In the anteroom to the office of the Mayor of Chicago there is an impressive photographic display of portraits of all the Chicago mayors since politics began. It follows the pattern of the political destiny of ethnic America but only to a point.
After all this is Chicago, the city once characterized crudely as “owned by the Jews, lived in by the Blacks and run by the Irish,” the place where Richard J. Daley ruled for twenty-one years and where his staff and associates were known as “The Polit-buro,” so unchanging were the faces.
Then, just at the time when the Blacks, under Mayors Harold Washington and Eugene Sawyer were taking over and one expected the Irish to fade into the middle distance, the face of incumbent Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J., suddenly inserted itself again on the wall of portraits.
Richard M. is a sliver, rather than a chip, off the old block. Sure, he comes from the same Bridgeport neighborhood in South Side Chicago that nurtured his father, but even there, where Richard Senior photos still proudly adorn the walls of local bars, Richard M. is viewed differently from his father.
That has much to do with the changing character of the city he inherited. Bridgeport is now a white ethnic enclave, the fast decaying ruins of the old Comiskey Park nearby stands as a metaphor for the flight of the whites to the suburbs.
At Schallers Tap House on Halstead Avenue in the heart of Bridgeport, a tavern forever associated with old Daley, the jury is still out on the son. Many feel that he has lost sight of his own roots. Others feel he had to build new alliances to stay in power.
But Daley knows the figures and realizes he is almost a mayor by default, in a city where Blacks now represent over 40 percent of the electorate. He came to power through an accident of politics: the untimely death of Harold Washington, and subsequent bitter division in the Black community offered him his opportunity.
Now he is determined to hold on to it.
And if that means distancing himself from the cronyism of the old Irish machine, so be it. While Daley denies that he has any such policy, the removal of a popular Irish commissioner who had survived the Washington era was read by many in the Irish community as a sign that it was not business as usual.
Daley’s bitter rival, former Mayor Jane Byrne, has said as much in an interview.
“He’s now acting the way the WASPs acted towards the early Irish,” she told the Irish Echo newspaper, one of several unflattering comments she made about the mayor.
Richard M. resembles Richard J. in one key aspect: he has a healthy distrust of the media. His press secretary sits close by, tape machine running, during our interview. His answers to questions are laconic.
The only time he seems enthused in response to an Irish question is, rather oddly, when he speaks of the food during his recent trip to Ireland. He says he was pleasantly surprised by it.
He’s for all the obvious things, Irish unity, immigration reform. His sense of his Irish American heritage is strongly religious. It taught him, he says, that “family ties, strong religious ties, personal and religious life are very important, and that education is one of the most important aspects of life.” He also believes the Irish religious sacrificed a great deal and helped others to better their lives.
The religious who educated generations of children, then stayed on in the parishes when the Irish left, and taught other ethnic groups, particularly impressed him.
He minimizes his father’s influence, saying the old man told him, “It’s your decision not mine,” when he decided to enter politics. He believes he has stood on his own two feet, and his rise through the ranks from state senate to Cook County State Attorney to Mayor proves it.
His major preoccupation is with drugs and the lack of federal money to alleviate the desperate needs of inner-city ghettos. The drug problem, AIDS, crack babies, rampant violence all stem in part from the same root, the unwillingness of the federal government to really tackle such problems, he says.
Daley is a popular mayor in Chicago. A recent opinion poll showed his support at fifty-seven percent. His city has been spared, so far, the worst of the economic recession so evident elsewhere. He has been astute in his coalition-building, particularly with the Black community where no obvious challenger is in sight. Arch-rival Jane Byrne rates just four percent in the latest opinion poll.
While the machine his father built is a memory, Richard M. Daley has built his own. You hear less of the old joke that all the problems. in Chicago are due to old Daley. Why? Because he died. Now his son lives and seems to offer a way towards solving them.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March 1991 issue of Irish America. ♦
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