Nomination Dispute Typical of Conflict : Truce Unlikely in Chicago ‘Council Wars’

Mayor Harold Washington tried for months to get William Spicer, his acting purchasing director, confirmed by the City Council. After two years, with the nomination still hanging, Washington decided he wasn’t pleased with Spicer’s work, so he fired him.

That was all it took, in this town of peculiar politics, to persuade the council that Spicer deserved its wholehearted support. Ten days later, the council confirmed him, and the whole issue ended up in the courts.

Down at City Hall, the mischievous political armies waging “Council Wars” show no signs of calling a truce. It has been 2 1/2 years since Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, was elected and power broker Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak led the white majority bloc of the City Council in revolt.

At first, some Chicagoans thought the comic opera of bantering and insult, confrontation and obstruction would have a short run. But now it has become clear that the show will go the distance--for the 17 months remaining in Washington’s term.

When Chicago again goes to the polls to elect a mayor, it will also be declaring a Council Wars winner and presumably ending one of the most, well, conspicuous periods in the city’s storied political history.

Until then, however, “it’ll be open warfare,” predicts Louis Masotti, a professor of urban affairs at Northwestern University. “This is a war, not a skirmish. There is no tomorrow.”

That war is played out weekly in a sunken amphitheater often clogged with cigar smoke, where 50 aldermen are fanned out on rising half-circle rows of leather chairs--each facing the mayor. The number of battles in that council chamber seems to be growing.

Some tales from the front:

--About 45 mayoral appointments remain hostages--buried in council committees. The Vrdolyak army has spent $18,000 in tax money defending aldermen sued by the stalled appointees, at least one of whom gave up the job she held in anticipation of her new appointment--two years ago--to avoid any conflict of interest.

--A dozen police officers and two City Council employees engaged in a bizarre car chase a few weeks ago to catch a businessman linked to Washington’s 1983 campaign and serve him with a subpoena, not from a judge, but from the council. The majority aldermen want to question the man and a former Washington aide about alleged influence-peddling in city contracts.

--When the mayor returned from Miami last week, where he saw the Miami Dolphins break the Chicago Bears’ winning streak, Vrdolyak introduced a resolution charging that Washington had jinxed the Bears by attending his first road contest this year. “For heaven’s sakes,” Vrdolyak told Washington, “don’t go near the playoffs.”

--Walter (Slim) Coleman, a Washington supporter, pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge stemming from a Council Wars battle during a summer council meeting. Vrdolyak started that brouhaha by assailing Coleman as a “funeral director for the Nazi Party,” a reference to a wake Coleman held for a youth once involved with a neo-Nazi street gang. Coleman, sitting in the spectator gallery, yelled obscenities and leaped onto the council floor.

--Vrdolyak was accused of trying to embarrass the mayor among blacks earlier this year when a tape recording of a private meeting was leaked to the press. On the tape, the mayor was heard to make disparaging remarks about the black candidate he was endorsing for a special aldermanic election.

--Vrdolyak’s attempt to win council veto power over construction contracts at O’Hare International Airport for months threatened to hold up a $450-million bond issue integral to a project that will double the size of the nation’s busiest airport. Washington and the council majority reached a compromise recently, narrowly averting construction shutdowns.

--Washington thought he had a pretty sweet deal when he arranged for the state to begin patrolling interstate highways in Chicago in exchange for allowing state lottery sales at O’Hare Airport. The swap would free extra Chicago policemen to patrol neighborhoods and the city would get its usual share from lottery sales, Washington said. But Vrdolyak’s majority criticized the mayor’s deal. One alderman said he was worried about being stopped by unfriendly troopers from downstate Illinois. The deal was eventually approved, but only after several weeks of debate.

Monkey House

With the mayor trying to make his mark and the Democratic machine’s Old Guard trying to stop him, Chicago politics have never been goofier. “Sometimes their behavior makes the monkey house at the zoo look like a British gentleman’s club,” writes Mike Royko, the city’s longtime columnist.

The tug-of-war over the city purchasing director’s job ended up in court, where so much of the battle has been waged. Spicer claimed the mayor couldn’t dismiss him without a public hearing. A Cook County judge ruled Spicer was not entitled to a hearing because he had not been confirmed by the City Council when he was fired.

The mayor claims his opponents will stop at nothing to embarrass him and create the appearance of a city in strife. Vrdolyak says the mayor oversees a “yo-yo administration.”

Washington, 63, is not the sort of politician who watches these street fights quietly from the curb. He threatened to punch the 47-year-old Vrdolyak in the mouth during one angry exchange this summer. He frequently calls Vrdolyak “buster” and says the alderman’s criticism is “about as relevant as last year’s rent receipts.”

In a recent interview, Washington summed up his feelings about Vrdolyak this way: “He’s pernicious, he’s evil, he’s a nuisance, he’s diabolical, he’s all the things that the textbooks say democracy’s designed to get around.”

Vrdolyak’s Accusations

Vrdolyak, in turn, says the mayor “ought to pay more attention to running the city.” He accuses Washington of the very things the mayor was elected to stop, namely patronage politics, opening bids behind closed doors and giving city business to his “cronies.”

Washington denies the assertions of patronage politics, points out that the one case of bids opened in private was decided by a judge in the mayor’s favor, and says that in Vrdolyak’s eyes, “all black people are my cronies.”

Despite the shouting at City Hall, Chicago still works. The trash gets collected, the streets are repaired, and giant mountains of street salt on the downtown shores of Lake Michigan indicate that the city is ready for winter ice and snow.

Contracts are still let, although by order of the mayor 30% now go to businesses run by minorities or women. And while the council warfare worries some prospective developers, downtown Chicago is in the midst of a $10-billion building boom.

“They’ll take Harold Washington to the mat and see if he blinks. And vice versa. But in the end, neither side wants to be blamed for jeopardizing the economic health of the city,” says Merrill Goozner, who covers city politics for the weekly Crain’s Chicago Business.

Extra Effort Needed

The mayor says the only effect of his battle with the council is that it takes extra effort to get things passed.

“They haven’t stopped us,” Washington says. “They’ve just been a nuisance by dragging out things that should be passed almost summarily, and by exhaustively and picayunishly trying to drag down some other serious programs.”

The maneuvering and fancy footwork makes for a good show, but it has obscured an important transformation in the city politic.

Political scientists are busily examining the remnants of the Democratic machine, which has been sputtering since Mayor Richard J. Daley died. Once a refuge for patronage, conflict of interest and other endangered species, its own existence now is threatened.

On the other side is Washington, also a Democrat, elected on promises of reform. By refusing to cut a deal with Vrdolyak for power in the city, he ended up with a fight: the mayor versus a council dominated, 29 votes to 21 votes, by the machine’s Old Guard.

Familiar Transition

What is happening at City Hall, some say, is nothing more than the transition many cities underwent years ago from one conception of government to another. “Reform means relative honesty, not taking bribes, not giving payoffs, following due process, hiring competent people instead of cronies or buddies--things that are nothing very revolutionary elsewhere but in Chicago are revolutionary,” says Terry Nichols Clark, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.

The next mayoral election is not until April, 1987, but the campaign is already diverting attention from the 1986 Illinois gubernatorial contest. Former Mayor Jane M. Byrne, defeated by Washington in the 1983 primary, has announced her candidacy and is already vigorously campaigning against the mayor. She was originally elected mayor as an anti-machine candidate but cut a deal with the machine soon afterward.

A recent public opinion poll, however, indicates that Washington would defeat Byrne if the election were held now. Another potential opponent, Richard M. Daley, the Cook County state’s attorney and son of the late mayor, who also lost in the 1983 primary, trails Washington in that poll as well.

One Democrat whose vote Washington is not counting on is Vrdolyak, who recently said he would rather support a Republican for mayor than Washington. It was an unusual statement for a Democrat, but unheard of for a Cook County Democratic chairman.

The winner of Council Wars is likely to be the person who can seize the Latino vote, because the council ward boundaries are about to be redrawn, giving more council representation to blacks and Latinos.

Wooing Latinos

Both Washington and Vrdolyak have been wooing Latinos. In October, the mayor called on Chicagoans to support a California grape boycott led by Cesar Chavez and the alderman promoted a tag day to raise money for victims of the Mexico City earthquake.

Byrne, however, may have a head start. She’s been taking Spanish language lessons since leaving office.

Now that the warring politicians are back on the front pages here, and the mayoral race is heating up, Aaron Freeman, the Chicago nightclub comedian who coined the term Council Wars, is thinking about bringing his characters--Harold Skytalker and Darth Vrdolyak--back into his act.

Says an admiring Freeman: “I’m just a poor comedian. Those guys are professional clowns.”