Chicago Candidates’ Gang Ties Lead to Election Day Police Patrols

More than 1,000 police officers patrolled public housing projects and stood guard outside polling places Tuesday as Chicagoans voted in an election dominated by the campaigns of two gang-linked City Council candidates and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s attempt to forge a sweeping multiethnic coalition.

The police presence was strongest in two poor South Side wards where ex-members of the massive Gangster Disciples street gang were battling in runoff elections against two incumbents.

In the 3rd Ward, a district bisected by the Robert Taylor Homes, a looming high-rise housing project, self-avowed former gang enforcer Wallace (Gator) Bradley was seeking to unseat longtime reform candidate Dorothy Tillman. In the 16th Ward, Hal Baskin, a former Gangster Disciple and now a youth counselor, was trying to oust Shirley Coleman, a one-term alderwoman.

The bolstered police presence appeared to be working, at least through the late afternoon, said Mary Bucaro, head of the Cook County state’s attorney’s election fraud unit. “Things are going pretty smooth,” she said.

Jaqueline Nash, an election judge at a Boys’ Club near the Taylor Homes, said she had seen little evidence of the intimidation tactics that frustrated project voters in a primary last February. Police moved through the projects on “vertical patrol” to ensure that gang members did not commandeer elevators.

“We haven’t had any complaints yet,” Nash said.

Recent newspaper and television polls have portrayed the mayoral race as a certain victory for Daley, who is running against former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris, an independent, and Raymond Wardingley, a former professional clown who is expected to be this year’s Republican also-ran.

Burris, one of the black community’s most popular politicians, has been continually frustrated by Daley’s ability to win endorsements from prominent African American leaders, among them Sen. Carol Mosley-Braun (D-Ill.) and more than 100 local ministers. A recent Chicago Tribune poll gave Daley 57% of the vote to 19% for Burris.

While Daley has generally ignored Burris’ repeated charges of political coercion, the battle of words in the two council races has been intense at times.

Baskin was forced to apologize to Coleman recently after trying to make political hay from the fact that Coleman’s ex-husband was executed by the state for kidnaping, raping and murdering a hospital worker.

Claiming that the husband may have been driven to the crime because Coleman was lax in her “wifely duties,” Baskin later retreated, admitted he had made an “error in judgment.”

Bradley also scrambled to overcome a political gaffe he made when blurting out to a television interviewer that he was still a member of the Gangster Disciples. Bradley later insisted that he was a former member, but his opponent, Tillman, used the remark to insist that Bradley was a stalking horse for Larry Hoover, a gang leader who is imprisoned for murder.