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The second of a two-part article by MILTON RAKOVl

SPECIAL FEATURE

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This article is the fifth in Illinois Issues' special series covering the political life of Mayor Daley and the effects of his dynasty. These reports were first presented at a conference entitled "Richard J. Daley's Chicago," sponsored by the History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the Chicago Historical Society on October 11-14, 1977. With grant assistance from the Illinois Humanities Council, Dr. Melvin G. Holli, conference director, assembled forty-odd journalists, academics, city officials and neighborhood leaders to present their views on the late mayor and his city. This month, Milton Rakove concludes his two-part article analyzing Mayor Daley as a politician and public official. Professors Holli and Peter d'A. Jones are editing the proceedings of the conference for publication in book form.

Balancing competing interests
with jobs, services and urban pride

 

 

Daley's secret
was votes and pros

DESPITE the importance of Mayor Richard J. Daley's constant efforts to be informed, to stay abreast of current developments, he also knew that good political leadership requires more than the accumulation of information. The mark of first-rate political leadership is the ability to act on information after having ascertained the will of the electorate with regard to the problems of the community.

How could the will of the community be ascertained? Through the formal structure of the political process in elections. "You can't win if you're not on the ticket," is an old maxim in City Hall in Chicago. And the corollary is, "You can't get things done if you haven't been elected to public office."

How does a political party win an election? By getting more votes than the opponents for those offices. So, for professional politicians (and Daley was a consummate one), the primary purpose of politics is to get more votes than the other side on election day. Daley had a stock answer to why any candidate lost: "He didn't get enough votes!"

How could those votes be won?

For Daley there was only one answer, simple in concept and total in execution. Put together a ticket that would reflect and represent the basic aspirations and wants of the varied constituencies in the electorate, turn the candidates loose on the electorate to appeal to their own constituencies and crank up his political machine to get the vote out.

For Daley, the primary consideration in constructing a ticket was not finding the best man for the job, or one who would appeal to the newspapers or even to the electorate at large, or even one who would necessarily win, but rather one who could best strengthen the entire ticket. The key to making the choicest for the slate was Daley's recognition of the fragmented structure of the community, the selfish drives of the constituent elements of the electorate and the emotional attachments of those disparate elements to an appeal from one of their own.

Once the ticket was constructed, Daley did not consider it his responsibility to conduct anyone's campaign. His job was to orchestrate the overall strategy and, more important, as party chairman, to gear up the political machine to deliver the maximum number of votes. Candidates were pretty much left on their own to organize their campaigns, raise money, devise programs and appeal to their personal

MILTON RAKOVE
Author of the book Don't Make No Waves . . . Don't Back No Losers, Rakove is professor of political science at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus.

18/ May 1978/ Illinois Issues


constituecies as their contribution to the overall effort. That electoral strategy reflective of Daley's basic philosophy of politics and government — that the whole was more important than the constituent parts and that every cog in machine should assume responsibility for his piece of the action. Daley knew that there was some truth in the maxim that "in union there is strength," but he also knew that centralizing authority while delegating responsibility and demanding accountability was the key to effective and efficient politics and government.

Dalley's primary role in the political business of winning elections was to organize his political machine and galvanize it into action for the crucial election day after he had constructed a ticket representative of the varied interests of the community. His task was to get people to do the essential, but hard work of politics — contacting voters and getting them out.

How could you get people to labor in the precincts — to undertake and persevere in the drudgery of climbing stairs, ringing doorbells, distributing literature, selling tickets, attending rallies, putting up signs, listening to complaints and performing the myriad, thankless tasks of precinct work?

"You can tell them that the polling place is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or to 9 p.m. on registration day," said state Rep. Marco Domico, a veteran precinct captain in Alderman Vito Marzullo's 25th ward organization. "But they couldn't care less. Especially, if you have registration day in the winter time. You know a man comes home at 5 or 6 o'clock, and once he takes his shoes off, forget it, he's not going to leave the house. And once a woman, after 3 or 4 o'clock, and the children come home and she has to start cooking and everything and she has to leave the house, forget it! It's up to the precinct captains to work all day long. And you actually have to beg them to register. They're doing you a favor. You're not doing them a favor. The people that don't register, they're the first ones to complain, to scream and holler, 'What's going on?' Those are the people that are doing all the complaining after the election is over. The people that do not vote. They're the biggest complainers."

The primary purpose of politics is to get more votes than the other side. Daley had a stock answer to why any candidate lost: "He didn't get enough votes!'

To deal with such an electorate, many of whom are disinterested or apathetic, Daley did not believe that you could recruit workers by appealing to their better nature, moral virtues or. civic pride. They had to be recruited, sustained and disciplined by offering them some of the rewards of politics — jobs, status in the community and membership in a functioning, viable organization. And they had to be provided with access to and contact with those organs of power which affected the lives of their constituents and with the means to ameliorate or resolve their problems. According to Alderman Marzullo, "A precinct captain has gotta be a community leader, gotta have something on the ball to deal with the general public. A precinct captain represents 400 or 500 votes in a precinct. Not everyone in the ward knows the alderman personally. But, through the precinct captain, they get acquainted with the alderman."

Another top precinct captain in Alderman Marzullo's ward organization is Madison Brown, deputy commissioner of streets and sanitation. He said, "You're available to the people. You provide service to the people. You're there to advise people. Many times they are looking for a direction, where to go to get something done. They don't want you to do it. They just want to know where to go. How to go about getting it done."

The next link in the chain is the committeeman. According to Marzullo, "I take care of my people like I take care of my own family. Anything that comes up, from street cleaner to psychiatrist. They call me for everything under the sun. If I can help them, I will; if I can't, I tell them, 'I can't help you.'"

Thus the voters could be served by personal contact with a network of precinct captains, aldermen, committeemen, ward secretaries and bureaucrats. A functioning, responsive political system could make the massive, mysterious bureaucracies of government work for the voters. According to Alderman Marzullo's ward secretary, John Domagala, "After being in this business for as many years as I have, I've learned the department heads. To visit the sewer department you have to go to [Edward] Quigley or his subordinates. I carry a little black book that has all the various department heads, plus rodent control and all that."

What are the results of this chain of contact, inquiry and service? "You can take all your news media and all the do-gooders in town and move them into my 25th ward," said Marzullo, "and you know what would happen? On election day, we'd beat you 15 to one."

It was out of this environment and this reality that Daley had come, with lessons he never forgot. Daley was a precinct captain and a ward committeeman who became chairman of the party organization and mayor of Chicago. Daley never left the precinct and its voters, and their needs and aspirations. He understood the relationship between the community, the political system and the governmental system, not in a contrived theoretical model, but at its basic, elemental level. He was cognizant of the harsh reality of precinct level politics and of human needs in the neighborhoods; suspicious of theoretical, intellectual programs for dealing with political realities; contemptuous of liberals, do-gooders and media representatives; and proud of his political organization and its works.

Daley knew that precinct workers could only be kept at their tasks if they were compensated by jobs which provided them with a livelihood. Those jobs could only be provided by government. That government had to be controlled to dispense the jobs. And control of government could only be gained by winning elections. So Daley worked out a practical model of community-political-governmental relationships. He utilized his political organization to pacify community needs on an individual and group basis by using it as the link to government which would then serve those needs. He also used government as an agency for providing for the needs of the political organization in the form of jobs, contacts and influence. And that enabled him to mobilize the electoral power of the community to keep him and his organization in control of the government so that his political organization's

May 1978 / Illinois Issues/19


interests could be cared for, order and stability could be maintained in the city and the general welfare of the community, as he conceived it, could be furthered.

But Daley was more than a precinct captain, a ward committeman and chairman of the party. He was also the mayor of Chicago. He loved his neighborhood and political organization, but he loved his city more. "He loved being mayor of Chicago more than anything else in the world," said Alderman Edward Vrdolyak. "That was his life. It wasn't his job. It was his life." Daley never wanted anything more for himself than to be mayor of Chicago, and he believed his city was the greatest community on the face of the globe.

As mayor of Chicago, it was his obligation and responsibility to look out for the welfare of his city, to make it a viable, thriving community. "Daley loves this city like you love your wife and kids," a Republican politician once told Saturday Evening Post writer Milton Viorst. "He considers Chicago his city. The sidewalks are his living room. The parks are his back yard. He just doesn't want anyone to screw it up."

Daley's pride in and ambitions for his city were the determining driving force behind his career as mayor of Chicago. He was an Irishman, a Catholic, a Bridgeport neighborhood boy, a staunch family man and a lifelong Democrat, and he gave his loyalty to all of those constituencies. But they were all subordinate, when the chips were down, to his role as mayor of Chicago. In this, he was different from most of his colleagues in the city bureaucracy and the political organization for whom government service was a way to make a living, and politics was a subordinate means to other ends. As Alderman Tom Keane, the second most powerful man in Chicago's governmental and political systems, once remarked on the difference between himself and Daley, "Daley wanted power, and I wanted money, and we both got what we wanted." And two of Daley's brightest, most able young cohorts, Alderman Vrdolyak and Alderman Edward Burke, both categorized their roles in life and their public careers differently than Daley did. "So, you're an alderman, a committeeman, and a lawyer," I once said to Vrdolyak in an interview. "No," he responded, "I'm a lawyer first, then a committeeman, and then an alderman." And Burke responded to the question of whether he was first a lawyer or a politician with an unequivocal, "I would like people to think of me primarily as a lawyer."

Daley wanted power, as Keane said. And it could be said that Daley loved power. He was not afraid of the responsibilities of power and he never hesitated to use power, when it was necessary. But his ultimate purpose in life was not the accumulation of power for the sake of power, but the use of power for the good of his city, as he perceived that good.

While his ultimate purpose in life was the welfare of his city, the realities of the community he governed and the demands of the political organization he headed required that he be cognizant of those forces and facts, that he counterbalance those elements and that he successfully broker the various power interests in the composite structure, the polis. Daley performed those tasks successfully for more than two decades by using his power as mayor to strengthen his party organization, by using his power as party chairman to buttress his role as mayor and by using his dual powers as mayor and party chairman to deal with the constituent power groups in the community.

When Daley came to power as mayor in 1955, after having won the party chairmanship two years earlier, he fused the two positions as his power base. But he also embarked on a policy of separating the city bureaucracy from the control of the political organization. While he knew that the city bureaucracy would have to serve the needs of the politicians in their wards, he was determined that the politicians would not govern the top echelons of the city government. If he was going to run the city well as mayor and provide a high level of service to the citizenry, he could not rely on professional politicians, untrained in public administration, who were primarily interested in political relationships and rewards, to control the city government.

To direct the city departments, Daley recruited top grade professional administrators, trained and generally respected in their fields. There were, of course, occasional exceptions to the rule at some levels in the bureaucracy, when a longtime friend needed help or a special political obligation had to be met. But those were exceptions, not general practice.

By hiring professionals who were generally not political to run the bureaucracy, Daley was able to provide a high level of city services in those areas of governmental responsibility that touched the lives of the citizenry most intimately — garbage collection; snow removal; street cleaning; sewer, curt and street repair; tree trimming; rodent control and the other basic functions of local government. Such a policy also helped to expedite major policy making functions of city government — revenue collection and distribution; legal services; finance; police and fire protection; traffic control and public transportation — which we re generally conducted efficiently and responsively to the city's needs. There was, of course, an occasional bending of the rules when powerful political and economic pressures had to be dealt with. And there were always the continuing unsolved problems of the public school system and neighborhood deterioration, some of which was due to conditions beyond the city's government control or ability, some of which was due to a lack of understanding in City Hall and some of which was due to powerful social, cultural, economic and political forces in the community at large.

The staffing of the city top-level bureaucracy by professional administrators provided Daley with the tools for dealing with two other problems.

If capable, professional administrators ran the departments at the top, there was then room for jobs at the lower levels for the precinct captains and their assistants to work where they could not seriously affect the basic policies and functions of the city government. These jobs also provided a reward system for political efficiency: the best precinct captains got the best jobs. This system generally worked to the advantage for the city at the middle echelons of the bureaucracy since it was generally true, as Alderman Marzullo once put it, "that the qualities that make a man a good precinct captain make him a good job holder."

Providing efficient city services to the citizenry in the neighborhoods also gave Daley the weapon he needed, as party chairman, to hold the ward committeemen accountable for getting out the vote. During elections voters were appealed to on two basic levels: (1) their emotional attachment to candidates on the ticket on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity and geography, and (2) their

20/ May 1978/Illinois Issues


relationship of mutual obligation and interst with their precinct workers and the Democratic organization which, if they performed efficiently, could take credit for meeting the constituents' personal needs. No ward committeeman could rationalize a poor performance in an election by claiming that he could not get good city services for his constituents. Daley's response would be that those city services were available and it was up to the committeeman to avail himself of those services for his ward. And the same standard held true of the relationship between the committeeman and his precinct captains. If the committeeman was doing his job well in maintaining contact with the bureaucracy, then a precinct captain who was derelict in serving the votes in his precinct had only himself to blame for his failure on election day.

Daley's dual role as preeminent political leader and powerful mayor enabled him to deal effectively and from strength with powerful groups in the community

The quid pro quo of the arrangement was strengthening of Daley's role as mayor, which was his primary objective in dealing with the committeemen. Daley did not consult with the commiton teemen on major matters of public policy for the city, but rather with his top bureaucrats and civic, business and labor leaders. Since the committeemen were not responsible for citywide public policies and problems, but only for their wards, they had little interest in such matters. They were always willing to elegate such matters to Daley, as the mayor, and to give him whatever support he needed for his policies. And, since the ward committeemen were either aldermen concerned with the needs of their wards or else controlled the aldermen from their wards, Daley could get approval from the City Council for any program he deemed necessary for the city. Daley did not conceive of the City Council as a legislative body whose function was to initiate legislation, but as something of a cross between the House of Commons in Great Britain and the Supreme Soviet in Russia, a sort of ratifying assembly whose major functions were to approve legislation submitted by the leadership, to act as another channel of communication between the neighborhoods and the city government and to assist in servicing the needs of the constituents.

Daley's dual role as preeminent political leader and powerful mayor, in fact if not in law, enabled him to deal effectively and from strength with powerful economic, social and cultural groups in the community on a basis of mutual interest and cooperation. Business, banking, civic, labor, ethnic, religious and racial leaders were consulted on matters of interest to their constituencies and given their due in proportion to their strength. But they, too, were required, as a quid pro quo, to support the political apparatus and the city government's public policies. Daley thus effectively melded the diverse and divided constituent elements of his city's body politic, pacified their interests to some extent and forced them to subordinate those interests, to some extent, to what he conceived to be the general welfare of his city. Daley was, in essence, a combination constitutional monarch and benevolent despot, operating in a democratic milieu, who practiced the trades of politics and government with great skill and dedication.

Of course, the other side of the coin was that on those matters of public policy that he did not understand or for which he had little sympathy, the city did not move very far or progress very rapidly. But, on the whole, his public record as political leader and public official was an enviable one. He made mistakes, as any man will; he was not always amenable to reason, and he did not foresee or come to terms with all of the nuances and changes which were taking place in 20th century American society. But he was probably a solid .400 hitter, in baseball parlance. Like Nellie Fox, the old spoiler of his beloved White Sox, Daley was a wily, tough batter, who tormented the pitchers by fouling off all the best pitches before lining one out to the far reaches of the outfield. Like Fox, Daley was no slugger. His batting average was high, but it was accumulated by waiting out the pitchers, spoiling the good ones and then punching out short, hard line drives rather than occasional loud, long blasts. But he drove the runs home and was always on base and ready to score.

The place he will hold in the hearts and minds of most of the people of the city he loved so well, and of those who knew him as a man, politician and mayor, is best exemplified by one of his favorite aphorisms. It hung, after his death, in the entrance to City Hall, over a book where Chicagoans stood in line to sign their names as an expression of sympathy to his family. It read, "I believe that a man should be proud of the city in which he lives and that he should so live that his city will be proud that he lives in it." Most Chicagoans are proud that Richard Joseph Daley lived in their city.

May 1978/Illinois Issues/21


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