Chicago Mayoral Race Rally Turns Into Brawl

Political discourse in Chicago often has had the flavor of a street fight.

But this week, Chicago viewers of television news have been greeted with the spectacle of a real brawl between supporters of two candidates for mayor.

The melee, and the charges of “dirty tricks” and intimidation that have erupted since, has enlivened a mayoral campaign that has, by Chicago standards, been in something of a slump.

The brawl broke out Thursday night at a rally for Republican candidate Edward R. Vrdolyak in a hall in northwest Chicago.

Larry Horist, Vrdolyak’s press secretary, said that as the candidate began to speak, one of a small group of hecklers came toward the podium, made a thumbs down sign and shouted an obscenity.

After that, Horist said, “things just sort of burst on the scene and there were tables and bodies and kids and women flying all over the place.”

Vrdolyak blamed Democratic candidate Richard M. Daley, the Cook County state’s attorney, for the disruption. Then, on Friday, Vrdolyak skipped a radio forum with independent candidate Timothy Evans to hold a press conference at which he announced that he will seek a federal investigation into Daley’s campaign tactics.

His campaign spokesman said telephoned death threats that Vrdolyak received Thursday night after the brawl partially accounted for the change in his schedule.

“We’re talking about the top law enforcement guy in Cook County basically scheduling a plan of dirty tricks,” Horist said. “It has to be looked at in a larger context than just a fistfight.”

Daley, who campaigned Friday night with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), denied that he had anything to do with the hecklers and suggested that Vrdolyak had the most to gain from the controversy. “He needs the publicity,” Daley told reporters. “Why would I want to disrupt his campaign? I’m going to win this election.”

Vrdolyak, a controversial former alderman who ran for mayor in 1987, won the Republican primary last month as a write-in candidate only six days after entering the race. But with the general election April 4, he continues to lag far behind Daley and Evans in the polls.

The Republican defended himself Friday from accusations that he staged the brawl to get on the news.

“If anyone can find any shred of evidence directly or indirectly connecting anyone in my campaign with the incident, I would respectfully submit to you that I would not want to run for this office,” he told reporters.

He said witnesses recognized several of the hecklers as being members of Daley’s campaign and said an organizer of the brawl is an assistant state’s attorney in Daley’s office. He said also that the “getaway car” driven by the hecklers belonged to an alderman who supports Daley.

Horist said the campaign had been told that Daley’s brother, William, a Daley campaign official, had instructed Democratic committeemen to picket Vrdolyak rallies and heckle him. The Daley campaign denied the accusation.