Word: daleyisms
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...become a tradition in the Windy City. Familiar images abound--the elderly or the infirmed dragged from morning homes to the polling booths, "street people" personally accompanied by volunteers to cast a vote, registration lists mysteriously changing names. The Democratic political machine built by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley survived by these methods, enlarging the patronage army that could guarantee votes from the apparatus itself and from the community at large...
Last week, a Black Congressman, Harold Washington won the Democratic Mayoral primary, upsetting two "machine-singed" politicians--incumbent mayor Jane M. Byrne and the late mayor's son, Cook County Stated attorney, Richard M. Daley. Washington campaigned on an anti-machine crusade, and -sure to beat his Republican opponent on April 12--he will carry that cry into the mayor's office. But that does not mean that the legendary Chicago machine has come to a halt. Washington, while winning an important battle, is just beginning his struggle for power...
Washington and his supporters succeded in cleverly out-Daleying Daley and Byrne. A machine's lifeblood is votes--getting registered voters to vote, and non-registered voters t register. With a massive voter registration campaign backed by Operation PUSH's Rev. Jesse Jackson and Black community leaders. Washington's troops dramatically increased the bloc of Black voters. In the 1979 Democratic primary, 24 percent of Chicago voters were Black. In last Tuesday's primary, the number of Black voters rose to 31 percent...
This clearly benefited Washington, who reaped 80 percent of the Black vote, while Byrne and Daley split the white vote. Washington's tactics were strictly of the old-fashioned machine type. The twist in this story is that the machine failed to practice its own teachings. Byrne, who won in 1979 with heavy Black support, alienated this major constituency during her term. One key incident which Black leaders single out as an example of her lack of concern was her decision to select white appointees to a board overseeing predominantly Black housing projects...
...over, and the real business of governing begins, Washington will face a city unaccustomed to political change. As one city councilor put it in the '20s, "this town ain't ready for reform." The existing power structures will still be there, and the cronice and lackeys of Byrne and Daley have yet to leave town. Like any reformer, Washington must face an opposition that resists changing the status quo, one which has suited them so well...