Political history of Chicago

The Politics of Chicago have been dominated by controversy, corruption, turn-of-the-19th century businessmen, Irish Catholics, and Richard J. Daley and the Daley family.

History

19th century

In 1855, Chicago Mayor Levi Boone threw Chicago politics into the national spotlight with some interesting proposals that would lead to the Lager Beer Riot.

During much of the last half of the 19th Century, Chicago's politics were dominated by a growing Democratic Party organization dominated by ethnic ward-heelers. During the 1880s and 1890s, Chicago also had a powerful radical tradition with large and highly organized socialist, anarchist and labor organizations. [cite book | title=Labor and Urban Politics | author=Schneirov, Richard | publisher=University of Illinois Press | date=April 1, 1998 | id=ISBN 0-252-06676-6 | pages=173-174]

The politics of Chicago came into play after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. For political reasons, a rumor was spread that a cow knocked over a lantern, thereby causing the fire. The election that year turned the fire into a "political football", with controversy erupting over who was culpable for the fire's rapid and insufficiently controlled spread. The winning party used allegations of mismanagement to spread fear, causing some voters to vote more than once. This would give rise to the famous saying "vote early and often."

20th century

The political environment in Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s let organized crime flourish to the point that many Chicago policemen earned more money from pay-offs than from the city. This same culture led directly to the Chicago Black Sox scandal of game fixing by the Chicago White Sox in 1919.

The modern era of politics is still dominated by machine politics in many ways, and the Chicago Democratic Machine became a style honed and perfected by Richard J. Daley after his election in 1955. Further evidence of this is the fact that his son, Richard M. Daley, is the current mayor.

Richard J. Daley's mastery of machine politics preserved the Chicago Democratic Machine long after the demise of similar machines in other large American cities. [cite book | title=Chicano Politics and Society in the Late Twentieth Century | editor=Montejano, David | date=January 1, 1998 | publisher=University of Texas Press | id=ISBN 0-292-75215-6 | pages=33-34] During much of that time, the city administration found opposition mainly from a liberal "independent" faction of the Democratic Party. The independents finally won control of city government in 1983 with the election of Harold Washington. Since Washington's death, Chicago has returned to the leadership of the Democratic organization led by Richard M. Daley, although it may differ from the previous ward-based organization, as it relies on other groups, such as the Hispanic Democratic Organization. [ [http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/clout/followup/cst-nws-hiredguy06.html "Sun-Times" series on the Hired Truck Program scandal] .]

A point of interest is the party leanings of the city. For much of the last century, Chicago has been considered one of the largest Democratic strongholds in the United States. For example, the citizens of Chicago have not elected a Republican mayor since 1927, when William Thompson was voted into office. Today, only one city council member is Republican.

The police corruption that came to the light from the Summerdale Scandal of 1960, where police officers kept stolen property or sold it and kept the cash, was another black eye on the local political scene of Chicago.

The Daley faction, with financial help from Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., helped elect John F. Kennedy to the office of President of the United States in the 1960 presidential election. The electoral votes from the state of Illinois, with nearly half its population located in Chicago-dominated Cook County, were a deciding factor in the win for Kennedy over Richard Nixon.

Chicago politics have also hosted some very publicized campaigns and conventions. The Democratic Party decided on Harry S. Truman as the vice-presidential candidate at the 1944 Democratic National Convention. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was the scene of mass political rallies and discontent, leading to the famous trial of the Chicago Seven.

Home-town columnist Mike Royko wrote satirically that Chicago's motto ("Urbs in Horto" or "City in a Garden") should instead be "Ubi Ist Mio", or "Where's Mine?"

Notes

References

*Lindberg, Richard Carl. "To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal : 1855-1960". New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0-275-93415-2
*Cohen, Adam. and Elizabeth Taylor. "American Pharaoh : Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for Chicago and the Nation". Boston: Back Bay Books, 2001. ISBN 0-316-83489-0
*Green, Paul M.. "The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition". Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8093-2612-4
*Sautter, R. Craig, Edward M. Burke. "Inside the Wigwam : Chicago Presidential Conventions, 1860-1996". Chicago: Loyola Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8294-0911-4
*Simpson, Vernon. "Chicago's Politics & Society: a Selected Bibliography". DeKalb: Center for Government Studies, DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University, 1972.
*Wendt, Lloyd, Herman Kogan, and Bette Jore. "Big Bill of Chicago". Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-8101-2319-3
*Wendt, Lloyd, and Herman Kogan. "Lords of the Levee". Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967.

External links

* [http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/989.html Essay on Chicago politics by Maureen A. Flanagan @ the Chicago Historical Society's Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago]
* [http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/774.html Machine Politics essay by Roger Biles @ the Chicago Historical Society's Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago]