Chicago By ED McMANUS

The key to Byrne's undoing

ULTIMATELY, I'm inclined to think, it was her lies — her bald-faced lies — that did her in.

It would be simplistic to suggest that a single factor cost Jane Byrne 30,000 votes — the margin by which Harold Washington became the first black Democratic mayoral nominee in Chicago's history. But, clearly, an awful lot of people were just fed up with the deceit that characterized the Byrne administration. And when they concluded that Richard M. Daley was not an adequate alternative, they turned to Washington, a South Side congressman with a gift for speaking, a warm personality and an impressive record of legislative achievement.

An analysis of what happened in this very unusual election must begin with the fact that it was a three-way race. If Byrne and Washington had been the only candidates, Byrne would have won easily. There are still many more white registered voters than blacks in Chicago, and a large number of the whites, let's face it, are bigots. Many of those who supported Daley would have gone for Byrne.

On the other hand, if Byrne and Daley had been the only candidates, Daley probably would have won. The black community was disillusioned with Byrne, primarily because of her appointments of whites to the school board and the housing authority board, and they would have supported Daley as a protest.

But it became a three-way race. Daley, embittered over Byrne's 1979 humiliation of his late father's machine, decided to try to wrest back the power, and black leaders talked Washington into stepping in, figuring he could capitalize on a split of the white vote. Washington did just that; he wound up with 36.3 percent, Byrne had 33.5 percent, and Daley 29.8 percent. Three minor candidates split the rest.

A large increase in black voter registration was central to Washington's victory, and it was a white supporter, Slim Coleman, who was chiefly responsible for the surge in registration. Coleman, a radical community organizer in Uptown, formed a group called POWER (People Organized for Welfare and Employment Rights) which set up registration tables last summer in front of public aid and unemployment offices throughout the city. The immediate result was a huge outpouring of anti-Reagan blacks in the November election which almost gave underdog Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III the governorship. That development greatly encouraged Washington to run.

The rest, he did himself. He was an energetic campaigner. He was the most impressive candidate in the four televised debates, which gave him important exposure to counter Byrne's massive, expensive series of TV commercials. His personality captivated the black community, and people who had always been cynical about politics saw a chance to get involved in a winnable campaign. Wisely, Washington kept the wraps on one prominent supporter, Jesse Jackson, the head of Operation PUSH, who has antagonized many whites. But Jackson spoke on television on election night, and his identification with Washington may have turned off many potential Washington voters in the upcoming general election.

It appeared that not many blacks were much concerned about Washington's chief liabilities — the fact that he once was convicted of failing to file income tax returns and was suspended from practicing law for failing to perform service for clients. Those facts did bother some liberal whites enough to steer them into the Daley camp.

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Daley's chief support came from his own 11th Ward and six other southwest side wards populated by ethnic whites who wanted a Daley back in City Hall. He also won two wards on the northwest side; Byrne won the rest there.

Daley was endorsed by the Tribune and the Sun-Times, and his aides put together an impressive sheaf of position papers, but he didn't seem to have either the charisma or the intelligence to inspire the confidence of voters.

Ironically, Byrne won election four years ago with a substantial black vote. Blacks backed her then in a general protest against the white-run machine and specifically because they believed the black neighborhoods had been neglected in the Bilandic administration's efforts to cope with the blizzard of 1979. Byrne made a lot of reformist promises that aroused the hope of blacks and white liberals, but after her election she embraced the machine and forgot who brought her to the dance. Her revolving-door personnel policies and the questionable integrity of her closest advisers — especially former housing authority chairman Charles Swibel and Edward Vrdolyak, whom she installed as Democratic party chairman — raised a lot of eyebrows.

In the final weeks before the election, her backers brought race into the campaign, pointing out, both directly and indirectly, that a vote for Daley might cost Byrne the election and turn the city over to the blacks. It appears that the strategy backfired. A Byrne aide was quoted as saying it drove away many blacks who had been leaning toward the mayor.

But Byrne's lack of respect for the truth may have been the key to her undoing. Throughout her term in office, she confounded the media and the public by repeatedly rewriting history, switching positions in midstream and denying she had said all manner of things with no regard for the fact that her statements were on tape. Then, when election time drew near, she began spending her enormous war chest on television commercials, concocted by a New York media consultant, which distorted the facts of her administration and portrayed her as a calm, cool, efficient administrator instead of the feisty, abrasive, unpredictable politician everyone knew her to be. The commercials were persuasive, but too many people saw through them. Indeed, some 22,000 whites in seven northside wards and 7,000 Hispanics on the near northwest side voted for Washington, providing him with most of the margin he recorded over Byrne.

It is a real testimonial to our democratic system that the virtually penniless Washington could defeat a candidate who raised an incredible $10 million in campaign funds during her term in office.

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Democrat Washington faces Republican Bernard Epton in the April 12 general election, but a write-in challenge was announced by Mayor Byrne three weeks after she lost and after she said she would support Washington. Sadly, race will be a big issue. □

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