Daley's Chicago One Year Later

...Until recently, this would not have been construed as a threat to the Daley machine, for both the ghettos and the ethnic neighborhoods were organization strongholds...

...Singer, a campaigner for Robert Kennedy in 1968 and a Convention floor leader for South Dakota's Senator George McGovern, had a youthful army of volunteers who intensively canvassed the area...

...Woods' police record and shady dealings proved an embarrassment, and many precinct captains—with at least the tacit approval of the Mayor—turned out the voters for Hubbard...

...In the other three contests, some liberals saw an independent coalition being born in response to the Convention...

...But Singer notes that he ran very well in the Lincoln Park area, where last August high-rise apartment dwellers could watch police clash with Yippies at the edge of the park...

...But it is Chicago's one million blacks who above all hold the key to the city's politics...

...The organization, for its part, ran a decidedly old-politics campaign, including a last-minute street repairing effort...

...Now the Mayor must bargain for his Federal money...

...Typically, while the administration has denied any wrongdoings on the various legal questions arising from the hundreds of Convention arrests, it has quietly looked into ordinances and police procedures, and come up with some ludicrous results...

...The head of the War on Poverty, Sargent Shriver, was a Chicagoan whom Daley had once appointed to the school board...

...Participation" is a key word for the city's new political independents, but one which Daley's men apparently cannot comprehend...

...Beyond these political realities, there is also Daley's personal image problem...

...The lobby is once again spotless and serene...

...This black bourgeoisie, kept from the suburbs by racial prejudice, is anxious to assert its political independence...

...the choice of aging ward boss William Barrett, who is also county clerk...

...Thus, the leaders of the annual Illinois Boy Scouts' campout, held for 18 years in a Chicago park with city approval, were informed only 48 hours before the latest fest that the Scouts would have to vacate the park at 11 p.m...

...Six seats were at stake, but half were in ethnic neighborhoods where the organization went unchallenged...

...Daley aides insist the election was resolved solely on local issues...

...Subsequently, law-and-order Republicans, and more recently George Wallace's American Independent party, appeared to threaten the Democratic machine...

...For example, some $38 million in Model Cities grants for Chicago were delayed until the end of fiscal 1969 and then released only after Daley's lieutenant in the House, Representative Daniel Rosenkowski, voted in committee for extension of the surtax...

...Martin Luther King, Daley endorsed fair housing...

...It is fair to say that but for Richard J. Daley, there would be no Conrad Hilton Hotel in the city of Chicago tonight," Cook County board chairman George Dunn declared at a local Democratic dinner last May...

...each night—just as the Yippies were forced to do last year...

...It never occurred to him that for an increasing number of people, the first question is more important than the second...

...But in the crannies and service corridors, you can find bits of graffiti and take in an occasional whiff of a stink bomb left over from the 1968 Democratic Convention...

...Daley's first real political test came in last spring's alder-manic elections...

...A recent survey of youth by Fortune magazine found the Mayor finishing second only to George Wallace in unpopularity...

...In June, when he testified before the Democrats' Commission on Structure and Delegate Selection, his clash with Senator George McGov-ern over the Convention issue overshadowed his substantial proposals for broadening the democratic processes within the party...

...The clearest confrontation came in the 44th ward, where William Singer, a 28-year-old lawyer, took on James P. Gaughan...

...He insists Chicago is all that concerns him, and that here he is firmly in control of the administration and the party...

...Officially, the city administration denies any error in handling the convention...

...In the 42nd ward...

...Higher up on the economic ladder is Chicago's black middle class, the nation's largest...

...Now the city's growing racial polarity is eroding this base...

...As the older whites continue their exodus to suburbia, the electorate, now one-third Negro, will grow increasingly black...

...Since the Democratic organization remains firmly in the hands of the old-line patronage workers, the "New Politics" offers the only effective outlet for these affluent young independents, 'there appears to be no basis on which the Daley machine can appeal to them...

...In the end, he settled for Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii...

...They point out that the 44th has been a swing ward—it elected a Republican councilman eight years ago...

...About a third of the city's Negroes are college educated, own their own homes, or have an income over $8,000...

...His vote, when combined with that of the other independent Democrat, exceeded the organization's total...

...As they leave, their strength is being replaced by the young and the blacks...

...Instead they offered affable Sam Shapiro for governor, who lost to Republican Richard Olgilvie...

...In any case, the pressure from the Police Gang Intelligence Unit helps rather than hinders the formation of a radical coalition which has links with sus and other New Leftists...

...It may even be resurrected later this month when peace activist Dave Dellinger...

...But in the spring of 1968, Daley reassured his white constituency by ordering police to shoot to kill looters...

...The Eastern European blue-collar families on the city's Southwest and Northwest sides have felt increasingly threatened by the young hippies and the abutting black ghettos that sprawl across and down the city's West and South sides...

...This one success does not override the fact that in the short run, at least, the Convention probably strengthened the Daley machine?even if trends that in the long run may force it out of City Hall have been accelerated...

...As a result...

...Still, the Convention has remained controversial in Chicago and has spurred the forces that are beginning to attack the Daley machine at its roots...

...Agenda for the Democrats?3...

...Similarly, recent protest demonstrations have been handled gingerGEORGE WALLACE ly...

...Singer finished second to Gaughan in the initial four-man race, forcing a runoff that he won with the help of a large turnout and liberal Republican support...

...Daley was able to provide enough Democratic votes to pass the tax bill, and there has been less talk lately of "dismantling" the Mayor's organization...

...Daley's slate-making committee kept State Treasurer Adlai Stevenson III off the top of the 1968 ticket because of dovish leanings...

...Nevertheless, on a national level the Convention uproar and the election aftermath have changed both the image and the reality of Daley-the-kingmaker...

...The battle lines here, however, were not clearly drawn...

...More recently they have turned to antipoverty work and political organization along the lines of the Black Panthers (who...

...one of the Mayor's aides asked rhetorically...

...For these lawyers and junior executives, teachers and social workers, local politics is both a way to do something about the problems they studied in college and to build a social life...

...Before a peace march last April, the Chicago Police Department gave its men a much-publicized psychological test to select 500 friendly officers lo line the parade route...

...Yet the 67-year-old Mayor now faces a form of politics his machine may not be equipped to handle...

...The change in Daley's national status over the last year is clear...

...Once the capital of Midwestern isolationism and provincialism, Chicago now harbors a young educated, cosmopolitan generation...

...Daley's Convention hard line was warmly received in Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods, which continue to form the backbone of the organization's strength...

...In its view, the valiant Chicago police kept a mob of out-of-state anarchists from taking over...

...In 1966, under pressure from Dr...

...Is the main issue who controls things, or what gets done...

...In the 1950s, he was looked on rather kindly by political scientists and progressives...

...It is not that his administration is unwilling to respond to Chicago's post-Convention forces, but rather that it is simply unable to cope with them...

...Although a year has passed since that dramatic gathering, its ghost hovers over Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago...

...Another segment of the black community, the young people, is also emerging as an independent political force...

...Daley claims he is not overly troubled about his national reputation...

...The Blackstone Rangers and others, for instance, began in the 1950s as bopping black street gangs...

...He says his election "brought home to the people the fact that the present administration is not attuned to the times...

...and in the fall, he cracked down on Yippies and others at the Convention...

...Democratic Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey narrowly lost the election for want of one more large industrial state...

...Now, many Northern liberals see him as a symbol of repression and police brutality...

...Before the election, Singer's headquarters were vandalized, and a leaflet was distributed alluding to his many Jewish backers as "a brigade of porcupines whose snout is their most prominent feature...

...On another occasion, when the Young Lords and other youth gangs engaged in some window breaking, the police did not actively interfere...

...John J. Stevens, a black actor and dramatics teacher, narrowly lost to the machine candidate...

...He was thought to be a tough-minded liberal who, despite a city full of gangsters, was basically honest and good—a man who made the trains run on time and endorsed the right social legislation...

...It is rumored that Daley tried to get a big name Democrat for last May's party banquet, but none would come...

...And it is precisely to this group that the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the charismatic head of Operation Breadbasket, is today addressing himself in his attempt to organize an integrated power bloc, independent of the Daley machine...

...Daley's strength was largely among poor blacks, especially the welfare proletariat...

...Friends and foes alike also agree he could easily be reelected today and will be hard to beat in 1971 when his present term ends...

...The city administration still views these groups as young criminals to be harassed and broken up, though some contend that the police recognize the politicization they have undergone and are trying to stifle it...

...Significantly, young black radicals tended to ignore the Convention, regarding it as strictly whitey's business...

...For many liberal politicians outside of Chicago, being linked to the Mayor is about as useful as having a picture taken with Lester Maddox...

...At the same affair Daley himself said he would "make no apologies to anyone in this city, this nation, or the world about our past actions...

...Daley is a shrewd politician, noted for his ability to compromise with emergent groups before they can bolster enough strength to force a bargain on their own terms, and there are signs that he is ready to open up his organization somewhat...

...The new Governor promptly vowed to "dismantle, the Democratic machine," but soon ran into trouble in the Legislature when conservative members of his own party balked at his proposed income tax...

...Harvey D. Shapiro, a new contributor to these pages, is a freelance journalist based in Chicago...

...While his organization—one of the nation's most powerful political machines—carried Cook County, it failed to provide enough votes to overcome the traditional downstate Republican majorities...

...It was, after all, some dubious Cook County vote totals that took Illinois out of the Nixon column in 1960 and cost him the election...

...Seething because their education and income have not enabled them to overcome discrimination, they have come to feel the machine does not offer what they want...

...In fact, 38 of the 50 city councilmen are part of his organization...

...As University of Chicago historian Richard C. Wade has said, "Race has become the fundamental fact of political life in Chicago...

...With this hard line, he renewed his grasp and slowed defections from the party...

...Yet these whites are the very same people who, bit by bit, are moving to the middle-class suburbs...

...At the state level, the bargaining picture is similar...

...But in the final analysis, it was the ward's black and white middle-class residents who were decisive in putting Hubbard into the City Council...

...Yippie leader Jerry Rubin and six others are tried for violating the 1968 Civil Rights Act by inciting the disorders which plagued the Convention, sds has called for massive antiwar demonstrations to coincide with the trial, and local observers are wondering how the Daley organization will respond...

...And it is among these two groups that Daley's power has been damaged in the past year...

...In the Nixon era, however, Daley is nearly a forgotten man...

...In the 2nd ward, Fred Hubbard, a 39-year-old black social worker who had been defeated twice before, was elected over Lawrence S. Woods, a former aide to Congressman William L. Dawson...

...In the days of the New Frontier and the Great Society, he was perhaps the most powerful government official outside of Washington, and had ready access to the White House and to Federal funds...

...incidentally, were rebuffed in their efforts to take over the Rangers...

...When an intemperate Health, Education and Welfare official cut off Federal aid because of de facto segregation in the city's schools, the Mayor quickly got the funds restored and the official chastised...