Segregated City Inflamed : Chicago Election Hinges on Race, Desire for Spoils

Politics in the nation’s third largest city may often seem crass and chaotic to outsiders, but the current election battle between incumbent Mayor Harold Washington and a string of prominent challengers is simple.

Just ask white precinct captain Elmer Filipini of the Northwest Side’s 30th Ward Democratic Organization:

“If Washington wins, in four years they’ll be 100,000 or more whites moving out of the city of Chicago. . . . In my organization and any white organization, he gave us nothing. When the whites were in, they at least gave the coloreds something. Maybe not as much as the whites, but something. Now, when you go down to City Hall, it’s all black.”

Or ask R. Eugene Pincham, a well-known black state appeals court judge:

”. . . Any man south of Madison Street (a major black stronghold) . . . who doesn’t vote for Harold Washington ought to be hung.”

As this highly segregated city prepares for its mayoral primary Tuesday, racial passions are inflamed, just as they were in 1983, when Washington became the city’s first black mayor after a bitter and raucous election fight.

But it may be opportunism as much as racism that is fueling the divisions here, as politicians still scramble to fill the leadership void created by the death a decade ago of the powerful mayor and political boss, Richard J. Daley.

Washington’s first term was hobbled by a bitter power struggle with his City Council opponents, but many whites fear that a second Washington victory would not only cement his grip on power but would accelerate a shift to black communities of the jobs and favors traditionally showered on white communities. Many blacks, meanwhile, think just such a development is long overdue.

Tuesday, in round one, Washington will square off in the Democratic mayoral primary against former Mayor Jane M. Byrne, the woman he ousted in the same primary four years ago when whites split their votes between two white candidates.

Mayor Has Edge

If Washington wins the 1987 primary--late polls suggest that he has a slight edge--he could then face as many as three major white candidates in the April 7 general election. The three--Cook County Democratic Chairman Edward R. Vrdolyak, County Assessor Thomas Hynes and former Byrne Administration finance czar Donald Haider--are all lifelong Democrats running under different labels. Most strategists think that, despite their deep disdain for one another, they would cut a deal in which two would drop out to avoid repeating what they view as a key mistake of 1983--diluting white voting strength. If Byrne wins the primary, however, all would stay in the race, to make it a four-way fight among white candidates.

The 1983 campaign shocked the nation as blacks unabashedly proclaimed, “It’s our turn,” and whites, jolted by Washington’s upset victory in the primary, rallied behind the “Before it’s too late” slogan adopted by the last-ditch campaign of an obscure Republican named Bernard Epton.

This year, the candidates have devoted more time to alleged scandals, bad management and bashing one another’s records and reputations--the normal stuff of politics. Byrne and Washington accuse each other of doing unacceptable jobs of fighting crime and managing city money. Byrne complains that Washington has publicly compared her to Hitler and right-wing ex-Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, and Washington says Byrne’s Administration juggled crime statistics and routinely funneled lucrative city contracts to her contributors.

Although the racial rhetoric may be somewhat muffled, the racial currents keep bubbling to the surface in this campaign, in which virtually all black voters are expected to support Washington and most whites will back white candidates. Black radio stations, making little pretense of objectivity, repeatedly exhort listeners to support Washington. Last weekend, two busloads of civil rights activists arrived in the city from the Deep South in what was described as a reverse 1960s-style freedom ride but was little more than a thinly veiled Washington vote-getting gimmick in the black community.

Black’s Threats to Blacks

Byrne has seized on such incidents, as well Judge Pincham’s public threat to blacks who vote against Washington and his comment that “those of us who might be inclined to be traitors--there are some who have slave mentalities . . . we know who you are . . . .”

Byrne’s latest television commercials depict Chicago’s stately skyline being ripped in two by a lightning bolt. The screen then fades to an image of Washington.

In recent years, blacks have successfully eased their way into control of many of the nation’s urban centers, but racial divisions still dominate the political climate here. The standoff results, in part, from a near even split between the numbers of black and white Chicago voters, while blacks easily predominate in Detroit, Newark, Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia and many other cities where they have taken control. One exception is Los Angeles, which has a black mayor even though blacks are in the minority.

More than two decades after the civil rights movement erupted across the nation, Chicago remains a city divided, with hardly a neighborhood that could be called truly integrated. “To walk in Chicago at this time is to see across the borders, to see how much the people who make up this great community still live very, very separate lives,” said John McDermott, head of a citizens’ watchdog group that has reprimanded candidates for injecting race into the campaign.

Pride Seen as Arrogance

” . . . The white community does not understand the enthusiasm, the affirmation, the pride surging through black Chicago over Chicago’s first black mayor. Many see it as a form of arrogance and threat. The black community does not seem to understand that all the white opponents and all the white opposition to Harold Washington are not based on hate,” he said.

As significant as the black-white statistical standoff is the struggle for control of a bureaucracy that disburses rich perks. Anti-Washington forces “are not motivated by racism, they’re motivated by greed,” charged David Axelrod, the mayor’s chief campaign strategist, who is white. “This is not a debate over good government issues, it’s a fight for political survival. For (the opponents), it means jobs and contracts and clout.”

Precinct captain Filipini’s perception notwithstanding, Washington has not turned City Hall over to black colleagues wholesale. In fact, many black activists complain that he has done too little to shift patronage to his supporters.

Although it may be getting more attention of late, exploiting race and ethnic origin is nothing new to Chicago politics. This is a city of close-knit ethnic neighborhoods, and the Democratic machine built by Daley and his predecessors essentially was an alliance of politicians rooted in those local groups. Poles grew up learning to vote for Poles, Italians for Italians and Jews for Jews.

Blacks Poorly Rewarded

Ethnically-based ward organizations were rewarded for delivering machine votes with jobs, parks, roads and other public works projects. The greater the vote, the greater the benefit. Blacks, too, shared in the largess, but never to the extent that their Democratic loyalty would have seemed to justify. Since the days of the New Deal, black wards routinely turned in the most reliable and lopsided vote totals for machine candidates, yet they received inferior city services and patronage handouts.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s kindled a growing sense among many Chicago blacks that they were being shortchanged and fostered the growth of a more independent group of black Democrats, among them Washington. But it took the political infighting among white leaders after Daley’s death to give blacks their opening into City Hall.

“The organization just isn’t what it used to be,” De Paul University political science professor Larry Bennett explained. “People like Vrdolyak (the leader of anti-Washington forces in the City Council) are still desperately trying to hold the machine together, and the only hook they have is to appeal to whites who harken back to the good old days of Daley.”

Both Washington and Byrne understand the demographic realities and have tailored their campaigns accordingly. Washington spent considerable effort late last year trying to goad as many white candidates into the race as possible, because a split white vote would enable him to win with monolithic black support. An incredible 99% of black voters backed him in the 1983 general election against Epton, who picked up about 81% of the white vote.

Both Wooing Latinos

So predictable are the voting patterns that Byrne and Washington have spent most of their resources wooing voters in only a handful of wards, primarily those filled with Latinos or affluent white liberals disillusioned by what many see as the mediocre accomplishments and stubborn temperaments of both candidates.

But, even in the swing wards, the Pincham comment about hanging blacks who oppose Washington and the reaction to it have come to dominate the campaign. The remark, made before a meeting of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s Chicago-based Operation PUSH, went virtually ignored until resurrected several days later by Byrne, who featured it in her television ads.

McDermott’s oversight group censured both Byrne and Washington over the flap, but she refused to stop running her commercials and Washington dawdled for a week before issuing a half-hearted repudiation of Pincham. “I am sorry because it gives the real polarizers of the city an excuse to do their worst,” the mayor said, referring to the Byrne ad campaign.

Ed Marciniak, a Loyola University urban affairs specialist who once headed the city’s human relations commission, said the Pincham incident illustrates a new, ominous tactic employed by both camps in the mayoral fight. “What we have become in the 1980s is not racists but racial exploiters,” Marciniak said. “We manipulate race to serve political ends.”

McDermott agreed: “The new way to exploit race is to be a victim. Nobody is a bigot anymore. They’re all victims.”