American Pharaoh

by Adam Cohen

  By the time election day came around, there was little suspense about how things would turn out. In the end, Daley won an overwhelming victory, 778,612 to 311,940, carrying every ward except the Far Northwest Side 41st, Sheehan’s home ward. Daley’s 71 percent of the vote was a near record, falling just short of the 76 percent that Mayor Kelly won in his 1935 landslide. Sheehan blamed his loss on “the power of an entrenched machine.” In his victory statement, Daley thanked the voters and promised that “As mayor of Chicago, I shall embrace charity, love, mercy, and walk humbly with my God.” 51

  CHAPTER

  7

  Two for You, Three for Me

  The wave of goodwill that swept Daley into his second term as mayor did not last long. State’s attorney Benjamin Adamowski, ever on the lookout for scandals that could be traced to Daley and the machine, found a good one a month after the election. On May 7, he asked a grand jury to hand up indictments in connection with a $500,000-a-year ticket-fixing scandal in Chicago Traffic Court. That the court was fixing tickets was the worst-kept secret in Chicago, but Adamowski’s investigation had the potential to tie the practice directly to the Democratic machine. Daley’s response to Adamowski’s legal assault was to direct his commissioner of investigation, Irwin Cohen, to look into the charges. Cohen was an odd creation. Shortly after taking office, Daley had arranged for one of his allies on the City Council to introduce an ordinance giving the mayor authority for investigating all allegations of wrongdoing. Daley’s carefully conceived plan called for an investigator who would serve at the pleasure of the mayor, and who was prohibited from revealing any information he collected to anyone but the mayor. Before taking the job, Cohen had distinguished himself by heading up a City Council crime committee that failed to find any link between criminal activity in the city and politics. The commissioner of investigation’s office allowed Daley to take control of impending scandals, pushing other official bodies and the press to the side. As Cohen noted when he was appointed, his agency had been “set up exclusively for the benefit of the mayor.” But Daley’s critics also understood exactly what Cohen’s office was up to. One Republican had objected a year earlier when Daley shunted another potentially embarrassing case from the City Council to his commissioner of investigation. “One of the chief functions of a legislative body is investigation of charges against public employees,” he complained. “This is being by-passed in favor of a secret investigation that will be revealed only to the mayor.” Cohen’s probe of the Traffic Court would allow Daley to say he was taking the charges seriously, with no risk that anything would come from it. 1

  Adamowski would be far more difficult to control. Daley publicly charged that his old nemesis was on a “fishing expedition,” but the trouble was, the fishing was getting good. Three deputy clerks of the court and one bailiff were soon arrested on corruption charges, and the scandal was reaching ever closer to the Democratic machine. The fact was, it would be hard to have a scandal in Traffic Court without involving the machine since it had hundreds of Democratic patronage workers on its payroll. But Adamowski’s real target was Daley himself, and he was quick to lay the blame for the scandal at the steps of City Hall. If the mayor had required his comptroller to conduct the required audits of Traffic Court records, Adamowski charged, the misconduct would have been caught. Daley “better start complying with the law,” Adamowski declared, “or he may turn out to be the biggest fish we’re angling for.” 2

  It is difficult to believe that Daley did not know firsthand that patronage workers in Traffic Court were fixing tickets. It had been a thoroughly ingrained practice of the Democratic machine for years. Daley’s old patron Jake Arvey once admitted that when he was an alderman “to fix a parking ticket ... was the pattern.” And many Chicagoans had more recent stories of ticket fixing, including one newspaper reporter who said that when he started out there was someone on staff who routinely fixed all of the reporters’ traffic tickets. Daley had only one response when the machine’s corruption was dragged out into the open in a way that was too credible to ignore. He ostentatiously embraced reform, and turned to men with unassailable reputations to vouch for his integrity. On May 28, with Adamowski still working to expand his investigation, Daley announced that he had hired the directors of Northwestern University’s Transportation Center and its Traffic Institute to investigate ticketing procedures in Traffic Court and to recommend reforms. Their inquiry would not concern itself with such mundane matters as which particular Traffic Court employees might have violated the law. It would be not an “investigation of people, but an investigation of a system.” 3

  It was a welcome relief from scandal when the queen of England showed up. Daley relished any opportunity to entertain dignitaries, but when Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, accepted his invitation to join President Eisenhower for the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway on June 29, 1959, Daley realized it would be a great moment in Chicago history. It would be the first time a reigning British monarch had ever visited Chicago, and Daley took great pains to choreograph every detail of the visit. On the appointed day, more than a million people lined the shores of Lake Michigan to greet the queen and prince as they arrived on the royal yacht Britannia, accompanied by seven warships and five hundred smaller vessels, including two Chinese junks. Daley presented the queen with a box of recordings by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the prince with two polo mallets, and he hosted a lavish dinner for the royal couple, complete with gold tablecloths, gold service, and 50,000 roses. In remarks that were perhaps more informal than his royal company was accustomed to, Daley invited them to “come again and bring the children.” The queen’s visit created a media frenzy that more than met Daley’s expectations. The Sun-Times alone put the story on its front page, and promised additional stories and pictures on pages 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 24, and 25, prompting Time magazine to snipe that the paper had single-handedly confirmed Chicago’s reputation as the Windy City. The queen’s visit was one of the highlights of Daley’s years in office; his associates say it was an important turning point for him in coming to appreciate the stature that came with his office. Daley might have started out as a precinct captain knocking on doors in the 11th Ward, and he might have still lived in a simple bungalow in Bridgeport. But he had invited the queen of England to come to Chicago as his guest, and she had come. 4

  In another sign that he was moving up in the world, Daley was elevated from vice president to president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in July. It ushered in an era in which Daley would be seen as one of the nation’s leading voices on urban affairs. At home in Chicago, Daley continued to push for downtown redevelopment. In August, he held a press conference at City Hall to unveil plans for a $20 million Hartford Fire Insurance Company building. Daley praised the company for its decision to build in the city, and hailed the building as “another gem for the crown of our new Wacker Drive,” a street that had been steadily upgrading since its el was torn down in 1948. Daley had also put together another bond issue for urban development to be voted on in the November election. This time, he was asking the voters to approve a total of $66 million in new borrowing, including a $25 million bond for more streetlights, $15 million for sewer improvements, $15 million for bridges, grade separations, and viaducts, and several smaller bonds. The entire package of bonds was approved by the voters, and after the election Daley said he had directed city officials to proceed “full speed ahead” in spending the money. The easy approval of new construction money only whetted Daley’s appetite for more. In a speech to the Better Business Bureau’s annual meeting days after the bonds passed, he unveiled plans for an additional $751 million in capital improvement spending over the next five years. The money would be used, he said, to build more expressways, bridges, lighting, government buildings, and downtown parking. 5

  The bad news for Daley was that the city employee scandals were growing. His attempt to pass the Traffic Court scandal off to c
ity investigator Cohen did not end the matter. Adamowski was able to score political points by loudly attacking the “Cohen Rug Company” — where, Adamowski said, Daley sent things to be swept under the rug. The Chicago Tribune had also begun to uncover some unsavory employees on the city payroll. An asphalt foreman in the Department of Streets and Sanitation was revealed to be on probation for looting cars in the Midway Airport parking lot. A paving supervisor was found to be working a full eight-hour shift as a trucking company supervisor. It also turned out that he was a juice man for the syndicate who had been arrested twelve times for robbery; on one occasion he had been shot by police while resisting arrest. Another employee collected gambling money in the Loop for the syndicate. It looked as if the syndicate, which had helped put Daley in office, was using its share of patronage positions to keep some of its own staff on the city payroll. Daley lashed out at the newspapers that were making what he considered to be baseless charges. “If we take the attitude that because a man made a mistake 25 or 30 years ago, that he shouldn’t be employed, then where are we going?” he said. Daley then added, “If I took that attitude then I wouldn’t be in government!” He never elaborated on what lurked in his past that would have made him ineligible for government service. 6

  In December, Governor Stratton announced his intention to run for a third term in 1960. It was generally agreed that a strong Democrat would have a good chance of defeating him. Stratton had barely won reelection in 1956, despite a Republican landslide that year. And 1960 was already looking like a Democratic year — in the 1958 midterm elections, the Democrats had won twelve Senate seats from the Republicans, and forty-eight House seats. Daley’s name began to circulate as a possible gubernatorial candidate. As usual, he kept his own counsel, and always dodged the question when he was asked if he was considering running. “What do you think?” he said to one reporter who asked him directly. When he was told that he would have a tough race against Stratton, Daley responded, “Could be, could be.” 7 But if Daley was not saying yes, he also was not making any effort to dampen the speculation. There is no doubt that if Daley had wanted his party’s nomination for governor, he could have had it. In the end, though, Daley took himself out of the running, without explaining why. If he had run, it would have been a hard-fought race, and Daley’s close association with Chicago and the Democratic machine would have hurt him with voters in the suburbs and down-state. The risk-averse Daley might simply have been unwilling to give up the powerful position to which he had just been reelected for the mere chance of becoming governor. Daniel Rostenkowski believes that Daley enjoyed being considered for governor, but that he was not interested in moving beyond his twin posts of mayor and machine boss. Daley’s son William says his father’s resistance was due to his commitment to running ethnically balanced tickets — and his concern about John F. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy. William Daley says his father talked it over with Kennedy. “Kennedy said, ‘Why don’t you run for governor?’” William Daley says. “He said, ‘If we have two Catholics — one running for president and one for governor — only one is going to win, and it’s not going to be you.’” 8

  Daley began the presidential campaign year by declaring on January 3, 1960, that John F. Kennedy was “highly qualified to lead our nation.” Even though he had hastened to add that there were also “other highly qualified Democrat[s],” Daley’s words were strong encouragement to Kennedy, who had just announced his intention to run. 9 Daley had long-standing ties to the Kennedy family. Joseph Kennedy, the candidate’s father, owned Merchandise Mart, the massive retailing space on the north bank of the Chicago River, and had been cultivating Daley for years. “Joe Kennedy first approached him in the forties or thirties when he was in the legislature,” says William Daley. And Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver was chairman of the Chicago Board of Education. Daley was probably genuinely excited by the possibility that a fellow Irish-Catholic might be elected president of the United States — the ultimate rebuke to generations of WASPs who had looked down on and mistreated his long-suffering people. But like most members of the machine, Daley never let idealism interfere with the pragmatic concern of holding on to power. “A lot of these guys, their political horizons extend all the way to end of the ward,” a Chicago reformer once said, in describing the thinking of men like Daley. “They don’t care what’s going on in the state or the country. They don’t care whether a bill passes or fails. They want the jobs. They want to run their wards. They don’t care who is president or senator. How many jobs has a senator got?” What Daley probably liked best about Kennedy was that with his youth and charm, and his ethnic and religious bond to many Cook County voters, he looked like the candidate with the best chance of sweeping the entire machine slate into office with him. 10

  Now that he had taken himself out of the running, Daley needed a candidate for governor. County judge Otto Kerner had made an impression two years earlier, when he had run strongly, and even carried the Cook County suburbs. Equally important, Kerner was that rare breed, a Protestant with strong ties to the Chicago machine. If Kennedy were at the top of the ticket, Kerner would provide the ethnic balance necessary to hold on to the Protestant vote. When the slate-making committee convened at the Morrison Hotel in early January, Kerner was officially slated for governor. For clerk of the Municipal Court, Daley tapped Joseph McDonough, son of his old 11th Ward patron. It was an obscure position, but one that was vitally important to the machine because of the number of patronage positions it controlled. Daley could trust McDonough. The other critical race was state’s attorney. Daley’s old nemesis, Benjamin Adamowski, had been the top Cook County prosecutor for the past four years, and he had been using the position as a battering ram against Daley and the machine. If he was reelected, it would mean four more years of allegations and investigations — and the odds were good that he would use the office as a platform to run for mayor against Daley in 1963. It is an indication of just how seriously Daley took the race that he reached outside the ranks of the machine to select a candidate of unimpeachable qualifications and reputation. Daniel Ward, dean of DePaul University Law School, was this year’s Paul Douglas or Adlai Stevenson — the machine candidate designed to make voters forget what they didn’t like about the machine. Adamowski saw just what Daley was up to in selecting Ward, and at every opportunity he told voters that his real opponent was not Ward, but Daley and the machine. In the course of the campaign, he actually challenged Daley — not Ward — to debate him. “Daley should quit sitting back being the Edgar Bergen of the Democratic organization, with his Charley McCarthys out there in front making the statements coming out of his mouth,” Adamowski said. 11

  There is no good time for a mayor to be hit with a massive police scandal, but the timing of the Summerdale scandal was particularly unfortunate. Just as Daley was gearing up for a big election year, Chicagoans learned that their policemen were engaged in the ultimate betrayal of their positions. Corruption in the Chicago police department was certainly nothing new. One history of the Chicago police starts out by noting that “scandal, disgrace, and rampant political corruption characterized the administration of the Chicago Police Department for 100 years.” In fact, most Chicagoans looked on police corruption as a bit of odd local color. As columnist Mike Royko once observed, “The Chicago River is polluted, the factories belch smoke, the Cubs are the North Side team, the Sox are the South Side team, George Halas owns the Bears, and the cops are crooked — so what else is new?” Chicagoans learned before they were old enough to drive that the way to beat a speeding ticket was to wrap their driver’s license in a five-or a ten-dollar bill when they handed it to the patrolman. Comedian Mort Sahl once observed that the question of whether it was to be five dollars or ten made Chicago’s highways the last outpost of collective bargaining in America. Nor was it any great secret that the syndicate, policy wheel operators, drug dealers, and pimps had all worked out their accommodations with the police department — often with Democratic war
d committeemen and precinct captains acting as intermediaries. Daley knew these facts of life in Chicago better than most: many of his Bridgeport neighbors, and members of both his family and Sis’s, were on the police force. Daley likely shared the prevailing view in Bridgeport that a modest level of payoffs was part of what Chicago police recruits bargained for when they signed on, and that many policemen needed the money to support large families. In fact, Daley had been elected in large part because of his willingness to tolerate flawed law enforcement. Dawson and the black submachine had pushed Mayor Kennelly out of City Hall for ignoring the Chicago tradition of keeping the heat off politically protected policy wheels and illegal jitney cabs. 12