Seeds Sown Over 21-year Reign Have Grown Into Big Problems - tribunedigital-chicagotribune
Seeds Sown Over 21-year Reign Have Grown Into Big Problems
December 07, 1986|By Robert Davis, a Tribune writer.
On Dec. 20, 1976, Mayor Richard J. Daley attended a Christmas breakfast with his department heads in the Bismarck Hotel, where he received a gift of two airline tickets to Ireland, inspected several ice sculptures in the Civic Center Plaza, went to the opening of a new Chicago Park District field house on the Far South Side, where he shot baskets with park Supt. Edmund Kelly and Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th), and directed his driver to take him to his personal physician`s North Michigan Avenue office because he didn`t feel well. And then he died. A massive heart attack in his doctor`s office abruptly ended the life of the 74-year-old mayor of Chicago.
In the bone-numbing December days that followed, hundreds of tributes to the man were spoken by ordinary Chicagoans as well as by politicians at all levels of government.
The theme was the same. Chicago, which had been governed by Daley for 21 years, the only mayor a generation had known, would never be the same.
In the 10 years since Daley`s death, the city has had three mayors: a Croatian with old-time Democratic organization ties; a woman who worked within the organization but never avoided a battle with anyone who opposed her; and a black former organization Democrat who has vowed to destroy, and some say has succeeded in destroying, the Democratic machine and the political patronage system that fueled it.
There has been financial chaos in the city school system, the first strike by Chicago firefighters, threats by some of the city`s major league sports franchises to leave town and record city property tax increases as Chicago`s bond rating plummeted.
Chicago has become just another big American city, not even the second largest anymore.
In retrospect, many of Chicago`s problems have resulted from seeds planted during the Daley decades.
``What trees do they plant?`` Daley asked of those who criticized his policies, and that same question could be asked of Daley himself.
School financial difficulties, city labor problems, the resulting costs and the lowered financial rating of the city can be traced, to some degree, to the policies and administration of Daley.
Ten years after Daley`s death, the City of Chicago once again must take stock of itself, analyzing the changes and looking to the future, as another mayoral election looms in February. This one promises to pit against one another all the political forces that have arisen since the time when there was only one.
The mayoral race is sure to ring with charges and claims that the city is on the brink of ruin or on the threshold of greatness.
Whether it is better or worse, Chicago is a different place than it was 10 years ago when kids thought ``Mayor Daley`` was one word.
Daley was considered the king of Chicago, but unlike other kingdoms, the line of succession was not clear.
Some of the up-and-coming aldermen, Vrdolyak and the other Eddie, Ald. Edward Burke (14th), who worked under Daley, said that although the mayor had always refused to discuss his own mortality, it was just a week before his death at a Chicago City Council Christmas party that Daley took some of them aside to tell them to stick together after he was gone. It was a statement memorable not for its message but for its utterance by a man who seemed immortal.
The night Daley died, Ald. Wilson Frost (34th), the council`s president pro tempore and, in theory, the No. 2 man in city government, sat in his City Hall office and was urged by black leaders to declare that he was now the mayor of Chicago.
But Daley functionaries, including Thomas Donovan, a top aide who handled patronage for the mayor; Frank Sullivan, Daley`s press secretary; Kenneth Sain, the deputy mayor; and Ald. Michael Bilandic, who represented Daley`s 11th Ward and served as chairman of the council`s Finance Committee, locked the heavy wooden door of the mayor`s office both symbolically and literally.
In political horse trading that Daley would have loved, Frost was given the Finance Committee chairmanship to satisfy the blacks; Ald. Casimir Laskowski (35th) was named to the new post of vice mayor to satisfy the Poles; and Bilandic was named acting mayor, satisfying the Bridgeport power bloc. Bilandic promised not to run in a special election six months later to fill the remaining two years of Daley`s term.
It was a promise not kept, and just two weeks after Daley`s death, Donovan had engineered a transparent ``Draft Bilandic`` movement that led Bilandic to victory in the June, 1977, special election.
Bilandic was Daley`s man, but he wasn`t Daley.
The late mayor`s legacy was manifold.
In 1955, Democrat Daley beat Republican Robert Merriam in the mayor`s race by a vote of 708,660 to 581,461 and, until his death, his limousine bore the license number 708 660 to indicate his winning total. After that, at four- year intervals, he defeated Republican opponents Timothy Sheehan, Benjamin Adamowski, John Waner, Richard Friedman and John Hoellen.