The Next Daley Takes the Political Challenge

“Take a small job,” William M. Daley’s father once told him. “You’ll last longer.”

His father was Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976 who did nothing small, and lasted nearly forever.

Now the son, the secretary of Commerce, no small job itself, has rejected his father’s advice yet again. Heeding Vice President Al Gore’s request in a post-midnight telephone call, he is abandoning a Cabinet post that he had coveted from the start of the Clinton administration and is parachuting into Nashville as chairman of Gore’s presidential campaign.

That is the Daley style--serving in background jobs but never far from the seat of power. It has served him well.

Gore announced Thursday that Daley will replace the ailing Tony Coelho, hospitalized this week for an inflamed colon.

At 51, the balding, buttoned-down Daley brings to the Gore campaign a name redolent of another era in the Democratic Party--that of the bare-fisted big-city political machine--and a connection to the business community that some critics say the campaign has been lacking.

As Commerce secretary, Daley has perhaps more hands-on contact with the chieftains of the American economy than any other Cabinet member. He slipped easily into that relationship with business in 1993, when he took on the seemingly impossible job of shepherding the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress.

He succeeded in the mission, and, in 1997, took the Commerce job in the second Clinton administration. In that role, he successfully guided through the House of Representatives last month another key piece of trade legislation, the measure granting China permanent normal trade status with the United States.

A lawyer in private practice for much of his career, Daley has a resume that doesn’t suggest grooming for his current life, save for his political pedigree. It was his brother, Richard M. Daley, who sought elective office and eventually took over the City Hall office their father once occupied.

But “Bill Daley is the political brains of the Daley family,” said Garry South, Gov. Gray Davis’ chief political advisor and a veteran of Illinois politics. “His brother wouldn’t be mayor, in my estimation, if Bill Daley hadn’t run all his campaigns for public office.”

Daley, a graduate of Loyola University and The John Marshall Law School, both in Chicago, has been an attorney in private practice there and, over a period of years, vice chairman, president and chief operating officer of the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago.

But his real business remains the family business: politics.

And in that business, he was his brother’s chief advisor, former campaign manager and chief fund-raiser.

While a partner in the Chicago firm of Mayer Brown & Platt, he was a “rainmaker” and lobbyist, taking advantage of his connections with fellow Chicagoan Dan Rostenkowski--then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and an eventual inmate of the federal prison system on embezzlement and fraud charges.

In 1996, he was co-chairman of the host committee for the Democratic National Convention, which met in Chicago. He took a leading role in soliciting support from the generally Republican business community there.

Now his role is to elect a president--and again, he is in a familiar position for a Daley.

His father’s political machine provided a crucial boost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election against Richard M. Nixon, drumming up enough votes under what have long been considered questionable circumstances to swing Illinois into the Kennedy column.

But politics has changed--if the Daley fascination with it has not--and this Daley has a different job.

The political organization he is taking over has been knocked into shape by Coelho. Daley’s job is to make the pieces continue to work together.

“Tony broke a lot of china. Daley will be able to take advantage of that,” said a Washington political operative with close ties to the campaign.

“Anybody who’s been around politics knows how big a job this is,” said Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago investment banker who was one of President Clinton’s closest political advisors.

But, Emanuel said of Daley, “he is uniquely capable of this. He brings all the skill sets.”

In particular, he said, Daley is “very strategic. He has a sixth sense about strategy and about people outside the Beltway.”

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Times political writer Ronald Brownstein contributed to this story.

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Profile:

William M. “Bill” Daley

* Age: 51

* Education: Bachelor’s degree from Loyola University of Chicago, 1970; law degree from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

* Career: Private practice lawyer in Chicago; vice chairman, Amalgamated Bank of Chicago, 1989, president and chief operating officer, 1990-1993; chief lobbyist for President Clinton on North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993; top advisor to brother, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley; Commerce secretary since 1997.

Family: Wife, Loretta, and three children: Lauren, Maura and William.

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Source: Associated Press