By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

You couldn't blame Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley if he felt a bit like a Jesuit in a Masonic Temple as he sat on the dais at last month's inaugural ceremonies.

After all, Daley was one of the few Democrats on hand for the Republican takeover of state government that began with Gov. Jim Edgar's swearing-in and ended two days later with the coronation of new House Speaker Lee A. Daniels of Elmhurst.

White the mayor spoke hopefully of cooperation with the new GOP powers, the Republican rise ushers in a perilous era for Daley's beloved city. For the first time in the mayor's six-year tenure, Chicago will not have a Democratic House to fend off hostile legislation. As a result, Daley is expected to become more involved personally in Springfield matters; indeed, after the November election he made a Capitol pilgrimage to lobby successfully for anti-crime legislation.

As he contemplates the new Republican order, the mayor might find it comforting to recall that his father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, faced a similar GOP hegemony throughout his first term, with former Gov. William G. Stratton in the Executive Mansion and solid Republican majorities in the legislature. Moreover, the elder Daley labored under the handicap of the 1870 Constitution, which required Chicago to seek state approval for almost anything city officials wished to do.

Although Stratton's successor, former Gov. Otto Kerner, was a product of the Cook County Democratic Organization and a loyal Daley ally, Republicans held a stranglehold on the legislature throughout the 1960s, losing only the House in 1964. The elder Daley had to deal with a Republican monopoly again in 1969, when former Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie took office with solid Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Yet Daley was able to work with GOP leaders on a wide variety of issues, securing state dollars for such massive projects as the Chicago expressway system, the University of Illinois' Circle Campus and McCormick Place. The mayor also teamed with Ogilvie to enact the state income tax, demanding a one-twelfth share of the proceeds for local governments as his price for providing Democratic votes.

Ironically, some of the senior Daley's most frustrating Springfield moments came during the last two years of his tenure, when his party controlled the levers of power. In 1974, Democrats won both chambers for the first time in 38 years, two years after a maverick Democrat, former Gov. Dan Walker, defeated Ogilvie. Adamantly anti-Daley, Walker struggled with the mayor for party control and clashed with him on such state issues as mass transit, the proposed Crosstown Expressway and school funding.

On one memorable occasion, Daley made a rare appearance before a joint legislative session in October 1975, urging lawmakers to restore some $131 million Walker slashed from school outlays. Daley stunned a packed House chamber when he praised Ogilvie's courage in fathering the income tax and said the former

Photo by Bill Stamets
For the first time in Mayor Richard M. Daley's six-year tenure, Chicago will not have a Democratic House to fend off hostile legislation. As a result, Daley is expected to become more involved personally in Springfield matters. After the November election, he made a Capitol pilgrimage to lobby successfully for anti-crime legislation.

Republican governor should not have been defeated by Walker because of the tax issue. Daley's plea inspired the House to restore the funds, but Walker prevailed in the Senate.

The issue may have been the last straw for Daley, however. A few weeks later, he pushed Michael J. Hewlett into the Democratic gubernatorial primary. The popular secretary of state ousted Walker, only to lose the general election to a Republican newcomer, former Gov. James R. Thompson. Daley never had the chance to work with Thompson, a native Chicagoan; he died in December, just a few weeks before Thompson was inaugurated for the first of his record four terms.

Daley's successors neither wielded the same power nor commanded similar respect in Springfield. Their influence among lawmakers ebbed as government reform sapped old-style patronage, and television spots supplanted precinct captains. Even when they were able to get their way, the results sometimes backfired. Early in her tenure, for instance, former Mayor Jane Byrne fired a key ally of then-House Majority Leader Michael J. Madigan to punish Madigan for allowing suburban Democrats to derail a transportation deal struck by Thompson and Byrne. The legislation — later approved — was perhaps the worst trade for the city since the Cubs sent Lou Brock to the Cardinals for Ernie Broglio. Byrne agreed to relinquish a state mass transit subsidy in return for authority to impose a local Regional Transportation Authority sales tax.

Byrne also pressured Madigan to sustain Thompson's veto of a sales tax relief plan downstate Democrats hoped to use in their 1980 campaigns, severely straining relations within the Democratic caucus.

By the time former Mayor Harold Washington ousted Byrne, though, Speaker Madigan had become the most important Democrat in town, using the power of the gavel and of campaign contributions to shape his party caucus into a potent voting bloc. Senate President Philip J. Rock of Oak Park was not far behind in the Democratic pecking order, with Chicago's mayor a distant runner-up.

Washington, the city's first black mayor, was embroiled for much of his first term in political infighting with a bloc of white ethnic aldermen, reducing his ability to make an impact in the Capitol. Madigan smothered attempts to bring the "Council Wars" to the legislature, but also moved ahead with his own agenda, at times at odds with the mayor. The speaker, for example, played a large role in killing a proposed Chicago World's Fair, a project Washington favored. After winning a second term along with a more sympathetic City Council, Washington was expected to become a more significant player on the state stage, until his untimely death.

When the current mayor was elected in 1989, Madigan arranged a fine welcome: passage of an income tax surcharge intended to channel some $90 million into city coffers. Daley also won funding for McCormick Place expansion during Edgar's first year in office, but has been stymied since then on such big-ticket items as land-based casino gambling, which the governor opposes, and a Lake Calumet airport, which Senate President James "Pate" Philip, a Wood Dale Republican, grounded despite Edgar's support.

The mayor's agenda for the coming session is equally daunting, headed by his ongoing quest for casino gambling, albeit on the riverboats Edgar says he'll support, and for state aid to help fill a projected $300 million deficit for city schools.

It is, no doubt, a challenge his father would have relished.

Charles N. Wheeler III is a former correspondent in the Springfield bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times. He began his career as a Statehouse reporter during the administrations of Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

26/Februarv 1995/Illinois Issues