Washington Edges by Byrne in Chicago Primary

Black incumbent Mayor Harold Washington crept to a narrow victory over white challenger Jane M. Byrne Tuesday in a racially divisive Democratic primary battle marred by massive confusion at the polls and a landslide of fraud charges.

Only minutes before midnight, Byrne spoke to disappointed followers at her campaign headquarters and conceded defeat. “The people have spoken; we didn’t make it,” she said.

Early in the voting day, some voters--possibly thousands--in Washington strongholds were handed ballots for a third party primary instead of for the Democratic race.

That sent the mayor’s forces scurrying to court seeking impoundment of the suspect ballots, extraordinary safeguards for counting others and an extension of polling hours in a handful of precincts.

Near Record Numbers

Voters went to the polls in near record numbers in unusually “warm” 30- and 40-degree temperatures. Shortly after the polling places closed, all three network-owned television stations in Chicago said their surveys of voters leaving the polling places indicated Washington would win the nomination. CBS predicted Washington would “have a comfortable margin of victory.”

But Byrne supporters discounted the polls, pointing to extraordinarily heavy turnouts in some key wards dominated by whites, and Byrne did indeed take a long early lead in the voting.

However, with 90% of the vote counted, Washington was pulling away, leading Byrne by a 52% to 48% margin. At that point, precincts remaining to be counted were largely from his strongholds.

“The universe has come into balance,” said David Axelrod, the mayor’s chief campaign strategist when Washington finally pulled ahead.

Supporters of both candidates had waited uneasily well into the night at opposing election night headquarters for some definitive word about the outcome. But when Washington pulled ahead shortly after 11 p.m., his headquarters suddenly resembled a giant revival meeting as purple numbers flashed on a giant black screen showing his narrow lead.

Break Into Song

Trumpets blared and the crowd broke out in a spiritual-like song, “I’m so glad that I punched number nine (the mayor’s ballot position), I’m so glad I punched number nine.” Then the crowd broke into a thunderous chant: “Four more years! Four more years!”

Displaying one of the advantages of incumbency, Washington’s headquarters, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, was guarded by an ad hoc squad of nearly 130 city police. The hall took on something of the atmosphere of a bazaar as supporters of black extremist Louis Farrakhan hawked the controversial Muslim minister’s albums and newspapers, while Washington loyalists passed out order blanks for a recording of the mayor’s official campaign song. The price: $3 each.

Legal tangles posed by the ballot mess slowed the tally of the ballots for hours.

Shortly before polls closed at 7 p.m., Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Schneider ordered the hand inspection of perhaps thousands of ballots voted in at least 385 of the city’s 2,900 precincts and another judge ordered nine precincts in black neighborhoods to stay open an extra two hours because they had opened two hours late in the morning.

Judges on Call

In addition, Schneider kept himself and two other judges on indefinite call in the Richard J. Daley building, named after the late Democratic boss whose administration was synonymous with election shenanigans. The judges stayed to handle additional election complaints throughout the night.

Even for a city famed for it’s rough and tumble politics, the developments were extraordinary.

A spokesman for Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan said his office had received more complaints of voting irregularities in just the first hour after polls opened than it had all day during last November’s elections. Law enforcement agencies said they were also deluged with reports of double voting, intimidation and vote buying, in addition to the ballot switching problems.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Gareth C. Leviton, an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County who has monitored eight previous mayoral elections. “There’s no way this (ballot counting) is going to be finished tonight.”

Civil rights leader and former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, a strong Washington booster, called the irregularities an attempt to “sabotage” the election and “a national embarrassment.”

“It was too widespread to be accidental,” Jackson said.

Blacks Against Whites

The turmoil underscored the bitter struggle for control of City Hall that has pitted blacks against whites ever since Washington upset Byrne, his predecessor as mayor, in the same primary four years ago. He then went on to win the general election in a fierce contest in which virtually all the city’s blacks voted for Washington and an overwhelming number of whites backed an obscure Republican candidate.

Compounding the confusion in Tuesday’s Democratic race were simultaneous Republican and third party mayoral primaries. Donald Haider, a former Byrne aide recruited by GOP leaders, was the favorite to win the Republican mayoral nomination over three contenders. Edward Vrdolyak, leader of the Democratic old guard, a city councilman and the mayor’s archenemy, was running not as a Democrat but as a third party candidate on the Solidarity Party ticket. Also on the Democratic ballot was Sheila Jones, a follower of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.

While he was not listed on Tuesday’s ballot, Cook County Assessor Thomas C. Hynes has also announced he will head another third party ticket in the April 7 general election. Washington’s primary victory is expected to force at least two of the other candidates to drop out of the race to avoid diluting white voting strength against the incumbent.

Vrdolyak, a vitriolic thorn in Washington’s side for four years, again appeared to be at the heart of Tuesday’s controversy even though the alderman was not on the Democratic ballot. Thousands of voters in more than 30 of the city’s 50 wards were handed cream colored punch cards for Vrdolyak’s Solidarity ticket when they had asked for Democratic cards, which were green. In Illinois, unlike California, voters do not have to be pre-registered with a party to vote in its primary.

‘Little Bit of Confusion’

It was unclear whether the problems were deliberate or accidental. Byrne dismissed them as “a little bit of confusion” that would not affect the outcome, but Washington said they were a “monumental foul-up.”

Lawyers for the mayor suspected foul play. They said an analysis by Washington’s staff found complaints of erroneous ballot distribution were confined to areas where the incumbent was expected to do well or at least had a good shot at competing with Byrne.

“It smells,” Judson H. Miner, the Washington administration’s top lawyer, said. “There’s a pattern. This happened predominantly in the south and west sides (overwhelmingly black, pro-Washington areas) and the lake front (where white liberals gave Washington the majority he needed to win four years ago).”

As complaints poured in, attorneys for Washington, Byrne, Vrdolyak and the city elections board--headed by old line Democrat Michael Lavelle who has frequently feuded with Washington--filed into Schneider’s jam-packed courtroom. Though cameras and tape recorders were barred from proceedings, the arguments of the lawyers were repeatedly interrupted by the rings of their portable cellular telephones and paging beepers.

‘What happened?” a stern faced and visibly perturbed Schneider demanded of Mickey Levinson, the election board counsel. Levinson said election judges were confused because they had never before had to deal with anything other than Democratic or Republican ballots.

Researcher Wendy Leopold also contributed to this article.