Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (ISBN: 0525070001) was written by Mike Royko in 1971. It is a critical biography of Daley and the Chicago political machine.
The author connects Daley to Plunkitt, once explicitly even. There's extensive reference to 'graft' and types of it, and also to the 'issue' civil service.
The bookends are Daley's experience with racial exploitation and violence.
- Opens with anecdotes about segregation in the city: "To the north of the Loop was Germany. To the northwest was Poland. To the west were Italy and Israel. To the southwest were Bohemia and Lithuania. And to the south was Ireland." (p. 24)
- The second chapter details how he was born in Bridgeport and went to an all-white school (De La Salle Institute, operated by the Christian Brothers) just over the 'border' into a black neighborhood. He was an active participant in the neighborhood gangs (esp. the Hamburg Club) that escalated the 1919 race riot.
Chapter 8 explores the 1968 riots following the assassination of King, including the infamous 'shoot to kill' order.
- Chapter 9 explores the 1968 Democratic National Convention police riot.
- Chapter 10 closes with the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, local leaders of the Black Panthers, during a raid led by Edward Hanrahan, the state's attorney.
Chapters 2 and 3 gives the history of Chicago politics starting from Thompson.
William Thompson was first elected mayor in 1915, as a Republican. He was openly affiliated with Al Capone and enabled his reign of terror.
- Black voters were credited with Thompson's narrow re-election in 1919. The deadly Race Riot of 1919 broke out that July.
William Dever won in 1923, a reform Democrat. This was the same year that the city council's redistricting and electoral reforms (single member districts instead of staggered election multi-member districts) came into effect. He chased Capone out of Chicago, although he was easily able to take control of Cicero. ("On election day, three people were killed, several were kidnapped, many were beaten, and Capone's candidates won." (p. 34))
- Thompson returned in 1927 and beat out Dever, returning Capone to power in Chicago.
- Anton Cermak built a multi-ethnic coalition ("Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and Bohemians") to take control of the Democratic Party from the Irish who had traditionally dominated it. He won the Cook county board presidency in 1931. Very shortly after, he defeated Thompson and became mayor.
In 1933 however, an assassin aiming for Roosevelt killed Cermak instead. Ed Kelly became mayor and Pat Nash became party leader, effectively re-establishing Irish domination. Nash died in 1943 leaving Kelly in complete control.
- Kelly importantly politicized the school board. ("The school board was loaded with party hacks, and what they weren't carrying off, they were wasting. The PTA had demanded that the school superintendent be replaced, and the superintendent airily responded that he 'couldn't care less' what the PTA wanted." (p. 49))
- Jacob Arvey, a Democratic alderman and prominent Jewish leader, was brought in to fix up the party machine. He coerced Kelly to step aside for the 1947 election, running reformer Martin J. Kennelly instead. The next election saw Republicans swept into the city council, but Kennelly took the mayoral race.
- The elections in November 1950 were rocked by scandal. The Democratic nominee for county sheriff, Daniel Gilbert, was discovered days before the election to have amassed a fortune through sports betting. Up-and-coming political stars like John Duffy, nominee for county board, lost their races as a consequence. Arvey was also removed as party chair.
- Kennelly lost the critical support of William Dawson, ward boss, congressman, and "leader of the black wards" (p. 56), and in 1953 became a lame duck mayor.
- Daley's connection in all of this:
Daley, McDonough, Kenny, and Kennelly were all of Bridgeport, an Irish Democrat stronghold.
He was a precinct captain under Joe McDonough, an Irish alderman who aligned with Cermak early.
After McDonough died, he was Babe Connelly's right hand man.
- He was made a state legislator and was "Mayor Kelly's man in Springfield" (p. 47). Kelly further made him county comptroller.
- At the same time that Arvey was shuffling out Kelly for Kennelly, Daley shuffled out Connelly for himself.
- He was appointed to Stevenson's cabinet in 1949.
- He was elected county clerk in 1950.
- He was elected chair in 1953 and used that position to ensure that, come 1955, he was party favorite for mayor. Kennelly nonetheless contested the primaries, but we was supported by only 2 ward bosses: Tom Nash and Frank Keenan. Benjamin Adamowski had also contested the nomination, and switched parties afterward. Robert Merriam, an alderman who had also just switched parties, served as the Republican nominee.
Adamowski is then treated as a foil to tell the history. He won election as state's attorney in 1956. He produced three scandals against the Daley administration:
- Traffic courts were fixing tickets. Policemen took bribes and paid into the machine.
- Municipal courts were refunding posted bail to bondsmen after defendants failed to appear for their hearing. Policemen had de facto partnerships with favored bondsmen and routed defendants accordingly.
- A burglar confessed that the other members of his outfit were policemen.
The last in particular forced Daley to adopt the platform of a reformer. He removed police chief Timothy O'Connor and brought in Orlando Wilson. He allowed Wilson to reform the police, including redrawing the precincts.
The November 1960 elections were marred by massive voter fraud in Cook county. A slow recount began to give evidence that there was very little fixing of national races however, and the Republican Party declined to continue funding it. Adamowski was thus removed from office.
Daley replaced Wilson in 1967 with James Conlisk. In April 1968, following the assassination of King, Daley directed Conlisk to give shoot to kill orders. Police brutality continued to ratchet up, culminating in the police riot outside the Democratic National Convention in August.
Reading notes
Chapter 1 established that institutions are insufficient to limit mayoral power.
- The separation between the city government and the county board is purely symbolic.
- The opposition in city council is silenced, sometimes literally.
- Aldermen are mostly lawyers, and have every incentive to treat this second job as rubberstamping so that they can return to their first job by lunch.
- Lucrative contracts only go to contractors who pay into the machine. When a lucrative contract doesn't exist, one is created by declaring a neighborhood blighted. If an outside contractor submits a cheaper bid, the unions pull all laborers. This cycle self-sustains.
Chapters 4 and 5 explore how this came to be.
- Running weak candidates who cannot oppose the machine.
- Relatively unknown local politicians for county or state offices
- Scandal-hit politicians who have no leg to stand on with other parties or independents
- Pulling politicians out of retirement
- Balancing ward bosses against each other, especially in terms of the patronage allowed. Prevents party rivals from amassing too many influential offices in their own organizations.
- Pipeline of lawyers up the machine. Contractors can't possibly win without retaining a political lawyer. They retire into judgeships, but only if they belong to a powerful ward boss' organization.
- Stripping the city council of budget powers.
- The mayor's office began drafting the budget.
- Stripped alderpeoples' offices of driveway permitting powers.
- Massive patronage system
- Coincidence of police districts and wards meant ward bosses picked their own superintendants.
- Anyone holding such a job is expected to raise funds for the machine.
- Massive nepotism scheme. See page 73.
- Party candidates for mayor need a petition with enough signatures to match 0.5% of the party's votes in the prior election. Independents need to match 5% of the total number of votes in the prior election, and they must be signatures of people who have not voted in any recent party primary. An impossible sum.