Sawyer Wins Wild Fight to Be Chicago Mayor

Eugene Sawyer stayed out all night when he was crowned the 43rd mayor of Chicago but the wild time that carried into the wee hours of the morning Wednesday was anything but a party.

A marathon City Council session punctuated by jeers from raucous demonstrators and accusations of racism and back-room deals from aldermen finally ground to a close at 4:01 a.m. with a 29-19 vote selecting Sawyer over Alderman Timothy Evans to replace the late Mayor Harold Washington.

Sawyer, 54, was sworn in minutes later and immediately pledged to continue the programs of Washington, the city’s first black mayor, who died of a heart attack last week.

Oath of Office Administered

“Let me end all speculation now,” the soft-spoken Sawyer told the council after City Clerk Walter Kozubowski administered the oath of office. “The reform movement begun by Harold Washington shall remain intact and go forward . . . there shall be no cronyism or favoritism.”

But that did little to heal a growing rift in the black community caused by his election. Nor did it calm skeptics who charged that the new mayor, though black and a Washington ally, would be a pawn of the same white aldermen who long had hobbled Washington’s progressive political agenda.

Charging that Sawyer had cut a deal with whites for their support, many of the thousands of pro-Evans demonstrators who marched on City Hall on Wednesday scornfully waved dollar bills as they shouted: “How much, Sawyer, how much?”

Only six of the council’s 18 black members voted for Sawyer, whereas he won the backing of all but five of 28 whites. Four Latino aldermen backed Evans. Two of the council’s 50 members did not vote.

Adding to his image problems, Sawyer was greeted on his first day on the job with allegations that he had used his muscle to place at least 16 different relatives and political operatives on city or other public payrolls. The report, in the Chicago Sun-Times, asserted that the combined salaries of Sawyer associates cost taxpayers more than $542,000 a year.

“If you can’t help your family, who can you help?” the newspaper quoted Sawyer’s 76-year-old mother, Bernice, as saying.

Sawyer’s selection is viewed here as only the opening round in a bitter and protracted campaign for the next citywide mayoral vote, scheduled for 16 months from now. Within minutes of his council defeat, Evans, another black who claimed to be Washington’s heir apparent, did all but formally declare his candidacy for 1989.

“Dreams deferred are not any less precious,” Evans said when asked what message he would like to convey to supporters. “ . . . Don’t rest too long. There’s plenty of work to do along the way. I’ll be calling on you, perhaps soon, for similar quests.”

Evans also refused to rule out a court challenge to the council vote, which he maintained had been illegally rushed around council rules requiring committee consideration. Evans had tried to put off Wednesday’s vote, sensing that any delay would help to erode Sawyer’s support.

Racial and ethnic divisions have long been pivotal in politics here, and whites, scrambling to regain the electoral dominance they lost in recent years, may have found some encouragement in the succession battle. Already, Cook County Sheriff James O’Grady, a white Republican, has said he is seriously considering a 1989 run for mayor.

That could pit him in a sharp GOP primary battle--rare for a party that had been long dormant inside Chicago--against former Democratic Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, for years the ringleader of council opposition to Washington. Vrdolyak switched party affiliations after losing to Washington when the late mayor won reelection to a second term last April.

And there is a chance that the election battles could be accelerated. A state senator from Chicago on Wednesday said he planned to press the Legislature to authorize a special mayoral election as early as March.

Locally, the council vote for Sawyer was seen as a slap in the face for Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, who never formally endorsed a mayoral candidate but clearly was backing Evans. After Washington’s funeral Monday, Jackson backed a call from pro-Evans forces to march on City Hall to try to block Sawyer’s election. However, some analysts suggested that the maneuvering could enhance Jackson’s stature in his presidential campaign by reinforcing an image he has cultivated as a champion of the underdog.

Despite questions about his commitment to Washington’s legacy, Sawyer was the first Democratic ward boss in the city to endorse Washington’s first successful bid for the mayor’s office in 1983. By contrast, Evans, like Sawyer a ward boss with roots in the old white-run Democratic machine, endorsed one of Washington’s two white opponents in the Democratic primary that year, then-Mayor Jane M. Byrne.

But Evans grew closer to Washington over the years and became his floor leader in the council. Sawyer also stayed close to the black mayor but retained ties to his white friends on the council as well.

Born in Greensboro, Ala., Sawyer has been taking home city paychecks since he was a teen-ager, when an uncle in Chicago arranged a summer job for him on a city garbage crew. After college he became a Water Department chemist, quickly rising through the patronage ranks until, in 1969, he took control of the Democratic organization in his middle-class ward on the city’s South Side.

Two years later, Sawyer was elected to the City Council. He had been the longest-serving black alderman until he resigned from the council Wednesday upon his selection as acting mayor.

On the council, Sawyer earned a reputation as a pleasant hard-worker with a low-key personality. Divorced and the father of three children, Sawyer was also quite loyal to his relatives. The Sun-Times said the Chicago Transit Authority has carried as many as eight Sawyer relatives and associates on its payroll at a time.

Brother Earns $70,200

One brother, Ernest Sawyer, earns $70,200 annually as the transportation agency’s planning chief. Another brother, Charles Sawyer, had been the city’s $65,000-a-year acting revenue director but was fired by Washington last year after allegedly accepting $2,500 in cash payoffs from a government mole in an FBI corruption probe. However, Charles Sawyer, who said he passed the money to Eugene Sawyer’s reelection committee, was not indicted.

Though Sawyer asserted all day Tuesday that he had enough backing to win, he wavered for several hours over whether to press for a council vote. He acknowledged Wednesday that part of the reason for the delay was that he was uneasy about being elected with such a lopsided vote from whites and was hoping to drum up more black support.