a city on style, dash and charisma...
...During the campaign Daley's opponent, Richard Emmanuel Friedman, 41, a cool, suave motorcyclist, hot-air balloonist, and very much an independent, presented-with considerable skill-the liberal alternative...
...But the machine means more than an army of payrollers and a few favors for the little guys...
...Daley, said Friedman, has concerned himself with skyscrapers, roads, subways, airports, filtration plants and garbage trucks, but he has ignored the people...
...If it didn't, it would have died long ago, because the electorate, once largely composed of bewildered immigrants, has become more independent...
...The liberal experience in Cleveland and New York would seem to bear out the theory that big cities are ungovernable at least if the reins of power are turned over to liberal governors...
...For nine of the last ten years Chicago has been named the cleanest big city in the country...
...If the streets of Chicago are clean and safe, they are also bright...
...Daley grew up in a working class neighborhood, the son of a sheet metal worker...
...a holy trinity The secret to the success of the Daley machine is the support it has fashioned from labor and business to replace its traditional power base that was grounded in Chicago's huge immigrant population...
...They cite the failure of the city to provide public transportation for the working man...
...This thing is a Republican trick...
...Of course I will," she said...
...What the hell do they know about running a city...
...It didn't work because Daley is too smart...
...Daley is the embodiment of the Protestant Ethic...
...Here it's not cutting a dead tree, but shaving a few million off the tax assessment of a new downtown office building, or pushing through a highly-sought-after zoning change, or building expressways to carry shoppers and employees into the downtown area...
...Perhaps he would have preferred to run as an independent, but the election laws in Illinois make it next to impossible for an independent to get a place on the ballot...
...He has the style and the verve to provide a classy alternative to plodding, jowled, semi-literate Mayor Daley, whose malapropisms are legendary ("The police are not here to create disorder, they are here to preserve disorder...
...According to the voters, Chicago still ain't ready for reform...
...These are the kinds of favors upon which election day majorities of ninety to one in some precincts are built...
...The amazing thing about Chicago's services is that Daley has built and expanded them within the confines of a balanced budget...
...Until liberals build a sound political base and learn how to use the tools of power, they are doomed to failure in Chicago...
...Daley's power rests on the machine, over which he exercises absolute control...
...in sickness and in wealth But might not the cure be worse than the disease...
...Most of the precinct captains have city jobs and the line between their political and governmental responsibilities is ill-defined, if not invisible...
...Knowing what made the machine work-the special favor, the fixed ticket-Daley applied the same principles to big business with spectacular results...
...A reporter went into a white neighborhood, which was also a Democratic stronghold, and asked a woman if she would still be voting for Daley after the announcement of his housing plan...
...Garbage collection is reliable and efficient...
...Over the years, they have found the surest way to turn out the vote is to work for their "constituents"-their precinct population-365 days a year...
...He doesn't understand the liberal obsession with eliminating poverty by handing out cash or expanding the welfare rolls...
...And so, over a period of sixteen years the charges against Daley have mounted...
...Paddy Bauler and John Lindsay Daley is not a liberal meddler...
...As is the custom in Chicago politics, when Daley became precinct captain, he jumped on the public payroll...
...To understand Daley's strength, one must understand his political power and what he has done with that power over the last sixteen years...
...He passes on them all, from the lowest mop boy in County Hospital to the most distinguished judges on the Circuit Court bench...
...His critics say Daley is a fine "brick and mortar" mayor, but that he has forgotten the people...
...Daley services But there's more to it than favors...
...He came before the G.O.P...
...Such favors build fierce loyalties...
...Although he denies being like Lindsay, few believe him...
...slatemakers as an independent seeking the party's nomination, but made it very clear that he was an independent and would remain one...
...They cite the failure of the city to stop the stampede of fifty thousand whites per year to the suburbs...
...They must turn out the Democratic vote on election day or they'll lose both their jobs...
...Garbagemen and hospital employees don't walk off the job...
...In 1923, at the age of 21, Daley began his long climb up the party hierarchy as a precinct captain in the 11th ward...
...In recognition of that, Daley was returned to office on 6 April for a fifth four-year term by a vote of 740,137 to 315,969 (the mayor's was 70.08 compared with 29.92 for his opponent), a victory that one television commentator called "an awesome display of power...
...But the face of Daley's Chicago is not without its warts...
...They cite a failure to build more public housing and lament an urban renewal program which has torn down housing for the poor and left the land vacant or built middle-income high rises...
...Teacher and transit strikes don't last long...
...For the most part, these subtle favors for businessmen benefit the general public as well...
...Daley knows and controls the machine so well because it has been a major part of his life for almost half a century...
...This is being planned in spite of arguments that the money could be better used to extend service to outlying industrial parks to enable the poor to reach jobs there...
...For example, tax incentives, although not completely legal, spur the rejuvenation of the downtown area, from which all citizens benefit...
...If Daley has fallen down, it has been in precisely those areas-education, housing and racial integration-in which federal meddling has been most blatant...
...Chicago also boasts the world's biggest convention hall and busiest airport...
...It has been argued that Daley sometimes witholds services as a means of bringing opponents into line or punishing them, but at least the services are there to be withheld...
...Friedman carried the torch of reform...
...In addition, Chicago has one of the finest expressway systems in the country, radiating in all directions from the central Loop district, with transit authority trains running down the median strips...
...And all the payrollers and appointees know this...
...Paddy Bauler, a legendary saloonkeeper alderman in Chicago who is retired, said back in 1955 after Daley's nomination victory, "Chicago ain't ready for reform...
...It is the same old liberal cliche...
...Since 1955 there has been a total of $7 billion of public and private construction in Chicago...
...Its economic development is first among the nation's cities...
...Given the opportunity, any good man will make something of his life, he believes...
...Not only is he mayor, but he is also chairman of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee...
...Unemployment in Chicago is always below the national average, often by a margin of fifty percent...
...He has been content to build a city in which the services can be taken for granted and each individual is free to pursue his own goals with a minimum of interference...
...They cite the dismal record of Chicago schools in which graduates from fifty-one of the fifty-seven high schools average per year behind national norms in reading and math...
...If Friedman had been elected he would have been without a political power base in the city council, and the city, more likely than not, would have split into warring factions...
...They cite the soaring property tax rate necessary to support a record city budget, up six and one-half per cent this year to $899 million, and suggest that firing all the political hacks on the payroll would save the city $150 million a year...
...But in his dealings with labor, Daley has not forgotten the businessman...
...The encouraging business climate and sound financial management of Daley's administration have resulted in extraordinary prosperity...
...The unions usually walk away with big wage increases, and industry saves face...
...In the works now is a new spur of the downtown subway to serve the fur salons and boutiques of North Michigan Avenue...
...In New York City, the mayor often cannot provide adequate services even to his friends...
...There is little integration and much hostility, they argue, with blacks taking over white neighborhoods at the rate of five blocks per day...
...Friedman, connoisseur of fine wines, chess player, mountain climber and liberal extraordinaire had run unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1962 and served in appointive posts under a Democratic state treasurer and state attorney general...
...Judging by the results, New York and other cities with liberal mayors, liberals who would dismantle the Daley machine would do well to devise first a workable system of governing with which to replace it...
...Friedman said he wanted to be mayor of all the people, to face up to the human problems over which Daley's payrollers have run roughshod...
...Besides, they say, the spiraling forty-five cent fare, up from twenty-five in 1967, has priced the system out of the reach of the poor...
...Sure, there are plenty of routes leading downtown, but where are the tracks to take ghetto dwellers to jobs in suburban factories...
...Several weeks before the election, a federal judge appointed by the Democrats, ordered the city to release its list of sites for building public housing in white neighborhoods...
...They are settled in the mayor's office...
...Traffic deaths per capita in Chicago were the lowest in any big city last year...
...Friedman said he was for all the people-the blacks, tired of being taken for granted, and the independents and liberals who are tired of machine politics...
...His climb up the ladder of city politics was slow but steady...
...His roots extend deep into the working class and many of his boyhood chums are top-ranking labor leaders in the city today...
...It is never explained how a person can build skyscrapers in which people live, roads on which they drive, subways in which they ride, airports from which they fly, filtration plants from which they drink and garbage trucks on which they rely to remove their debris without being concerned primarily with people...
...Curiously too, at the time when Daley's style of governing is supposedly on the way out, more and more urban experts are arguing that big cities are ungovernable...
...The average family income is thirty per cent above the national average...
...But Daley doesn't think much of the urban experts...
...Friedman envisioned molding a coalition of the city's Republicans, dissident blacks and liberal independents and Democrats to beat the machine...
...When Daley became mayor in 1955, nine of the twenty largest cities had a higher bond rating then Chicago...
...All of these 35,000 payrollers hold their jobs subject to Daley's approval...
...His love affair with the captains of industry and business, whose traditional loyalties are Republican, is his greatest accomplishment...
...All his opponents were invited to join forces behind the Republican-Independent candidacy of Richard Friedman...
...So, when election time rolls around, businessmen, mindful of the hand that feeds them, fill the Democratic coffers to overflowing...
...One got the feeling that Friedman almost felt he was lowering himself by running on a party ticket...
...Union men have every reason to be happy under Daley...
...The machine can get a man a city job, have the dead tree removed from his parkway, give him an extra garbage can, fix his traffic ticket, or make sure he gets his welfare check...
...Under Daley, Chicago has been remarkably free from long, crippling strikes...
...Nobody says that about Dick Daley...
...He is a strong family man with seven children boasts impeccable personal morals, and attends mass daily...
...He has appointed them to crucial jobs on his special committees and on the school board...
...Daley installed such powerful lights in the alleys that some persons feel it is safer to walk there than on the streets...
...Chicago's services are the best in the nation...
...Publications of the sites caused great howling in the white wards...
...And the streets are safe to drive on...
...It is estimated that by i985 the city will be seventy-five per cent black and the population of the suburbs will have doubled...
...Government in Chicago, in spite of its problems, works, and it works well...
...Last year in the central district alone there was $1.5 billion of private construction underway or announced...
...he has said...
...He became a clerk in city hall and he's been on the payroll ever since...
...He came from a poor family and worked to get his law degree in night school...
...It is liberal America, not Daley's America, that cannot govern itself...
...Nobody but Daley knows precisely how many city and county jobs the machine controls, but estimates run to about 35,000...
...It is here he has displayed his genius for fashioning an unbeatable machine...
...the machine makes it so He does this by holding the two most powerful posts in the city...
...And Daley has not forgotten them...
...The liberals are concerned with people, the conservative with things...
...Circuit Court judges, wearing Daley buttons, stand in the cold waiting for the mayor to appear at campaign rallies...
...During his campaign, Friedman tried to sell the liberal alternative, and he, like Lindsay in New York, is an engaging and attractive salesman for that ideology...
...Consequently, Daley sees his responsibility as one of providing a healthy city in which others can climb as he has...
Vol. 4 • May 1971 • No. 6
