The merits of political patronage

"At-large representation" has become a major civil rights issue in recent years, one that is not likely to go away. Only days after a U.S. District Court ruled Springfield, Illinois, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act, civil rights activists in Danville (Ill.) filed suit. At issue in Illinois and many other states is the method of electing local government officials.

In a classic ward system, members of a city council are elected from the neighborhood districts they represent. The smaller the district, the more susceptible the councilman is to pressure from constituents. In an at-large system, however, all the voters vote for all the councilmen or (commissioners). In a city like Springfield, where blacks make up just a little more than 10 percent of the population, the white majority maintains an effective monopoly on public office.

Defenders of at-large representation argue that it was never designed to exclude minority representation. This is not entirely true. In fact, at-large elections became popular early in this century precisely because they reduced the power of ethnic leaders and neighborhood politicians. Upper and middle class civic leaders were alarmed by the flood of immigrants who did not take even a generation to learn how to muscle their way into urban politics. Cities like Chicago and Milwaukee, which had small districts and large councils, soon found Irish, Italian and later black aldermen bargaining for a bigger piece of the pie. The result was a complex system of patronage and pull that drew each new wave of immigrants into the political process.

In the name of good government and municipal reform, liberals and progressives took steps to reduce the influence of ward heelers and ethnic voting blocks. More cautious cities simply increased the size of an alderman's district and drew the lines carefully to make sure the district did not coincide with ethnic neighborhoods. The more radical solution was at-large elections, which were going to usher in a period of uninterrupted honesty and prosperity for all.

Not exactly. So long as men are men, politicians will be politicians. A councilman at large is no more honest or intelligent than an alderman elected from a ward. The only difference is that while the alderman typically lives in his district and has to face, every day, constituents who want to know what he's doing about the garbage pickup or the potholes in Elm Street, the at-large councilman or commissioner only has to please himself and a handful of colleagues. Given the reality of urban politics, which type of dishonest councilman would most of us prefer, one who is only out for himself and his cronies or one who has to answer to his neighbors?

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There is little justification for at-large elections. They are anti-democratic, bigoted and stupid. I say stupid, because in a town like Springfield, where blacks comprise the lowest socioeconomic class, a minority that is excluded from the political process naturally develops resentments — an explosive situation, especially in a period of underemployment.

Why do so many cities persist in maintaining such a system? There are several reasons. Old habits die hard, especially in small towns, and no entrenched elite enjoys sharing power with its subjects. But there is, perhaps, another reason. At-large elections were sold as a progressive, enlightened, and liberal measure, because they held out the promise of Utopia: cities free of pettiness and bickering, urban governments liberated from ethnic animosities, and the selfish "what's in it for me" that characterizes ward politics in the Chicago style. During the same period of good government," school districts were consolidated in a similar effort to keep parents and politicians from interfering. Teachers and administrators needed a free hand, if they were going to instill democratic values, and city government had to wrestle power out of the hands of neighborhood politicians and put it in the hands of decent people and trained professionals.

We used to call this sort of idea by its proper name: enlightened despotism. Since people are too stupid or too selfish to govern themselves, they need wise and benevolent leaders to govern in their name. Black voters are only the most recent victims of a progressive political establishment that has repeatedly attempted to save democracy from itself. At the national level, it has taken about 100 years for the republic of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to turn into debt-ridden bureaucracy. In local government, the old uproarious style of ethnic ward heelers and neighborhood government was slowly but surely transformed into miniature replicas of the Pentagon: powerful, centralized, wasteful, and unresponsive. When Americans contemplate the careers of old-style political bosses like Chicago's Richard Daley, I hope they will remember him, for all his faults, as one of the last democrats in America.

Dr. Flemming is editor of Chronicles: A Magazine American Culture, published by The Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois.

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