Coalition Politics in the Prairie State
PFLALUM, IRVING
NATIONAL REPORTS Coalition Politics In the Prairie State By Irving Pflaum CHICAGO THE ILLINOIS General Assembly—the State's 71st—is meeting in Springfield under conditions roughly similar to...
...the Senate, however, is safely Republican—34 to 24...
...Half the Legislature is run by the opposition: In the House there are 91 Democrats to 86 Republicans...
...Cook County (largely Chicago) has 54 Democratic representatives, of whom 51 are considered safely obedient to Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, boss of the local machine...
...De La Cour is a protege of Senator William J. Connors, lojigtime professional political power who was majority leader when Adlai Stevenson was Governor...
...De La Cour's Democratic opponent was Representative Paul Powell from the southern Illinois town of Vienna...
...The Chief Executive, Governor William G. Stratton, is a "moderate conservative" Republican...
...There is no income tax in Illinois, and there is a rather high sales tax...
...Granata is a Republican with six sure votes in his bloc and from eight to ten likely Democratic allies...
...Real property bears an undue proportion of the tax load...
...These, plus Powell's bi-partisan group and Granata's coalition...
...Someone, somewhere, is going to have to pay the State more...
...Moreover, coalitions are the rule in Springfield, as they are in Washington...
...Administratively, Mayor Daley's record is good, and he has used the police to protect Negroes from fanatical segregationists in some neighborhoods...
...Illinois is partly a Southern state...
...are more important in showdown voting than nominal party affiliations, and they dominate the array of sectional, political, economic and even historical groupings that form the Prairie State's General Assembly...
...These latter include Negroes and others who follow U. S. Representative William L. Dawson, Democratic boss of the predominandy Negro South Side...
...Little has been done in Chicago to forbid these unwritten, often unspoken agreements which define the racial content of neighborhoods and some suburbs...
...Add to these two more strong Republican groups: a GOP Chicago suburban bloc led by State Senator Arthur J. Bidwell, and the bulk of Republican tories, led by State Senator Everett R. Peters, who hails from a tiny Central Illinois cornland village...
...The time now seems ripe to get some sort of State civil rights law on the books, and Daley and Stratton together may do it...
...Regional lines cut across and often erase party lines...
...Daley's man was Joseph L. De La Cour, a 64-year-old representative of Chicago's Near North Side (vaguely like New York's Greenwich Village...
...Chicago battle often eclipses the GOP-Democratic struggle...
...The initial fight was for the Speakership of the House, and it was Downstate vs...
...it hasn't been easy to enforce educational integration in some of its southern towns...
...His bi-partisan following gives him the "right" to patronage even from a Republican governor...
...Chicago inside the majority party...
...Between Stratton and Daley, however, much can be done, and one of their apparently common objectives this session is a mild Fair Employment Practices Act...
...Legislatively, nothing at all has been done in the City or State...
...His counterpart, after a fashion, is Peter C. Granata from Chicago's West Side, one-time site of gangridden tenements...
...Governor Stratton, of course, has a powerful voice...
...A North Carolina official visited Chicago to study this system...
...The Downstate vs...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Coalition Politics In the Prairie State By Irving Pflaum CHICAGO THE ILLINOIS General Assembly—the State's 71st—is meeting in Springfield under conditions roughly similar to those in Washington...
...Powell, a 24-year veteran of Illinois politics, is a smooth trader who often leads many small-town Downstaters of both parties and has learned to work profitably with the Stratton Administration...
...They may also join in seeking new revenue for needed State expansion in education, mental health and other welfare activities, and in attempting to reconstruct Chicago's transportation system...
...he controls many patronage jobs and is the nominal GOP state leader...
...In Chicago, there is no legal segregation, but residential limitations result in the effective segregation of many public schools...
...But his actual role is scarcely more vital to the legislative process in Springfield than is President Eisenhower's in Washington...
Vol. 42 • January 1959 • No. 4
