Mayor Washington: a lasting imprint on Chicago

In the aftermath of the death of Mayor Harold Washington almost every commentator on the Chicago political scene has written a tribute or analysis of the historical significance and governmental effect of the city's first black mayor. Here's mine.

Though I was far from being a Washington insider, I closely observed the mayor's political and administrative style during his mayoral campaigns and his four and one-half years in office. Unquestionably Harold Washington was a trailblazer in Chicago politics. He was more than the city's first black mayor; he was Chicago's first black political energizer. His mayoral candidacies and personal charisma made a mockery of those political scientists who for years had argued that as long as blacks were at the low level of the socioeconomic ladder, their political involvement and voting activity would remain below national and local turnout averages. It hardly seems a decade ago when I and my old Governors State University colleague Peter Colby wrote an Illinois Issues article on Chicago politics that among other things contained a ward-by-ward breakdown of voter turnout strength in the city. As others before us, we highlighted the voter apathy in the black community, especially in lower income west and near south side wards. Harold Washington rewrote the book on black turnout, and today a similar ward-by-ward analysis would find black and white turnout percentages nearly the same. Also, unlike 10 years ago the predominately white 11th Ward, the ancestral home of the Daley clan, would no longer head the ward turnout chart. Instead, that honor would go to the nearly all black 6th Ward, the home of the current acting mayor and Washington successor, Eugene Sawyer.

Washington made politics a second religion to Chicago blacks. As generations before have been seduced by the glory, guts and gold that Chicago politics has to offer, the mayor and his black constitutents became fixated by the local political scene. State and national politics, including the Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns, took a distant back seat to Washington's political and governmental successes and failures. Post-Washington Chicago finds countless blacks able to rattle off the names of aldermen and Democratic committeemen throughout the city as they eagerly await the next campaign. Just as the Irish before them, Chicago blacks see politics as a prime vehicle for upward mobility and respectability, and they are second to none in their commitment to run the city. Of all the legacies and traditions left by Washington, this last point may be the most important and enduring.

What about the man himself? In my view he was a far better politician than he was an administrator. His famous grin was never wider or his sparkling wit sharper than when he was working the crowd at a political event. He truly loved politics, and seeing him chitchatting with white and black pols, both friends and foes, one saw a man truly at ease with himself. Despite his own campaign rhetoric and that of his more independent followers, Harold Washington remained to the end a ward and precinct organization politician.

Any meaningful evaluation of his governmental impact will have to wait until after the predictable two stages (hero worship and hero revision) that usually take place following the sudden death of a dynamic and controversial leader have run their course. Even at this early date, however, it is clear that Washington was unable to address the three most critical issues facing Chicago: revenue, public housing and education.

The unfinished Washington agenda includes an ongoing budget crisis that, according to municipal finance expert Donald Haider, "sees city revenue increasing

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at a 3 percent annual rate while its expenditures grow at a 6 percent to 7 percent annual rate." To "Band-Aid" this problem Washington used the city's property tax like a strong-arm baseball relief pitcher. Every time there was a revenue jam Washington called on his bullpen, the city's homeowners and businessmen, to give the city some needed relief. Even the best relief pitcher gets worn out or fed up. Thus Washington's successor must find some starting pitchers — some other sources of revenue and budget belt-tightening — so that property tax payers can get some rest.

The public housing issue remains unresolved and festering within the socioeconomic and political structure of Chicago. Urbanologist Ed Marciniak has called the elevators in Cabrini-Green (perhaps the toughest public housing complex in the world) the "most dangerous public transportation in Chicago." Washington's Chicago Housing Authority appointments and politics were mixed at best, and it can be argued that public housing residents are worse off today than they were four and one-half years ago.

Education is perhaps Washington's greatest failure. No issue cuts more deeply into the heart of the city's problems than its inability to educate its young people, especially its overwhelming minority population, for the jobs of tomorrow. Washington's hands-off approach was good politics, but given his political standing, an activist approach on this issue might have served his core constitutents far better.

One fact is certain: Washington has left a lasting imprint on Chicago's landscape. Any subsequent mayor, especially a black one, will be compared to Harold Washington.

Whether you were positive or negative about Mayor Washington, you had to love his sense of humor and his sharp political tongue. He once commented on Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio program, "Extension 720," that yours truly was off a noodlehead for some of the things I had said about him on a previous show. A few weeks later I saw him at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco and presented him with a small bag of noodles as a peace gesture. He took the bag, gave a hearty laugh and put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Don't believe all that stuff that you hear on radio — even from me." I will miss you, Mr. Mayor. Good-bye.

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