Chicago By MILTON RAKOVE

'I don't need to know what I'm voting about'

IN A LITTLE over three months the voters of Chicago will go to the polls to nominate Democratic and Republican candidates in the quadrennial February 1983 mayoral primary. The media in the city has been rife with speculation about potential candidates who might oppose Mayor Jane Byrne in the contest, particularly focusing on State's Atty. Richard M. Daley who has indicated he will not declare until after this year's statewide and county elections. There is also speculation about the potential candidacy of a viable black candidate, although none of those mentioned to date is viable, except possibly Congressman Harold Washington. As for the Republicans in Chicago, there is little speculation and no interest in their primary or potential candidate, since he or she will be irrelevant in the April mayoral election.

There will also be an election held in Chicago on the same day as the mayoral primary, a fact which is generally not known by many Chicago voters. On the same day that the voters nominate mayoral candidates, they will also elect 50 aldermen, one from each ward in Chicago, to serve for four years in the City Council. They will almost certainly all be Democrats of one stripe or another — liberal, moderate or conservative; black, white or possibly Latino; political machine minions, eclectics or political independents; mediocre, run of the mill or capable; and bright, moderately intelligent or "D" grade level in their understanding of the public policy issues they vote on. They are thus fairly reflective of the city's population in their makeup, even though they might not be representative of the city's public policy needs.

They will run as nonpartisans, by law, in the election, although the winners will all be Democrats. (There have been occasional solitary Republicans in the council, but not since the last one, Dennis Block, quit and moved to the suburbs some years ago.) The fusion of the mayoral primary with the aldermanic election guarantees almost unanimous Democratic victories in the aldermanic races, since the Democratic machine turns out a heavy vote in the mayoral primary, while the anemic Republican effort automatically dooms Republican aldermanic candidates.

It is this electoral procedure, which, more than anything else, is the root cause of the character of the City Council and is responsible for the peculiar procedures and voting results in what purports to be a legislative body. In truth, the Chicago City Council is much more of a ratifying assembly than a traditional legislative body. It does not function in the same manner as the Illinois General Assembly or the U.S. Congress. The City Council's relationship to the chief executive officer of the city, the mayor, is unlike the Illinois General Assembly's relationship to the governor of the state or the relationship of the Congress to the president of the United States. The council's committees are almost irrelevant to the legislative process. They meet infrequently, if at all, in sessions which are not designed to examine pending legislation, nor to debate and argue the merits of the public policy issue, nor to hear expert testimony from opponents or supporters of a bill. The meetings of the committees and the City Council are gatherings in which the voting results are foregone conclusions; testimony of witnesses is fairly irrelevant and searching examination of ordinances is unusual.

There are practically no blocs of aldermen which are formed on the basis of common interests and loyalties to constituents. The exception is the small bloc of independents, led for the past few years by Alderman Martin Oberman, the contemporary conscience of the city; this bloc musters a few votes in opposition to the wishes of the mayor and the overwhelming vote of the Democratic machine's dominant majority. There is not a Polish, Irish, Jewish or Italian ethnic bloc which votes its ethnic interest over its loyalty to the administration's directions. Neither is there a black bloc which votes all together on race issues. Nor are there solid economic or geographic blocs, responsive to the pressures of constituencies' interest groups.

Generally, there is no bargaining, dealing, or give and take between leadership people, powerful committee chairmen and representatives of well-organized interest groups such as takes place in the General Assembly or Congress. The primary loyalty and subordination of the aldermen is to the mayor and his or her designated councilmanic leaders. Secondary loyalty is to the alderman's ward committeeman, if he doesn't hold that office himself, but not to his constituents. If he does hold that party office, his primary loyalty is to the mayor, not to his ward constituents or to private interest groups.

As a consequence, legislative procedures and public policy issues in the Chicago City Council are now more akin to the systems of one-party regimes led by a supreme authority, than they are to democratic state and national legislative bodies in the United States. That similarity was succinctly expressed by a staunch administration alderman, who, two years ago, on the council floor, responded to an independent alderman who had tried to explain his position by declaring, "I want these guys to know what they are voting about." The machine stalwart shouted out, "I don't need to know what I'm voting about."

Given that reality, it does not matters significantly whether ward boundaries are gerrymandered, whether the blacks get two or three more seats, whether the Latinos are given control of two or three wards, or whether the independents pick up a few aldermanic seats. Any real change in the character of Chicago's City Council and chance for movement toward a genuine legislative body with real power in the governmental process of the city (which the council has legally) could only come about through a revolutionary change in that body. That possibility is remote.

36 | November 1982 | Illinois Issues