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IT IS TOO early to foretell what a Mayor Jane Byrne administration will mean to Chicago's political and governmental systems, but some patterns are beginning to emerge in the first few months.

Chicago politics is the same, yet different, since Mayor Byrne took office. Things are the same in that the political machine still exists, unchallenged in its supremacy by any threat from an opposition Republican party or the independent movement in Chicago. But things are different because the once clearly defined guidelines of power in the machine and the city have become somewhat blurred and confused.

The political and governmental systems are currently suspended in an odd combination of ennui and limbo as the Byrne administration begins to take shape and as the politicians in the machine try to take the measure of the new mayor.

There are two different styles emerging in the relationship between the new mayor and the old political machine in what, at times, seems to be a classic confrontation between the new and the old and, at other times, seems to be a coming together of the old and the old.

The roots of the uneasy and, as yet, tentative detente are planted in the nature of traditional politicians, on the one side, and on the other side, in the relatively unknown and untested popular politician just elected to the major governmental office in the city.

In Chicago, as in all political systems, politicians are by nature conservative, resistant to change and wary of any new situation. Their normal tendencies, when confronted with change, are to sit tight, keep quiet, try to figure out who might be winning and then leap aboard the victor's ship or at least abandon the one that seems to be sinking.

But it is hard to tell who is winning at the present time. Mayor Byrne won a narrow victory against incredible odds in the primary election and an overwhelming victory over the nonexistent Republicans in the general election. She clearly has, to date, garnered substantial public support -- and politicians never do anything that would alienate the public and turn that public against them. So, while the politicians may or may not be happy with Byrne's actions to date, they will do nothing that would disturb a public that seems to like what Mayor Byrne is doing. But neither will they get too close to her, since they are not sure of what she is about and whether what she is doing will benefit them or will continue to garner public support. Most machine politicians in Chicago, consequently, are not in a state of flux, but in a state of inertia.

Mrs. Byrne, however, is certainly not in a state of inertia. Instead, she is in what seems to be a modified state of perpetual motion. She clearly knows how to use the media to reach the public. To date, the public feels that she is doing a good job -- catching payrollers who are not working, disciplining ward superintendents who are not picking up enough garbage, leveling charges against politicians who oppose her stance in defense of the public interest and giving the media sufficient grist for their mills so that they have to keep her in the public eye. It is a political style that feeds on itself and perpetuates Mayor Byrne's image as the outsider and underdog the public elected as a protest against the politicians in office.

In her administrative role as mayor of Chicago, Mrs. Byrne has maintained a moderate level of activity, but nowhere near her level of political motion. Some bureaucrats have left voluntarily, others have been replaced and still others seem to be in a state of abeyance, waiting to see whether the ax will fall on them or whether they will escape the blade. So the city bureaucracy, too, is in a state of inertia -- everybody generally doing their jobs, nobody moving too far out front with suggestions for major policy changes and everyone paying lip service to the new order. The bureaucrats know that they will get no help from the politicians in the current environment as long as the public seems to support Mayor Byrne, so they are left to their own devices in coping with a situation which, for them, is also old but new.

Even the independents in the city council, who traditionally opposed the Democratic administration in Chicago, are confused as to who the enemy is now. They are unsure of whether Byrne is for them or against them. Confronted with a situation where their former leader, Leon Despres, sits at Byrne's right hand in the council as her parliamentarian while she pays homage to Alderman Vito Marzullo at the same time, they have nowhere to go and are reduced to attacking former Mayor Michael Bilandic, who is no longer a legitimate target.

To sum up the current situation in Chicago, three months after Byrne's ascension to the mayoralty, the status is quo.

July 1979 / Illinois Issues / 33