Washington, 1st Black Mayor of Chicago, Dies

Mayor Harold Washington suffered a massive, fatal heart attack while working at his City Hall desk here Wednesday, bringing an abrupt and shocking end to what many Chicagoans thought would be a long dominance of local affairs. He was 65.

Washington, the first black elected to the helm of this racially polarized city, never regained consciousness after slumping over shortly after 11 a.m. Chicago time.

His police bodyguards and then paramedics tried to resuscitate the stricken mayor, who was rushed by ambulance to nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital and put on a life support system while three teams of cardiac specialists worked for more than two hours to revive him.

But his vital signs never returned, and at 1:36 p.m. Washington was pronounced dead by Dr. John Sanders, the hospital’s chief of staff.

Late Wednesday, Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein said autopsy results showed Washington’s heart attack was brought on by a clot in the main blood vessel of the heart. Stein said the mayor’s “obesity” probably contributed to the attack. He said Washington weighed 284 pounds.

Washington, who was elected in 1983, was the first mayor to serve more than one term since Richard J. Daley, boss of the city’s powerful Democratic machine. Washington’s death could renew a scramble for power between blacks and whites, which seemed to have sputtered out with his narrow reelection last April.

After that victory, a buoyant Washington talked unabashedly about serving as mayor for 20 years--a stint rivaled only by that of Daley. His first term hobbled by racial and political infighting in a rebellious City Council, Washington managed to wrap the reins of political control in his firm hands after his reelection. In the process, he sent many former Democratic rivals scurrying for sanctuary in Chicago’s long-dormant Republican Party.

Like Daley, Washington purposely groomed no one as his successor. So his death could set off a painful struggle for control of city government reminiscent of the turbulent months and years following Daley’s passing. Then, one-time Democratic allies set upon each other with a vengeance.

Evidence of confusion surfaced within minutes of the announcement of Washington’s death, when both mayoral aides and City Council leaders acknowledged that city and state laws governing mayoral succession were ambiguous.

They agreed that Alderman David Orr, an obscure former history teacher at a Catholic college on the city’s North Side, would serve as interim mayor for a brief, albeit unspecified, period of time. Orr held the largely ceremonial post of vice mayor.

To Pick Acting Mayor

However, the officials could not agree on whether a permanent successor should be picked by the City Council from its ranks or through a special election. Nor were they sure whether such a successor should serve for two years or four. But they were sure that some time within the next several days the council would formally pick an acting mayor to take over for Orr.

David Axelrod, a political consultant to Washington’s reelection campaign last spring, said the mayor’s floor leader in the City Council, Alderman Timothy Evans, who is black, appeared to be the odds on favorite to succeed his late leader.

But Axelrod said that while Washington has paved the way for black political power in Chicago, his overwhelming popularity among blacks amounted to a cult of personality that would not be duplicated by Evans or anyone else.

Political scientist Paul Green, an expert in the Byzantine world of Chicago mayoral politics, predicted the new political void could pit black political leaders against each other and set up the reverse of what happened in 1983, when Washington won because white rivals split the white vote.

“You’re going to find a lot of black politicians without a lot of support in the black community, each trying to say they’re the natural heir to Harold Washington,” Green said. “ . . . There never was a movement. The movement was Harold Washington.”

Slumps to Side

Alton Miller, Washington’s press secretary, was with the mayor when he was stricken. Washington was “chit-chatting” about a press conference he had held earlier in the morning when suddenly “he slumped to one side,” Miller said. “I thought he was trying to pick something up off the floor he might have dropped like a pencil.”

Miller said the mayor complained recently of what he described as “viral bronchitis or congestion,” but appeared to be in generally good health. Washington had no publicized history of heart problems, although he was seriously overweight and rumored to be a closet smoker. Miller insisted that Washington quit smoking four years ago.

A divorcee with no children, Washington had been engaged for several years to schoolteacher Mary Ella Smith. She was at Washington’s side in the hospital emergency room when doctors pronounced him dead.

A native Chicagoan, Washington rode a roller coaster path to the pinnacle of power in this city known for its rough-and-tumble politics. He was the son of a precinct captain for the Democratic political machine he would one day come to oppose and conquer.

Washington earned a law degree from Northwestern University Law School. Like his father, he also began in politics as a precinct captain, then worked as a city attorney before serving 16 years as a Democratic state representative and senator.

Washington’s career appeared to hit bottom in 1972 when he pleaded “no-contest” to misdemeanor charges of failing to file his federal income tax returns for four years. Perhaps because he had paid the money he owed even while forgetting the paper work, he only served one month in jail. He once was suspended from the practice of law for five years after accepting fees from clients for work he never did.

Returned to Legislature

Despite those setbacks, voters in Washington’s overwhelmingly black South Side district continued to return him to the Legislature. Although a Democrat, Washington in 1974 broke with Daley’s powerful party machine and joined a growing faction of liberal reformers.

In 1977, shortly after Daley died, Washington made his first run for mayor, and was solidly trounced by then-Alderman Michael A. Bilandic who had been Daley’s floor leader. In 1980, he bucked the machine again, this time running as an independent for Congress and winning the first of two terms.

In 1983, he made a second try for mayor, winning an upset victory in the Democratic primary on the strength of almost monolithic support from the black community. His two white opponents--then incumbent mayor Jane M. Byrne and Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor--split the white vote.

Although the party nomination had long been tantamount to victory in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, the general election campaign erupted into a racially charged affair in which whites of both parties rallied around Republican Bernard Epton. Washington, however, won narrowly.

Although Washington was mayor, the City Council for most of his first term was controlled by a faction of anti-Washington whites led by Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak. They stymied many of the mayor’s programs and appointments. Vrdolyak and other white political leaders tried to wrest City Hall from Washington earlier this year, but voters not only returned him to office but also elected enough Washington loyalists to the new City Council to give him firm control over the 50-member body.

Even before his reelection, Washington, aided by several favorable court rulings, began inserting loyalists onto several important boards and commissions and into city patronage jobs, moving on the path to becoming this city’s next political boss.

Before official news of Washington’s death was announced, about 1,000 city employees filed out of City Hall for a prayer vigil in a plaza across the street named for Daley. At the same time, stunned and tearful friends and political allies of the mayor gathered in the lobby of the hospital while doctors worked to revive the mayor.

Meanwhile, city leaders huddled behind closed doors at City Hall trying to decipher the city’s vague succession laws.

Chicago’s other nationally prominent black politician, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, got the news on the first day of a six-day swing through the Middle East as part of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. In Kuwait, Jackson announced he was cutting the trip short and would return to Chicago today in part to prevent the unraveling of the “precious and somewhat fragile (political) coalition that needs to be sustained.”

Officials said Washington’s body will lie in state in the rotunda of City Hall from Friday through Sunday. A private funeral will be conducted on Monday.

Ernest Barefield, Washington’s chief of staff, pledged that city government would function normally despite the question mark over succession. “We will be assuring that we will not skip a beat on behalf of the people of the city of Chicago,” he said.

Staff writers Larry Green in Chicago and Gaylord Shaw in Kuwait contributed to this story.