Elections Give Chicago Mayor Control of Council

Mayor Harold Washington, bedeviled for the first three years of his term by a City Council majority at war with him, wrested political control of City Hall from his rivals Tuesday night with victories in two ward runoff elections.

“This is a message to the machine--the old way of doing business is clearly not acceptable,” Washington said. “We will try to work with this new majority to bring sanity to the City Council.”

The victories of Washington-backed candidates in the 15th and 26th wards erased Edward R. Vrdolyak’s majority voting block in the Council. Vrdolyak conceded even before his candidates did.

“We have always maintained that we were the loyal opposition and we remain so,” the Cook County Democratic Party chairman said in a statement. “We stand ready to work with him (Mayor Washington) and his Council supporters and move the city ahead, but reserve the right to disagree with the mayor when he is wrong.”

Heavily Monitored

It was the most heavily monitored election in Chicago history, and election officials said allegations of voting irregularities were relatively rare.

In the closest contest, the predominately Latino 26th Ward, Luis Gutierrez, a city worker backed by the mayor, defeated Manuel Torres, the candidate of Vrdolyak and the regular Democratic Party.

“Thirty years of neglect by the regular Democratic Party machine have ended,” Gutierrez told cheering supporters. “Today we begin to reconstruct the 26th Ward and the city as we have never known it before.”

Marlene C. Carter, Washington’s candidate in the predominately black 15th Ward, won easily. Carter, a university secretary, is black. Her opponent, Frank Brady, an alderman since 1979, is white.

Mayor Washington’s candidates needed victory in both the 26th Ward and the 15th Ward to create a 25-25 split on the City Council--and hand the mayor the tie-breaking vote. Many of the mayor’s appointees and programs have been delayed or blocked by Vrdolyak and his majority bloc aldermen.

The dispute between Washington, the city’s first black mayor, and Vrdolyak, the leader of what remains of the Democratic machine’s old guard in Chicago, has resulted in three tumultuous years of “Council Wars” for Chicago. The first battle occurred shortly after Washington’s election in 1983, when Vrdolyak grabbed control of the Council. The Council majority and Washington have fought dozens of battles since then, some big and some small.

Gutierrez, Washington’s candidate, appeared to have won the March 18 election by 20 votes over Torres, Vrdolyak’s candidate. But in a city known for its unusual politics, an unusual thing happened. Ten ballots for Jim Blasinski, a school crossing guard who had run as a certified write-in candidate, were found in an elections board warehouse.

sh Official Ballot Tally

On April 17, the elections board decided to include the ballots in the official tally. That gave Blasinski only 21 votes in all--but enough to deny Gutierrez the 50%-plus-1-vote total he needed to win. A runoff election was scheduled.

In an attempt to prevent the chaos that followed last month’s special aldermanic election in the 26th Ward, Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley and U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas stationed more than 200 assistant prosecutors and federal marshals in polling places and on the streets.

Last month’s special elections were staged after a judge ordered that seven City Council districts then controlled by machine aldermen be redrawn to include more minority representation.

At the time, 29 council seats were held by aldermen led by Vrdolyak and the remaining 21 were in Washington’s political camp. In the election, Washington-backed candidates picked up two seats, Vrdolyak retained three seats and the other two ended up in Tuesday’s runoff.