Word: epton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Conversely, the white ethnic wards, which have voted solidly Democratic since William ("Big Bill") Thompson was elected the last Republican mayor in 1927, went heavily for Epton. In the Polish-Irish-Russian 13th Ward on the Southwest Side, Epton took 34,856 votes to Washington's 1,457. Even the famed Eleventh Ward of Bridgeport, the bedrock Democratic base of the late Mayor Daley, voted overwhelmingly Republican. Holding the electoral balance were the city's six affluent "Lakefront Liberal" wards. Undecided until the very end, they finally gave Washington 40% of their vote, enough to assure...
...been arrested for child molesting. He also aired a powerful television ad that showed a series of violent scenes from America's past: a Ku Klux Klan rally, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the Kent State shootings. It culminated with pictures of Epton supporters jeering Washington at a church on Palm Sunday. "There are moments in our history of which we are thoroughly and profoundly ashamed," said the narrator. "One of these moments may be happening in Chicago right...
...Epton continued his attacks on Washington's dubious financial past, charging that his conviction in 1972 for failure to file tax returns and the suspension of his law license for professional malfeasance represented "documented evidence of a long and disturbing pattern of behavior." Despite Epton's distinguished record of opposing racial prejudice, he continued to strike chords designed to appeal to fearful white voters. "Nothing will be done in this city without the consent of the neighborhoods involved!" he shouted in one ethnic area...
...campaign, Epton seemed beaten down by the pressure. "He conked out at the end," said Political Analyst Milton Rakove of the University of Illinois. Epton testily withdrew from one national television interview on Sunday, claiming that one of the panelists was biased against him, and insisted on being in a separate studio from Washington during another broadcast. "He thinks he's in South Africa," chided Washington. On election night Epton raged to a television interviewer that some Chicago reporters were "slime, beneath contempt." He was particularly bitter that blacks, who always backed him for the state legislature, had turned...
...Democratic machine was wobbly after the traumatic campaign. "It's been declining for ten years," said Chicago Political Consultant Don Rose, "but this is the most devastating blow." Eight of its 50 ward leaders actually endorsed Republican Epton. Many others who remained officially neutral ended up working against the party nominee, including Alderman Edward Burke, a ward leader on the Southwest Side. He spoke of the feelings of his white ethnic constituents: "They're afraid of what might happen, and that fear is not unrealistic...