A VIEW FROM CHICAGO

Old Sid is looking better
than ever in the 9th District race
by James Ylisela Jr.

Up here in the 9th Congressional District, the gang has been waiting, not very patiently, for the day when Sidney Yates will finally hang it up and retire from his long and noble career in the U.S. Congress.

These folks have been pretending not to run for Yates' seat for so long that being the heir apparent to the 88-year-old congressman probably should qualify for its own federal pension. One could get old waiting for Sid Yates to get old.

Yates is a revered figure in the 9th District, and probably could have stayed in office until his death or term limits, whichever came first. But last March he announced his decision not to seek a 25th term, ending a string of Election Day victories interrupted only by an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1962. That set off the stampede of candidates who have been good to go in the 9th District for years, only to pull back from the launch pad every time Yates said he wanted just one more orbit.

State Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston has been poised for a congressional run for at least three election cycles, as has longtime state Sen. Howard Carroll, whose district encompasses Chicago's far North Side 50th Ward.

Even J.B. Pritzker, a young man whose family owns the Hyatt Hotel chain, has spent the last two even-numbered years preparing for a race that never came to be — until now.

Being an heir apparent to the 88-year-old U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates probably should qualify for its own federal pension.

But Yates says he's really retiring this time, and one of these three long-suffering uncandidates will likely be moving to Washington next year. After 48 years with the same congressman, 9th District voters can be forgiven if they appear momentarily confused by the sudden return of choice to their ballots.

They shouldn't expect much to change. The 9th includes the north suburbs of Skokie and Evanston and snakes down the lakefront. It's a throwback to the days when the Democratic power brokers sliced up Chicago's congressional districts along ethnic lines: a couple of Italians here, a few Poles there and, yes, even several black districts, as long as the Machine could control who went to the Capitol.

The 9th District was the Jewish seat, and it still is. Carroll, Pritzker and Schakowsky all share the basic liberal Democratic Party agenda that Yates made famous, so all they have left to fight about is which of them is more Jewish. Pritzker got things off to a rollicking start when he attacked Carroll for accepting money from the American Muslim Council, a group Pritzker said has connections with Hamas, an Islamic organization linked to terrorism. That was a pretty goofy charge, given Carroll's longstanding ties to the Jewish community, not to mention the 9th District's sizable and influential Indo-Asian population.

Schakowsky, seeking the higher ground, accused Pritzker of faxing anonymous attacks throughout the district as part of a campaign of "fearmongering." She unwrapped a clean campaign pledge and demanded Pritzker and Carroll sign it. Both challengers declined, perhaps because they want to reserve the right to taint Schakowsky by reminding voters of the problems of her husband, Robert Creamer, who resigned last year as head of Citizen Action of Illinois over an alleged check-kiting scheme.

With the campaign threatening to turn uglier, one crafty Irishman might have stepped in and taken this thing. That might be the strategy of the fourth candidate, Charles "Pat" Boyle, if anybody actually knew he was in this race.

And to think that all anybody used to argue about up here was Sid Yates' age. In 1990, then-Chicago Alderman Edwin Eisendrath challenged Yates in the Democratic primary and hinted the veteran congressman was too elderly to continue in office. He even sent out a campaign mailing that mistakenly raised Yates' age from 80 to 90.

Yates may be older than most of his constituents, but he has never been feeble or shy about defending his turf. In the primary, Yates had Eisendrath for lunch, sending a clear message to future challengers: Don't mess with me. I'll leave when I'm good and ready. He has been doing his slow dance toward retirement ever since, and almost seemed to delight in watching the poseurs to his throne squirm impatiently like children on a long car trip.

And the way this campaign is going, Sid Yates is looking younger all the time.

James Ylisela Jr. teaches urban reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He's the consulting editor of The Chicago Reporter.

Illinois Issues March 1998 / 37