Word: precincts
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...wants at least a hundred thousand out there tonight," the portly precinct captain said, "so you better have five bodies, plus your own ugly face, out there on Michigan Avenue tonight. We're taking a head count at the lot, and don't try to leave before Carter speaks because Tommy will be at the lot." The captain smiled, exposing tobacco-stained dentures as he banged his fist on his fleshy palm...
...city worker he grinned at, also a precinct captain in the mayor's own 11th ward, returned his smile. He knew tonight was important. Mayor Richard J. Daley wanted this to be the largest parade ever held for a single individual. It would be bigger than the torchlight parades he organized for JFK and LBJ. The mayor is no Carter fanatic, but he needs a Carter victory to help carry his gubernatorial candidate, Michael J. Howlett, into office. So for Daley, control of the state is at stake; control means patronage, and patronage is power...
...cigar-chomping politicos who make the place their ward headquarters away from home. The following description of the Chicago patronage system was provided by men who admit they owe their livelihoods, and often their social lives, to the machine. All the detailed information was necessarily supplied by well-connected precinct captains, and as usual, the names are changed to protect the guilty...
Patronage jobs doled out by the city and county number not in the hundreds, but in the thousands and probably the tens of thousands. Johnny, a precinct captain in the mayor's ward, estimates that of the more than 35,000 employees the city hires directly, 80 per cent got their jobs through political connections. This figure does not include another 33,000 policemen, firemen and Board of Education personnel, many of whom also got their positions through a "sponsor." Even though I was only a summer intern in City Hall's "cleanest" department, seven fellow workers asked...
...Yankee Stadium that exhausted the city's patience. In an angry statement. Commissioner Codd told his 26,000-man force that any policeman unwilling to accept the responsibility of his job should "retire or get out." Codd promised to bring departmental charges against the offenders and the precinct captains who had allowed the disorders to occur...