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ROBERT McCLORY


Evanston's laid-back mayor: Joan Barr



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Evanston Mayor Joan W. Barr

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the citizens of Evanston, Ill., sometimes complain they don't get any respect. Although it's the eighth largest city in the state — population 73,000 — Evanston is dwarfed by its immediate neighbor to the south, Chicago. It tends to be lumped together with all those bedroom communities which are part of the huge megalopolis, all those suburbs whose individual identities become integrated into that undistinguished generic creature: Greater Chicago. But Evanstonians rightly complain that their city is different. It has a 125-year history, a character and complexity of its own and a unique set of problems too.

The distinguishing mark of Evanston today is diversity. Within its eight square miles is an amalgam of rich and poor, blacks, whites and Hispanics, progressives and reactionaries, Democrats and Republicans. Only a few blocks from the lakeside mansions along Sheridan Road is a shelter for the homeless operating many nights at full capacity. Within walking distance of the stately halls of Northwestern University are blocks of old frame houses occupied for generations by low-income blacks. Presiding over this melange of people and property is Joan W. Barr, the 48-year-old mayor of Evanston. A slight, energetic, bright-eyed woman, whose glasses are usually perched on top of her head (a la Gloria Steinem), Barr has the task of satisfying the often divergent demands of her various constituencies. She does this with a leadership style that can best be described as moderating and laid back. Definitely not an imitator of Chicago's mercurial former Mayor Jane Byrne, Barr prefers to let issues work themselves out through dialogue and debate rather than to settle them by mayoral edict.

As a result Evanston City Council meetings can sometimes run well past midnight, as discussions drone on and the assembly waits in vain for Barr to wield her gavel and send everyone home. In fact, a council committee has been considering rule changes designed to "assist the mayor" — that is, to keep things moving along at a brisker pace.

Some see Barr's lack of aggressiveness as a decided weakness, and when she comes up for reelection in 1989 her opponents will surely zero in on that point. Barr herself insists her approach is healthy, indeed the only sensible one, given the diversity of people and the traditionally high level of public interest in civic issues. "When you see what Evanston is made up of," she says, "why would anyone be surprised that people get into debates or yell at each other?" As she views it, her job is to let the debate run its course so that everyone gets to participate.

This is not to say that Joan Barr is a disinterested, nonpolitical referee. She has her own agenda; she just goes about it in a low-keyed way. To a large extent, she gets what she wants. "She is a very political creature," says Bob Seidenberg, political editor of the Evanston Review newspaper. "She is as astute a mayor as anyone Evanston has had."

Barr comes by her interest in politics naturally. Her father, James Worthy, is a onetime suburban Chicago Democrat who converted to Republicanism during Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 political campaign. A Sears Roebuck executive (and author of Shaping an American Institution: Robert E. Wood and Sears, Roebuck),


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This is downtown Evanston with Northwestern University in upper right corner

Worthy served for a time in the 1950s as an assistant secretary of commerce in Washington, D.C., then became intensely involved in Republican affairs in the Chicago area. Young Joan shared his enthusiasm, working with the Evanston Young Republicans over the years in the various campaigns of Richard Ogilvie, Donald Rumsfeld and Charles Percy.

Ten days after graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in English she got married and settled down to being a full-time housewife. "I never thought of politics as a career," she says. "Girls didn't do that in those days."

Divorced four years later, Barr discovered other things young women didn't do in those days. She sought employment as an executive trainee in the health service field but was flatly rejected. "Wherever I went," she says, "all I heard was, 'Too bad you don't type, honey!' It was a painful awakening. . . . I became resentful. The rejection was almost worse than the divorce." With a young daughter to raise, Barr finally got a job as a claims adjuster with a Chicago insurance company but met with frustration here, too, when her efforts at advancement failed.

She married again in 1968, to J. Robert Barr, the Evanston Township — and later Cook County — Republican chairman, and became actively involved with the Dewey Community Conference, a neighborhood organization in her central Evanston area. "I found I thoroughly enjoyed local political and community affairs," she says. "Zoning, building maintenance, real estate problems — everything." She also ran her own catering business for several years. "Cooking is the only domestic skill I ever had," she laughs. "I have no energy for vacuuming or cleaning, but when I'm out there in public I'm able to draw on a deep reservoir of energy."

By 1977 both Barr and the situation of women in society had changed so much that no one was shocked when she ran for an aldermanic seat in the nonpartisan election in her home ward, Evanston's 2nd. Apparently her opponent had not read the signs of the times. If voters want someone with high intelligence and strong leadership qualities, he said, they should vote for him; if they prefer someone with pretty legs, they should opt for Barr. "I believe that [tactic] backfired and helped me immensely," says Barr, "that and the fact that I worked harder, rang more doorbells and visited more homes in the ward." She won, however, by fewer than 150 votes.

Barr today makes no bones about her feminist leanings, though she is hardly strident on the subject. "I just think women should have the same opportunities under the law as men," she says.

Between 1978 and 1980 Barr took several steps up the Republican party ladder, serving as Chicago field director for Gov. James R. Thompson's reelection bid and campaign manager for John Porter's successful run for the U.S. representative seat from Illinois' 10th District.

In 1981 she and her husband were divorced, and Barr (now with two daughters) again looked for gainful employment. (At the time an Evanston alderman's salary was $1,750 a year; now it's $3,600.) With her increasingly impressive resume as organizer and manager, she landed a position as director of government affairs for a major Chicago area dental association. In 1984 Evanston Mayor Jay Lytle (a close friend with whom Barr had attended grammar school) decided not to seek reelection. Barr put together a bipartisan search committee, and its consensus was that she, Joan Barr, would be the best candidate. Although Evanston has a majority of Democratic voters, Republicans have traditonally won the mayoralty in the non-partisan, winner-take-all elections. "I psyched myself up for the campaign," recalls Barr, "and I never stopped moving. When I wasn't raising money or giving speeches, I was copy-editing campaign literature. I loved it!"

She faced two opponents in the 1985 election, a white Democrat and a black independent, and she won the hotly contested battle, garnering 37 percent of the vote — to 33 percent for the runner-up — thereby making Evanston the largest governmental unit in Illinois with a woman chief executive. (Among its 1,200 villages, towns and cities, the state has about 80 female mayors or board presidents.) Barr got her heaviest support from the affluent, largely Republican northwest side of the city, and she benefitted mightily from the three-way race. But the results indicated she still might have won even in a head-to-head contest with either opponent. Even the black community, comprising 25 percent of the population, gave her some support.

Evanston has a two-layered system of government. An elected mayor presides at City Council meetings, appoints all the members of major boards and serves as liquor commissioner, and a hired, nonpolitical city manager oversees all the day-to-day operations of the city with his own staff of professional technocrats. The arrangement, which has


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been used in Evanston for more than 30 years, has generally avoided the unhealthily cozy relationships between government and politics which plague many other cities, most notably Evanston's large neighbor to the south.

Barr quickly rejects any suggestion that her mayoral position (for which she is paid $9,000 a year) makes her a mere figurehead — a sort of Queen Elizabeth of Evanston trotted out only for ribbon cutting and other ceremonial activities. The mayor exercises a strong influence on policy, she notes, through appointments, through influence on the 18-member City Council and through liaisoning and tone-setting with business, industry, community groups and other segments of society. Thus far, Barr is usually given high marks for her intelligent, though understated leadership in all these areas.

"She's definitely good for business," says Ira Golan, executive director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. "She's supportive and positive . . . and yet she's largely let the private sector work out its designs without interference." He points to developments like a new downtown parking garage, several new office buildings and the conversion of the historic old Marshall Field's store into rental residential units with small shops on the first floor.

The biggest development in the city and the one that continues to generate more heat than light is the Evanston-Northwestern University Research Park, a 24-acre site adjacent to the downtown area, which has been designated for basic private industry research. Most of the land has been cleared, and a multistory Basic Industry Research Laboratory has been built to lure companies into moving into the park.

The project is intended to generate much-needed tax revenue for Evanston, since the city has always been light on industrial development. In addition, tax-free property occupies large chunks of real estate in the form of the expansive Northwestern campus, public schools, parks and places of worship. (Evanston, says Barr, may have more churches per capita than any other city in Illinois.)

"We can't annex new land around us, and we simply have to increase our tax revenue," says Barr, a longtime booster of the research park. When fully operative, supporters claim, the park will produce $12 million or more in taxes a year from the participating industries. But so far the park does not have one major tenant signed up. What it does have is a bevy of critics. Environmentalists wonder what by-products will be belched or spewed out of the testing laboratories; peace activists contend the park could become a hotbed of industrial-military collusion (though the current agreement between the city and the university bans any weapons research); and many citizens fiercely oppose incursions of non-tax-paying Northwestern, with whom relations have historically been strained, into their city.

During the past two years Barr has patiently moderated discussions and forums on the matter in the City Council, all the while encouraging the project to go forth. "Joan Barr is a consensus builder, and she's steered the research park through stormy times," says Ronald Kysiak, executive director of Evanston Inventure, a city wide development corporation. "Time and again she's reminded the City Council that it's a deliberative body, not a hockey game."

Barr maintains good relations with most City Council members, many of whom have been personal friends for years. But the issue of leadership style and chronic suspicions of Northwestern's intentions are always simmering in the background. "As a person, Joan Barr is charming — I call her our huggable mayor," says Jack Korshak, outspoken 4th Ward alderman. "She's warm and vivacious — but let's not forget it, also very political."

As Korshak, a Democrat, sees the scene, party politics plays a much larger role in Evanston than Barr and others admit. Republican Barr, he argues, takes most of her guidance from Jon Nelson, a Republican alderman representing the northwest area of the city where she got her strongest backing in the 1985 election, and from former Mayor Lytle, also a Republican. What disturbs Korshak most about these alignments is the uncritically "warm relationship" between these top political figures and Northwestern. "We talk about all this cooperation between the city and the university [in the research park project]," says Korshak. "I want to know what's the price we're gonna have to pay in the end!"

Barr denies that party politics or old alliances dictate decisions on her part. "I doubt the president of Northwestern even knows what party anyone on the City Council belongs to," she says. "If you insist on automatically believing Northwestern corrupts everything it touches, there's nowhere to go. . . . I'm just glad most Evanstonians are getting over their Northwestern phobia and starting to move together in partnership." The slow progress in obtaining tenants for the research park should not be a matter of concern, she says confidently: they will come in time.

On other city matters she is equally direct and upbeat. Street gang spillover from Chicago, which caused considerable tension two years ago, is now on the wane, she says, thanks to more efficient police work. A solid waste recycling program is under development, the homeless have a permanent sanctuary and five new shopping areas have been built or are under construction in sectors of the city. All of these matters, along with research park progress, were key issues in her 1985 platform. Barr feels that the achievements to date both foster the prestige of her city and belie insinuations that she is not a strong leader.

Married again in 1985 (to Robert Tullis, a grandson of Sears Roebuck's General Wood), Barr now supplements her meager mayoral salary by working part time as a salesperson at an Evanston women's clothing store (where unaware customers occasionally note her extraordinary resemblance to Evanston Mayor Joan Barr). Her immediate — though not yet officially announced — political goal: to seek reelection in 1989. After that she is wide open. There will be both state and federal redistricting following the 1990 census, she notes, and, depending on the new shape of her district, she might consider seeking a legislative seat. Meanwhile there are always new topics for the aldermen and the citizenry to get exercised about: the site for a new public library, for example, or a ban on smoking in public places. When the debate gets hot, Joan Barr intends to remain calm and cool — but quietly in charge. □

Robert McClory writes regularly for the Chicago Reader, the National Catholic Reporter and other publications.


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