The Lady and the Machine

Rebellious Jane Byrne knocks out the mayor of Chicago

The arrogance of the Democratic political machine powered for so long by the late mayor Richard J. Daley was more obvious than ever on the eves of last week's primary election. "The machine may not be well , oiled," proclaimed Alderman Vito Marzullo, "but it will never break down. Mayor Bilandic is going to swamp them." But break down it did.

Dissident Machine Democrat Jane Byrne, 44, a Daley protege and for ten years commissioner of consumer sales, had become disenchanted with Michael Bilandic, 56, who, was elected two years ago to succeed the Boss. In 1977, she charged that the new mayor had "greased" the way for an unwarranted taxicab rate increase. For that insubordination, Bilandic fired her. Veterans at city hall guffawed when the angry woman announced that she would challenge Bilandic for his job.

They were not laughing last ? week. The plucky Byrne knocked Bilandic out of office, winning the Democratic nomination as the party's candidate for mayor by some 17,000 votes out of more than 800,000 cast. She not only beat the machine but Chicago's business and newspaper establishment, which supported the incumbent. Byrne is an overwhelming favorite to win next month over her little-known opponent, Republican Stockbroker Wallace Johnson.

How did Byrne pull off the stunning upset? TIME Midwest Bureau Chief Benjamin W. Gate reports:

Last fall Bilandic had looked unbeatable. An easy-going type who constantly sang Chicago's praises, he staged a successful summer festival along the lakefront that attracted hundreds of thousands of fun seekers. He married a svelte socialite, Heather Morgan, and played the proud host to President Jimmy Carter, who slept in the mayor's house.

Then came January and February, with back-to-back blizzards and a winter long record 87 inches of snow. For more than a month the city that worked became the city that did not work. The snow was not removed. Residents, unable to use their cars on the drifted streets, waited in subzero cold for elevated trains or buses that never came. Yet every night, there was Bilandic on television, proclaiming that everything was fine, that the situation was under control.

As the uproar rose, it turned out the mayor had hired a former city hall crony to prepare a new snow-removal plan, and paid him $90,000 to do it. The resulting 23-page paper proved to be hardly better than a high school essay. Then came revelations of similar huge consulting fees to other political buddies. Chicagoans' anger increased. Finally stung, Bilandic made a bizarre speech in which he likened the attacks on him to the Crucifixion and the criticism of the city to the Holocaust. He charged that the same "subversives" who had toppled governments in Iran and Cambodia were now trying to undermine Chicago.

Jane Byrne, meanwhile, trudged from campaign lunches to dinners and church socials, repeatedly assailing "grease jobs" and "snow jobs" and "deceit" and "greed." Although she was outspent 10 to 1 by the machine, the press amplified her cries. She repeatedly invoked the names of Daley and John F. Kennedy, implying that they would have approved of her fight.

When election day arrived, the weather once again plagued Bilandic. It turned mild and sunny, and citizens turned out in near record numbers (57%) to vent their fury. Byrne won in 29 of the city's 50 wards, scoring most heavily in black neighborhoods whose residents blamed Bilandic for a transit authority decision to eliminate several passenger stops so as to serve outlying white areas better. Many residents were also angry at Bilandic's having outmaneuvered black Alderman Wilson Frost, the council's senior member, for the temporary appointment to succeed Daley.

At Byrne's frenzied election-night headquarters, a long-haired young man seized the microphone and exulted: "There is no more machine! There will never be a machine again!" He did not know Chicago. Shortly after the primary, Byrne called Cook County Democratic Party Chairman George Dunne and told him she did not want any split in the party. Dunne happily accepted the olive branch. "You know," said Dunne, in the midst of the defeat, "you can make peace with anyone."sb

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