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Jane Byrne seeks a return to Daley verities, not an overthrow

ON February 27, 1979, 26 months after the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley, Chicago's voters went to the polls in unprecedented numbers and handed the half-century old Chicago political machine the most resounding defeat in its history by nominating as the Democratic candidate for mayor Mrs. Jane Byrne, a long-time Daley cohort who had broken with Daley's successors and declared war on the machine.

Five weeks later, on April 3, Mrs. Byrne's victory over Republican mayoral candidate Wallace Johnson, brought Chicago its first woman mayor and its first nonmachine slated incumbent since 1931.

A persistent machine

What does Mrs. Byrne's victory mean for the future of the machine and the City of Chicago?

Probably not that much, because it lost a battle, but not the war. It will survive, changed somewhat in its internalconstituency and leadership, but unchanged in its major objectives, strategies and basic dynamics.

Mrs. Byrne, first of all, is not an antimachine liberal reformer who will strive to create a new era in Chicago's political and governmental history. She is, rather, a product of the machine, a disciple of Daley's, and an ideologically conservative, devout Irish Catholic whose major differences with the current machine leadership are not philosophical, but tactical. She would, if she could, not go forward, but rather go back. Her quarrel is not with machine politics, as such, but rather with a corruption of that kind of politics. Her goal is not revolutionary social change in Chicago, but rather a return to ancient verities and tried and true practices. She is a true believer in the Daley myth and the John F. Kennedy mystique. And she would cast out of the temple the corrupters of that myth and mystique, cleanse the altar and preach the ancient gospel anew.

Even if she were inclined to attempt revolutionary political reform or social change in Chicago, she would fail because of the character of the community and the realities of the political and governmental systems. Chicago is a politically conservative, culturally diffuse, governmentally weak community which is resistant to change, fragmented in its constituencies and tolerant of its long-time politics. The political machine has survived and prospered in Chicago because it is representative of the community's cultural differences, adaptive to changes in the city's social and political environment and efficient in its political practices.

In addition, the very nature of her support would prevent her from making significant changes in the political and governmental processes of the city. Even if she tried to change it, she would be unable to do so. She triumphed over Mayor Michael A. Bilandic and his cohorts with the backing of a jerry-built coalition of rebellious blacks, reformist lakefront liberals and angry neighborhood ethnics who were temporarily disenchanted by unplowed snow-covered streets, disrupted public services and uncollected garbage. That coalition of diverse groups with conflicting interests could hold together tenuously for an election, but will collapse under the weight of its internal differences.

The alternative to that coalition is the traditional power structure of the city --the political machine, the city bureaucracy and the powerful economic interests in the community. All of those entities are conservatively oriented, inextricably linked, mutually supportive and inclined toward the status quo. And Mrs. Byrne moved, as the good politician she is, to build the bridges and mend the fences to establish a working relationship with those power groups immediately after her primary election victory over them.

A fragmented city council

The other deterrent to dramatic change is the city's political structure. Legally Chicago has a weak mayor-strong council form of government. But the reality of Chicago's government is a legally weak mayor, a politically fragmented city council and a powerful political system which dominates and normally controls the weak government in a linkage which is, in many ways, comparable to the Communist party-Soviet government relationship in Russia.

Mrs. Byrne has captured a weak governmental office and will have to deal with a weak city council. To govern effectively, or at all, she will need support from a strong and entrenched political machine (which has only suffered a temporary setback); the city's professionalized bureaucracy (created by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley); and powerful economic interest groups (who hold the city's viability in their hands).

33 / May 1979 / Illinois Issues

Will Mrs. Byrne continue to seek that support from those elements in the community?

In all likelihood, she will. She is a pragmatist who has pulled off a major political upset, but who is cognizant of the realities of the situation. Those with whom she must deal -- politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen in Chicago -- are also practical, nonideological men. They will strike a deal and meet her halfway.

The great blizzard of 1979 is over in Chicago and spring has arrived. The fallout from the snowstorm has been significant -- a temporary setback for the machine, a woman in the mayor's chair on the fifth floor of City Hall and an impressive demonstration of the power of the people when they are aroused. As H. L. Mencken put it a half-century ago in his Notes on Democracy, "The American people . . . are bamboozled and exploited by small minorities of their own number, by determined and ambitious individuals, and even by exterior groups .... But all the while they have the means in their hands to halt the obscenity whenever it becomes intolerable, and now and then, raised transiently to a sort of intelligence, they do put a stop to it."

But in Chicago, as in all political communities, the traditional practices of politicians will begin anew and the normal processes of politics will reassert themselves. In other words, things have not changed much in Chicago and are not likely to change much in the future under Mrs. Byrne.

19 / May 1979 / Illinois Issues