Divide and Rule in the Windy City

By Jack E. White/Chicago

Back when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and his powerful political machine ran Chicago, winning a Democratic nomination was tantamount to victory in the general election. These days the machine is falling to pieces, and candidates have little to lose by running without its support. The point was made abundantly clear last week when Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, kicked off his campaign for a second term by threatening to skip the Feb. 24 Democratic primary altogether and run as an independent in April's election. Not to be outdone, a brigade of would-be successors, all lifelong Democrats, proclaimed that they too might shun the party and enter the fray as independents or even -- horrors! -- as Republicans. Crowed the mayor, whose best hopes for re-election depend on a crowded field: "Monkey see, monkey do. The more the merrier."

What explains the rush away from the long-preferred Democratic label is the fact that in Chicago racial voting has become a habit. Blacks and whites each account for about 42% of Chicago's 3 million population, and Hispanics for most of the remainder. If two or more white contenders carve up the white vote, blacks -- voting as a bloc -- have the numerical strength to elect a mayor on their own. That is what happened in 1983, when Washington narrowly won the Democratic nomination in a three-way primary race against former Mayor Jane Byrne and Cook County Prosecutor Richard M. Daley, son of the legendary boss. Chastened, Washington's white opponents are now trying to unite behind a single challenger. Says Chicago Political Scientist Paul Green: "The name of the game is to get Harold Washington one-on-one. That's the only way you can beat him."

The trouble is that Washington's enemies, whose dislike for one another seems to be exceeded only by their distaste for the mayor, have been unable to decide which great white hope to get behind. This year, for the first time in 70 years, Cook County's Democratic Central Committee, Mayor Daley's former stronghold, could not agree on a standard-bearer. So neither Byrne nor the mayor's archenemy, Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, leader of the anti-Washington faction on the city council, has the blessing of the machine.

For his part, Washington is taunting his challengers by playing a masterly game of political chicken. Last week the mayor filed a huge stack of petitions qualifying him for a spot on the Democratic primary ballot. Should only one Democratic contender square off against him, reducing his chances of winning, the mayor may duck the party contest and jump straight into a three- way general election as a black independent running against a white Democrat and a white Republican. Washington clearly relishes forcing his opponents to play a guessing game. "I am getting a tremendous amount of pleasure out of watching the opposition squirm and wonder what I'm doing," he gloats. "Let 'em sweat."

One side effect of the Democratic squabbling has been to resuscitate Chicago's long-moribund Republican Party. If Washington risks running in the Democratic primary, the Republican nominee could be in line for a one-on-one shot against him. As a result, the Republicans will stage a hard-fought battle for their nomination for the first time since 1939, pitting mild- mannered Bernard Epton, 65, who narrowly lost to Washington in 1983, against Byrne's former budget director, Donald Haider, 44, until now a career Democrat. Still another popular Democrat, County Tax Assessor Thomas Hynes, is running as an independent -- unless he also changes his mind and enters the Democratic primary.

All but overlooked in the scramble is Washington's performance in office. For the first three years of his term, the mayor's initiatives were frustrated by the opposition of Vrdolyak's bloc, which held a 29-to-21 majority on the city council. But in court-ordered special elections last spring, enough Washington allies won council seats to give the mayor a 25-to-25 split. Using his tie-breaking vote, Washington proceeded to oust Vrdolyak's henchmen from powerful committees and rammed through a series of measures, including a $72 million property-tax increase to balance the city's budget.

Despite such successes, Washington's reputation as a reformer has been hurt by a 2 1/2-year federal probe of city hall corruption that culminated last month in the indictments of seven local officials, including two black aldermen allied with the mayor. Known as Operation Incubator, the ongoing inquiry focuses on bribes paid to Chicago officials to win a parking-ticket collection contract for a private firm. Although Washington boasts that "we have put the machinery together to move aside institutional corruption," a report on the scandal, commissioned by the mayor himself, found that the city remains "an environment conducive to the kinds of abuses we are investigating." In the wake of the study, Washington fired his revenue director and canceled a contract with a second tainted bill- collection agency.

The scandal has undoubtedly hurt Washington with Chicago's small minority of white liberal voters, but its impact on his re-election chances may prove negligible. While Byrne has not hesitated to lambaste the mayor for raising local taxes, she has remained silent about the contract imbroglio. Recent polls indicate that while Byrne and Washington would run neck and neck in a two-way contest, the mayor's loyal black support would make him an easy winner in a larger field.