A New Daley Dawns, but the Chicago Machine Is Dead

The 1989 mayoral election in Chicago has generated exceptional but also predictable press attention far beyond the borders of Cook County. To some extent this reflects traditional fascination with Chicago politics, always by turns colorful and bizarre. No other major city in the country seems to combine such strong political polarization with such striking personalities.

Added attention has been drawn, however, by the presence of Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, the most powerful mayor in Chicago since World War II--perhaps the most powerful mayor ever. In our current frustration, the image and memory of the late mayor has assumed even greater dimensions. Will the past be reproduced? No. Does the new Mayor Daley have an opportunity to emulate has late father in new ways? Yes.

Milton L. Rakove, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, devoted his career to the study of Chicago politics. The titles of his two principal works represent the essence of Chicago machine politics. “Don’t Make No Waves, Don’t Back No Losers” underscores the late Mayor Richard Daley’s core beliefs that you get along by going along, that caution and picking the right political horses are important to both individual success and group cohesion. “We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent” refers to the fervent complaint of a party hack when confronted by a potential political campaign volunteer not recommended by a known ally in the political wars, thus underlining the sharp distinction between reliable organization insiders and all those on the outside.

These two statements might well be referred to as Daley’s Law and the Ward Heeler’s Corollary.

The most important lesson to remember while trying to understand the current Daley sweep in last Tuesday’s Chicago mayoral election is that the Democratic political machine is dead, but still lives for this particular candidate. The first and most consequential point here is that the old Chicago Democratic Party machine is really gone in structural terms; the elements that continue to live are largely emotional and psychological.

Blacks now, in contrast to Richard J. Daley’s time, are active, influential, aggressive and politically consequential. They are a major force in the Democratic Party, in contrast to the state of the city during the heyday of the late mayor. The real challenge is not Jesse Jackson, but a much altered collective state of mind among black political activists and representatives. The late Mayor Harold Washington was the primary beneficiary of this changed state of mind, but he as much reflected as influenced that sentiment.

Here the main lesson gives pause. The late Mayor Daley was a great builder of consensus but on the black-white racial divide he was curiously ineffective.

Nothing underscores the structural death of the machine more than the circumstances just before the late mayor’s own demise. In the 1976 presidential election, Jimmy Carter took Cook County by a wider margin than John F. Kennedy had in the 1960 race against Richard M. Nixon. Reportedly on the basis of this evidence, Daley called Carter and told him that the election was in the bag. In fact, Carter lost Illinois but won the presidential election against Gerald Ford, the first time the state had gone against the winner since 1916. Daley was proud but stoic in announcing the sad news. He died not long thereafter. Carter’s fine showing, thanks to the efforts of the lingering Cook County Democratic Party machine, could not alter the reality that migration had simply made the suburbs of Chicago more important, the city itself less.

Yet Daley’s son has been elected mayor by a striking majority, reflecting the exceptionally powerful reputation of the father. The late mayor was the man who got things done, the one who more than any other made Chicago “the city that works” in the 1950s and through much of the 1960s. His son’s triumph represents some nostalgia but also a hard-nosed desire to return to an era of seemingly more effective management. The black-white divide has become so dominant in Chicago that people long for effective management separate from the racial gulf.

The second most important lesson of the election, hidden by the poor showing of Republican candidate Edward R. Vrdolyak (who won only 4% of the vote; Daley got 56%, independent Timothy C. Evans 40%), is that the white blue-collar sector remains fragile for the Democratic Party. Vrdolyak bolted the Democrats primarily because he saw a Republican urban base in opposing black Mayor Harold Washington.

Washington’s sudden death effectively frustrated Vrdolyak but does not undercut his basic calculation. The comparative growth in influence of blacks, and for that matter other organized liberal interests making up the Democratic Party--in Chicago and elsewhere in the nation--continues to provide a challenge to Democrats who are interested in winning elections.

Ronald Reagan’s extraordinary appeal to blue-collar whites in 1980 and 1984, and Michael S. Dukakis’ striking lack of appeal to them in 1988, are perhaps the most important factor in explaining why the Republicans have been able to occupy the White House for so many years. Vrdolyak was caught between a white-black polarization that drove white voters to Daley and blacks to candidate Evans, the de facto heir to Washington.

Herein lies the most important challenge to the new Mayor Daley. His father was rigid on race, reflected most importantly in his antagonistic reaction to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visits to Chicago in the 1960s.

The first Mayor Daley, however, was also to some extent supple in his appreciation of the currents of change in the Democratic Party. In 1960 he moved decisively to endorse Sen. John F. Kennedy, reflecting appreciation of emerging forces in his party. In the spring of 1968, he quite surprisingly refrained from endorsing Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, keeping a door open to another Sen. Kennedy.

After Robert F. Kennedy was killed, Daley, recognizing the turbulent nature of the political atmosphere, made an effort to involve the last Kennedy brother in the campaign. He could count votes and also sense more subtle tones; he realized that times were shifting.

Race retains a cutting edge in the Democratic Party, an uneasy coalition of middle and lower-income whites plus blacks and other minorities.

The Democratic Party has endured since the earliest days of the Republic, thanks to a striking capacity to adjust. Arguably, the Democrats have lost the White House most of the time since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt because too often in recent years they have failed to adapt to changing times.

Richard M. Daley, heir to a significant legacy, mayor of a major city, struggling inevitably to establish his own identity, has a good opportunity to explore fresh approaches to racial and ethnic integration within his very durable political party. He has a special incentive; if he does not do so, the racial divisions in his own City Council will grind him down and out.