Chicago Mayor Wins Backing to Defeat Machine

Mayor Harold Washington began wresting control of government from the remnants of the city’s once-monolithic Democratic machine Friday in what may become the decisive battle after three years of political warfare.

With a dramatic show of newly gained power, Washington, often casting the decisive vote himself, won scores of City Council ballots to place 36 of his appointees on a broad variety of governmental boards and commissions that were once the Chicago machine’s private preserve.

“I believe this is just the start of things to come,” said Timothy Evans, the mayor’s City Council floor leader.

Old guard machine Democrats had blocked confirmation of the mayor’s appointments for up to 32 months. They plan a court challenge of Friday’s council actions, after failing to stop them in a series of parliamentary votes.

Objects to Word ‘Boss’

“If the courts uphold today’s votes, Washington’s got it all,” said Basil Talbott Jr., veteran political editor for the Chicago Sun-Times. “Washington doesn’t like the word ‘boss,’ but he’s certainly in a command position if he’s upheld.”

Washington, meanwhile, called the machine attempts to block his appointments “a crass display in the arrogance of power and the inability to mature and grow with change. . . .”

Friday marked the first time since his 1983 election as Chicago’s first black mayor that Washington was able to prevail. Until two weeks ago, the City Council was dominated by hostile, white machine Democrats led by party boss Edward R. Vrdolyak. Bitter confrontations between Washington and the machine majority resulted in Chicago’s celebrated “council wars.” The Wall Street Journal called the city’s government “Beirut by the Lake.”

Vital to Holding Power

Control of the boards and commissions is vital to holding power in Chicago because they dispense thousands of jobs, award contracts worth tens of millions of dollars and have budgets totaling hundreds of millions. Among the most important are the patronage-rich Chicago Park District, the Chicago Board of Education and the politically important Chicago Transit Authority, which operates all city trains and buses.

Special elections in seven City Council districts in recent weeks set the stage for Washington’s success Friday. Those elections, ordered by a federal court to give blacks and Latinos greater representation on the council, increased Washington’s council supporters from 21 to 25 and decreased Vrdolyak’s backers from 29 to 25.

With the council evenly divided, Washington contends he has the right under state law to cast the tie-breaking vote, which he did several times Friday despite protests by machine Democrats.

Washington Challenged

Washington was also challenged when he ruled that a simple majority vote could free appointments that had been held hostage in committees. More than 60 of the mayor’s appointments to boards and commissions had been trapped in committees by machine Democrats who claimed they could be freed only with a two-thirds vote.

And the old guard said that Washington was wrong when he cast a tie-breaking vote upholding earlier rulings he himself had made. Council Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke, a lawyer who spoke for machine Democrats on Friday, said after the meeting that “the only way to resolve (these disputes) is to ask a court.”

Although Chicago’s City Council sessions are often said to resemble a preschool class at recess, Friday’s meeting was uncharacteristically orderly. Vrdolyak, usually a firebrand when confronting Washington, sat silently through the more than two hours of debate and repetitious parliamentary votes.

The only heated exchange came when Burke accused Evans, the mayor’s floor leader, of telling the council “how to make horse manure taste like ice cream,” and Evans responded:

“He’s the one who knows how it tastes. I haven’t any idea.”

“The score is one to one,” said Washington, bringing the brief exchange to an abrupt end.