Chicago Mayor Controls Party as Foe Resigns

One-time political power Edward R. Vrdolyak stepped down as head of the Cook County Democratic Party on Thursday, allowing his arch foe, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, to gain an ironclad grip on local party machinery.

Washington’s choice to head the party, Cook County Board President George Dunne, was unanimously elected to replace Vrdolyak, who told reporters bitterly: “It’s going to be Harold’s party.”

Dunne pledged to unify the party during a rambling speech filled with quotes from the Bible, “Zorba the Greek” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

May Switch to GOP

Vrdolyak, who seized the party leadership post from Dunne in a 1982 coup, would neither confirm nor deny persistent reports that he plans to join the GOP and run for a county office as a Republican.

Vrdolyak, known as “Fast Eddie” in local political circles, gained national attention by leading old-guard Democrats in a stormy, acrimonious and futile three-year-long fight to prevent Washington from gaining control of Chicago’s government agencies.

“We have a long-standing difference of opinion,” Vrdolyak said Thursday of his running feud with the mayor.

Although Dunne, 74, got back the chairmanship he inherited in 1976 when Mayor and party Chairman Richard J. Daley died, the big victor Thursday was Washington.

Machine Power Dwindles

The mayor was elected on a pledge to destroy the old political machine that Daley had built and has now virtually completed that task. Vrdolyak was one of the last products of that machine still holding a position of power in Chicago and challenging the mayor’s leadership.

“Harold Washington is now in control of the Democratic Party,” Vrdolyak said after throwing in the towel in a brief speech to committeemen gathered in a stuffy hotel basement conference room across the street from City Hall.

Other politicians who came out of the Daley machine have now, for the most part, made peace with Washington.

It was a stormy five years for Vrdolyak as he ruled over a divided, racially polarized and largely impotent party. Organization-backed candidates were big losers under his leadership. Washington, a reformer and independent Democrat, beat the party in two primaries and beat Vrdolyak, who ran for mayor on a third-party ticket last April.

Can’t Mobilize Support

The party lost the Cook County sheriff’s office to the Republicans and was unable to mobilize support for Adlai E. Stevenson III’s sluggish campaign for governor last November.

Similarly, the party provided only lukewarm support for Walter F. Mondale’s presidential campaign four years ago.

Thursday’s meeting of the Cook County Democratic Party began with a few routine formalities: One committeeman sent a proxy with his son because a federal judge had refused to release him from prison for the day to attend the meeting. A second committeeman--and former city councilman--resigned in a letter sent from the federal prison cell where he is serving time for extortion.