Jim O'Grady: Cook County GOP's 'perfect candidate'

There are some good cop stories about Cook County Sheriff Jim O'Grady. One day, about 20 years back, the guy is eating at a Chinatown restaurant. He notices these four Chinese acting kind of suspicious. The area is lousy with mah-jongg games and mobsters, and O'Grady smells something besides chop suey. He radios for backup and while he's waiting for his help, the four guys leave.

Cook County Sheriff Jim O'Grady turns on his charm at a Republican fundraiser in Northbrook, but Republicans failed in November to win any other countywide offices. Former Democrat O'Grady remains the only GOP county officeholder.       Photo by Richard Foertsch/Photoprose

Backup cops arrive to find O'Grady wrestling with the four Chinese who are proficient in, the story goes, some kind of Oriental self-defense. The four guys finally get arrested. Karate is no match for the sticks of a half dozen Chicago cops. Back at the station the arrested men prove to be Red Chinese, wanted by customs, who are over here extorting money from Chinese American restauranteurs. Customs have been looking for them but had given them up for dead when one of them sent a body back to China with his own name on it.

Another day, in 1971, O'Grady is walking through the Loop when he and his partner see a purse snatcher. They give chase and draw their guns but don't shoot because the streets are crowded. They are shot at instead, and O'Grady takes a bullet near his spine. In the hospital he refuses to go up into surgery without first giving a full description of the event to his tactical team. He carries that bullet in his spine to this day.

"Those were interesting times," says former cop and O'Grady protege Dan Davis with police wryness. Davis, who's since worked with O'Grady in a private detective firm and as a new member of the Republican party, has high praise for his old commander. "Eighth graders were shooting at each other, the Black Muslims were active, the Rangers were active and every radical in the country was stopping at Hyde Park. O'Grady could sit down with all of them in a room and come out with an agreement."

O'Grady served 32 years in the Chicago Police Department, rising to the superintendent's spot under Mayor Michael Bilandic in 1978. His career took a turn for the worse when Jane Byrne made a campaign promise to fire him. Upon her election in 1979, he quit and went to work for the man who was to become his opponent in 1986, then-Cook County Sheriff Richard Elrod. A year later he was back at the police department as chief deputy in Mayor Byrne's administration. He resigned for good in 1983 after Harold Washington was elected mayor.

O' Grady's street instincts have remained with him through the off-the-street part of his career. As superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, O'Grady once pulled a gun on a tire thief. Now, even as he is both hailed and attacked as a "New Republican," the spearhead of a movement that brought Democrats into the GOP, he projects a subdued wariness at all times.

O'Grady plays his cards close to the vest and keeps his eyes moving. In person there's no flash, no dash, no physical evidence to attest that this is the guy who carries a bullet in his back and whose various heroics earned him the "blue-chip cop" headlines. O'Grady is almost completely unassuming. Clad in brown polyester slacks and a nondescript plaid shirt, the county sheriff — the man into whose campaign the Republican National Committee poured a couple hundred thousand in cash and personnel — looks like Joe Six-Pack's dad. He's got the bearing and demeanor of a nine-to-five lifer, the guy next door —the perfect candidate.

He's got an instinct for politics, too. It takes some shrewdness to ride the police department bureaucracy all the way to superintendent. He's good at getting along, not a boat-rocker. Once he was accused of letting Mayor Bilandic's patronage

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officer Tom Donovan summon to his house a police officer who'd arrested Donovan's son for bicycle theft. "I didn't politicize the department," was O'Grady's serene response. News reporters were quick to note that he wasn't saying the department wasn't already political.

High hopes are riding with O'Grady today because only two years ago the Cook County GOP had no banner carrier. The big dogs — the Republican National Committee (RNC) people — were scouting Cook County, searching for candidates to back with money and to test their conviction that the local Democratic machine was growing vulnerable. According to former RNC operative and current Cook County GOP strategist Kristine L. Wolfe, O'Grady appeared to be an obvious choice to run against Elrod. He was squeaky clean, and he had a built-in organization in the Irish community and the police force.

O'Grady's detractors — many of whom were Republicans before he was — disagree. They say O'Grady isn't enough of a reformer and not ideologically a Republican. "O'Grady's switch to the Republican party was made to run for sheriff," says one county Republican. "It had nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, family values, peace through strength."

If the O'Grady move was pure politics, he's still got some good personal anecdotes and opinions with which to back it up. The first president he ever voted for was Eisenhower in '52, he said. And, although one of his personal heroes is the quintessential Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, O'Grady is critical of his old party. "FDR is a Democrat I admired," O'Grady said. "He was strong, dynamic, a leader. The Democrats today are consensus people. They have to have the vote of every minority special interest group before they can make any decision. I think people look for leaders, people who make decisions. Even if they aren't always the correct decisions, hopefully they are proper decisions."

The distinction between "correct" and "proper" decisions is a point almost too fine to be expected coming from a man who built his reputation in the police force while it was getting a national reputation for head bashing. But O'Grady has a strain of genuine subtlety that the public didn't always expect to find in Chicago's men in blue.

Actually O'Grady was perceived, even in the late 1960s, as a "new-style," educated cop by his peers and subordinates, according to Davis. As commander he let his men do their jobs (as they were defined back then), but he projected a coolheadedness younger cops admired. That balanced mentality comes through in his definition of a good cop: "You have to empathize with the good guys and the bad guys," O'Grady said. "Because sometimes the good guys turn out to be the bad guys and the bad guys turn out to be the good guys. It's hard to tell right from the start."

O'Grady's parents came to Chicago from Ireland. Born on the northwest side of the city, he's still Irish Catholic to the bone. Although he reputedly can dance a jig and sing Irish songs, he recently described himself as "Catholic first and Irish second." The Catholic religion is "the foundation of my life, my existence," he said. His other personal hero, besides FDR, is Catholic radio and television personality Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

O'Grady's dad was a Chicago cop who was laissez-faire about his son's career. "My father never pushed us. He never even came out to see us play sports," O'Grady recalled. "I don't even know if he wanted me to be a cop. I think he was happy I made superintendent, but he never told me that. He wasn't the kind of guy you kissed. A handshake was emotional to him."

O'Grady's own emotional side was played up considerably by RNC image makers in 1986, according to Wolfe. "We polled women in Cook County and found they were all over the place. They said they were Democrats, but they wouldn't vote for incumbents. And they were very leery of cop O'Grady. He was perceived as a man's man. We wanted to make women understand that he's no Clint Eastwood, that he's a grandfather."

Whether it's due to coaching or not, O'Grady projects the fatherly demeanor that the RNC promoted, the one that counters the macho cop stories. "I kiss my kids," he said, comparing himself to his father. "They are 25, 30 years old. I still kiss them." He is, in fact, father of five children.

The RNC's thoughtful strategizing is only part of the story of how O'Grady beat 17-year incumbent Dick Elrod and became the first Republican since Bernard Carey to win a countywide office. The biggest factor behind the win was that in the summer of 1986 Elrod's office was perceived as stinking with corruption. During the crucial last parts of the campaign, ranking sheriff's police were on trial on charges stemming from a federal probe of suburban vice protection operations.

For the three years before he ran for office, O'Grady was in the private detective business, running Special Operations Associates, an agency of about 300 former or aspiring cops. SOA hired O'Grady after he left the police department for the last time in 1983. The company was started by O'Grady associates and New Republicans Davis, Jim Dvorak and Mike Caccitolo. It is now a booming business, thanks in part to connections created by O'Grady, Davis said. SOA is currently under contract to provide security for the Chicago Sun-Times building and other downtown buildings.

SOA proved a useful campaign aid in the battle with Elrod. Before and during O'Grady's stint as its chief executive, SOA had been contracted to investigate the unsolved murder of suburbanite Diane Masters, a case investigated to no conclusion by the same sheriff's police on trial for suburban vice protection during the campaign. SOA uncovered evidence that pointed to the woman's husband being behind her death. During the murder investigation some of the sheriff's police on the case were working part-time as detectives for her husband. SOA provided information about that case to the media during O'Grady's run for office, adding to the daily cavalcade of sleazy information about the sheriff's office. This year the U.S. attorney indicted Masters' husband in connection with her death.

The detective agency connection was actually a boon from the beginning. The RNC "found" O'Grady through Caccitolo, Dvorak and Davis. The three New Republicans, led by newly elected GOP county chairman Dvorak, met the RNC's Wolfe when SOA was contracted to do "ballot integrity" work for a bipartisan clean elections committee in 1983 and 1984. As Wolfe tells it, the RNC was prepared to back Caccitolo against former Democratic state Sen. Leroy Lemke until someone realized money would be better spent pitting O'Grady against a vulnerable Elrod.

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Wolfe confirms what O'Grady and his partners have said about the cool reaction of then-Cook County Republican Chairman Don Totten to O'Grady's candidacy. Says she: "I was there. Totten held up a sheet of blank, white paper when asked what kind of financial help we could expect." For his part, Totten has said the organization simply didn't have any money but that he heartily welcomed O'Grady anyway.

In any case, the RNC didn't shirk from funding O'Grady. The RNC spent $161,000 and put seven staff members on the campaign. The assistance of national people and money was required, Wolfe said, because the former cops who were running the effort were not politicians.

Wolfe gives O'Grady credit for bringing other Democrats to the party, including state Sen. Robert Raica, who defeated Lemke. "They brought in [former Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Ed] Vrdolyak. O'Grady has a commitment to bringing people in."

O'Grady's victory changed the old GOP. Many pre-O'Grady members of the party still rue the day he came on the scene. Their beefs: The party lost its noble reputation of "reform or lose" and its grip on being the party that deals with the issues. Both those complaints have some validity.

O'Grady rode into office looking incredibly squeaky-clean next to the image of Elrod's top men heading for the federal pen. He was going to solve the Masters murder and scour away the political hacks that had gathered on the sheriff's staff like barnacles over the years. The men in white were with him: Two of the state's top crime fighters were backing him. Former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb had chaired his financial committee. Former Gov. Richard Ogilvie reportedly urged O'Grady to run.

Contrary to expectations, O'Grady's first two years in office have not been spotless. O'Grady and his people were criticized after his election for continuing the old style patronage practice of handing out sheriffs deputy badges (which enable the bearer to sport sidearms) to friends and trying, despite the Shakman decree which constrains patronage, to stack Republicans into sheriff's office staff slots. The very fact that Dvorak plays the dual role of chief sheriff's administrator and county GOP chair brings politics into the office. And O'Grady already has an in-house campaign contribution machine going. Politically Concerned Employees of Cook County, chaired by two county corrections employees, has collected and donated more than $14,000 to his cause since February 1987.

Chicagoans seem to accept a certain amount of political gamesmanship in their officeholders, but O'Grady admits that he has a lot to learn about government.

One recent lesson was taught by Cook County Board President and Democratic Party Chairman George Dunne, whose seat many politicos want O'Grady to secure for the GOP. In September a court ruling on jail overcrowding forced the sheriff to release a number of criminals. Some of the released committed crimes immediately, the most egregious being a rape during rush hour at a CTA stop. O'Grady was left taking the blame for the releases even though Dunne had been aware of the jail need since Elrod's days and had been looking for a new jail site since then. O'Grady ended up "trick bagged," as one pol put it — partly because he lacked the policymaking foresight to head off the situation before it hit him.

O'Grady seems in some ways an unlikely candidate for the higher posts he's being pushed toward. He doesn't show great relish for the secret pact, that modus operandi in Chicago politics. By his own accounts, he prefers face-to-face encounters to back room decisions. Nor does O'Grady try to inject his own up-front attitude into the modes and methods of those with whom he deals.

O'Grady's work for Elrod typifies his lack of interest in reformist boat rocking. As Elrod's deputy, O'Grady reviewed police misconduct reports during the years that now-convicted officers were protecting suburban vice operations. Yet he never initiated any action against the alleged corruption below him. His response is that the most serious reports he ever got were about police brutality. "I had the feeling, the gut reaction, that something was wrong. The word on the street was that [convicted former officer James] Keating was either working for the outfit [mob] or for the [federal] government. But Keating would do whatever the hell he wanted. There was not much you could do about gut reactions."

There are those who find O'Grady wily. Elrod attacked O'Grady as an ingrate for running for sheriff after Elrod had twice offered him employment. Totten said O'Grady lacked loyalty by backing Dvorak to run against him.

In other groups, particularly the old circle of cops, O'Grady inspires intense loyalty. O'Grady trusts them. They trust him. They talk to each other in a kind of "policespeak" that leaves most civilian members of their party wide-eyed. That kind of loyal entourage can also be a problem. One prominent Republican, who professed respect and admiration for O'Grady, said that the sheriff's distrust of non-cops, of people outside the old circle, is a problem for him. "It's a shortcoming. He is insulated and he admits it."

If O'Grady is too insulated within his circle, it doesn't show on the campaign trail. By all accounts, he is a natural campaigner. Wolfe compares him to Reagan in telegenic appeal. Former mayoral contender Don Haider praises him, too: "He is a good politician. In a crowd, it's incredible the way he remembers names, relatives, cousins, kids. People see that twinkling eye; they get that personal contact. He's not just a gladhander."

As of early November, O'Grady gave no indication of when he will use that natural campaign talent again. "As I look at it now, I think I would like to run for sheriff again," O'Grady said. "It keeps our program on track. And also, from a political standpoint — and I am concerned about that — this is a good political base. If I leave and run for something else, who's going to run for sheriff and hopefully win? Is the chemistry there for a Republican to win? I don't know. I would hope I'd have a sufficiently good record to run for sheriff again. But I won't have the luxury of running against a 17-year incumbent with a very poor record in his later years." He pauses, reconsiders. "But I don't have fear of moving into something different. I don't have a lot of fears."□

Nina Burleigh is a freelance writer living in Chicago.

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