Mangled Machine

It was primary-election night in Chicago, but what was the matter with everybody? Why no festivities, why not the usual arm pumping and back thumping? The hordes of loyal Democratic Party workers who gathered in the Sherman House hotel to await the returns were uncommonly solemn and silent. Ward bosses did not barge exuberantly into Mayor Richard Daley's tightly guarded inner office. They slunk in sheepishly or stayed away altogether.

The gloom was justified. The vote tallies had spoiled their plans and struck the machine a staggering blow. For the first time since 1938, the Cook County organization had lost a primary. Not only had Edward Hanrahan beaten the machine's candidate, Raymond Berg, for state's attorney, but Insurgent Daniel Walker had won the party nomination for Governor against Paul Simon, now the Lieutenant Governor. Five machine-backed state legislators from Chicago had also gone down to defeat before independent candidates. As he moodily paced a corridor in the hotel, a ward boss remarked: "This is like waiting outside the maternity room when someone is having a miscarriage."

The Daley ticket was trounced by a combination of the Old and the New Politics. The old was represented by "Fast Eddie" Hanrahan, who returned from the political dead--and as everyone knows, the dead do not vote in Chicago unless Daley tells them to. Daley had originally endorsed Hanrahan for reelection, but party pressure forced the mayor to dump him from the ticket. A grand jury had indicted Hanrahan for obstructing justice in the investigation of the killing of two Black Panthers by the police in 1969.

Surprise Dessert. Hanrahan, however, decided to fight back, and he had the resources to do so. As U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois and as state's attorney, he had built up a reputation as a zealous law enforcer. He asked voters during the campaign: "Would you want your law enforcement carried out by me or by a nice fellow?" A volatile man, he buttonholed precinct captains to remind them who he was and what they owed him. When he found that doors were locked at ward meetings, he sometimes tried to bash them down. He claimed that he had done more than anyone else to protect blacks from street crime, but he also played to the gut fears of whites. His appeal was likened to that of George Wallace.

Normally surly and dour, Hanrahan was at pains to demonstrate another side of his personality--one that people had not seen before. He developed a sense of humor. Marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade, he doffed his hat and released a white dove as he passed Mayor Daley. He engineered a surprise dessert for Daley's precinct captains when they gathered in support of Berg at a dinner. When they cracked open their fortune cookies, they found the message "Hanrahan is the man."

Less amusing, Hanrahan made use of the powers of his office to help him get elected. It was implied that anyone who opposed him too vigorously might become the target of an investigation --and investigations are not popular in Cook County; they have a way of turning up things.

On election night, Martha Mitchell called Hanrahan to gush, "I'm a Republican, but you're my kind of Democrat." Not much later, Mayor Daley also phoned his congratulations. "Politics is no different than sports," the mayor philosophized. "You win 'em and you lose 'em." Having defied the machine and won, Hanrahan returns to the fold with much more power than he had before he was kicked out. Unless he is convicted on criminal charges, he seems likely to beat his Republican opponent in the general election. He is, in fact, in a strong position to succeed Daley.

It was the New Politics that cost the mayor the gubernatorial primary. When he announced for Governor more than a year ago, Dan Walker was scarcely known outside Chicago. He had served as vice president and general counsel for Montgomery Ward, and had headed the commission that investigated the rioting during the 1968 Democratic Convention. His report was an even-handed indictment of both demonstrators and police, but it aroused the everlasting enmity of Daley and other law-and-order backers by referring to a "police riot."

Fed Up. Last year Walker got publicity by walking 1,200 miles around the state, spreading a populist message: he roasted his opponent for suggesting an increase in the state income tax; he denounced some of Daley's proposed public works in Chicago; he opposed busing. But what he chiefly presented to the voters was Walker the man --straight-shooting, indignant, a mite self-righteous. He would lock eyes with his audience and demand: "Aren't you fed up with race-track and shoe-box politics?" It was an allusion to scandals that have embarrassed the Daley machine. Voters apparently were too mesmerized to remember the Walker Report or whether they liked it. They liked Walker because he appeared to care, and they liked his seven sprightly children who helped in his campaign.

Walker won with 52% of the vote, even running Simon a close race in areas of Chicago where the machine is strongest. While it will be easy for Old Politician Hanrahan to make up with Old Politician Daley, it will be harder, if not impossible, for New Politician Walker. Daley may well favor Walker's Republican opponent Governor Richard Ogilvie, the front runner in the November election. But it is Daley, basically, who must sue for peace because he took the licking. It has now been proved that the charismatic independent candidate--whether of the old school or the new--can triumph even in the innermost fastness of once impregnable Cook County.

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