Chicago
By ED McMANUS

Getting mad and getting even: an Irish feud

WITH A FRIEND like Jane Byrne, Bernard Carey didn't need any enemies. The Democratic mayor of Chicago embraced the Republican state's attorney of Cook County in the November 4 election and her arch enemy, state Sen. Richard M. Daley, slipped in Carey's backdoor with a razor-thin victory. The election ended a bitter campaign in which Carey seemed like an innocent bystander watching Byrne and Daley tangle. The tangling is sure to continue and probably escalate as the end of Byrne's term in 1983 approaches. If Daley doesn't run against her, there will be a lot of surprised political experts in town.

Those not abreast of current Chicago politics may be shaking their heads in confusion over that paragraph. To briefly recapitulate: the Democratic party machine, fine tuned by Daley's father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, dominates Cook County politics, but Bernard Carey, with the support of the suburbs, managed to win the state's attorney's office in 1972, and retain it in 1976. After Daley died and his successor, Michael Bilandic, failed to cope with Chicago's blizzard of 1979, Byrne beat the machine, then became, for all intents and purposes, its boss. A few months after her election, the mayor sided with Gov. James R. Thompson in opposing an attempt by the legislature to eliminate the state sales tax on food and drugs. Richie Daley earned her enmity by leading the anti-tax forces. When Daley decided to run for state's attorney, she saw it as a threat and put up her own candidate in the primary — Alderman Edward Burke; but Daley defeated Burke easily. The county party organization formally endorsed Daley in the general election, but Byrne tried to torpedo him. She questioned his sanity, accused him of racism, and persuaded several ward committeemen to openly oppose him, but it didn't work.

Daley had some things going for him. One was the Daley name; it is still revered in much of Chicago. Another was aggressive campaigning; Daley put together an effective Democratic party organization in the suburbs for the first time.

Add to that the negative elements: a lot of voters, both in the city and in the suburbs, are thoroughly turned off by Byrne's style and saw the state's attorney race as an opportunity to express their displeasure. The Chicago Sun-Times' Mike Royko ran a series of columns attacking Carey which may have done some damage, and Carey himself, apparently running scared, was so harsh in his attacks on Daley that he may have offended some voters. One example was his suggestion early in the campaign that some of Daley's brothers-in-laws are connected with organized crime. Another was a television commercial suggesting that Daley had improperly influenced the late Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn to divert assets from his estate to members of the Daley family.

Two weeks before the election, the Byrne-Daley feud reached a climax with the mayor charging that Daley was involved in a scheme with the City Building Department to keep blacks and Latinos from building homes in his ward. But she failed to produce much documentation for the claim, and it appeared to backfire. Daley accused her of McCarthyism and Carey himself criticized her, obviously trying to disassociate himself from her rancorous charges.

The issues of the campaign were almost buried by the Byrne-Daley feud. Daley's chief theme was that Carey was a timid prosecutor; Carey emphasized the importance of having a "professional" as state's attorney rather than a "politician."

The real key to the election seemed to be that Carey's chief issue of the past — his opposition to the machine — was pulled out from under him. In 1972 and 1976, he won the heavily Republican suburbs and the independent wards in the city by portraying himself as a "check and balance" on the power of the Democratic organization. But with Byrne and her friends on the central committee virtually in the Carey camp, many voters had lost the main reason they had to vote for Carey. Daley ran much stronger in the suburbs than the 1976 Democratic candidate, Edward Egan.

So now, ironically, we have a Democratic state's attorney who may give the Democratic mayor a lot more trouble than the Republican state's attorney did. That's one reason Byrne was so against Daley; she doesn't relish having his investigator poking around in her administration looking for scandals.

Daley claims he has no intention of running for mayor. Of course, anyone who watches politics knows that's no guarantee he won't run. His election as state's attorney gives him a solid power base and seems to assure that he or someone he supports will take on Byrne in 1983. And what will happen? It's very hard to predict. For one thing, there could be other candidates — a black, for instance, or somebody from the Polish community who wouldn't accept either Irish Jane or Irish Richie.

The mayor will continue to hold a great deal of power by virtue of her control over so many thousands of city jobs — the glue that has held the machine together all these years. Although Daley managed to attract a few committeemen to his campaign, most kept their distance from him because they feared Byrne's wrath.

Jane Byrne has demonstrated since she took office that she's no shrinking violet. It looks like the Chicago press is going to have plenty to write about in the next couple of years.

32/December 1980/Illinois Issues