American Pharaoh (22 page)

Daley’s run for mayor was a tour de force of old-style machine politics. He spent relatively little time introducing himself
to actual voters, and almost none working out plans for the city or positions on controversial issues. Classic machine campaigns
like Daley’s were focused on gearing up the machine to work as efficiently as possible on election day. Daley spent much of
his time meeting with the city’s fifty ward committeemen and building personal relationships with as many of the three thousand
precinct captains — he always pronounced it “presint captains” — as he could. Daley knew that if he could fire them up, they
would in turn fire up their voters. Although he was not an eloquent man, Daley had a rare ability to reach party workers with
what has been called his “I’m witchoo treatment.”
⁵²

Daley traveled around the city and spent countless hours visiting with machine workers in the ward organizations. “We will
continue to carry the message as the early Christians did,” he liked to say, “by word of mouth.” Daley knew how to speak the
language of the neighborhoods. He asked after the workers’ families, talked with the men about the White Sox, and with the
women about church and children. When he delivered prepared remarks, Daley spoke “as a good father, good neighbor, and good
citizen.” And like any good politician, he could deliver a well-worn joke. “There was a fellow who was hard of hearing, and
he had been doing a lot of drinking,” went one of Daley’s favorites. “So he went to see Doctor Hughes, over at Thirty-seventh
and Wallace, and the doc told him, ‘Pat, I’m telling you this: If you keep up your drinking, you’ll lose your hearing.’ Well,
the fella came back in a month, and he says, ‘Well, Doc, I’ll tell you, I been enjoying what I been drinking so much more
than what I been hearing that I thought I’d just keep on drinking.’” Daley fine-tuned his message to the personalities and
ethnic politics of particular wards. At a 25th Ward Democratic Organization rally, presided over by Alderman Vito Marzullo,
Daley was introduced as someone who “will recognize the Italian-Americans and other nationality groups in Chicago.”
⁵³

Daley’s campaign also made great use of a Chicago machine tradition — massive luncheons and rallies for the precinct captains.
These meetings were held in the large downtown hotels and various civic centers around the city. Red, white, and blue bunting
hung down from the balconies, photographs of the candidates were strategically placed around the auditorium, and thousands
of hardworking machine loyalists hooted and hollered from their seats as a parade of speakers rose to the podium to heap praise
on even the most mediocre member of the machine slate. On Valentine’s Day 1955, candidate Daley spoke to an audience of almost
five thousand of the machine’s best workers gathered at the Civic Opera House. As a brass band struck up “For He’s a Jolly
Good Fellow,” the party faithful — crammed into 3,700 seats and jamming the aisles — waved “Daley” placards and roared their
approval for five uninterrupted minutes. A chorus sang “Back of the Yard,” in tribute to Daley’s 11th Ward. As Arvey spoke,
Daley moved through the exuberant mass of humanity, surrounded by a wedge of family and uniformed ushers. He waved and grinned
at the crowd, which was by now calling out “Dick!” and cheering wildly. When he got to the podium, Daley told the machine
workers that their calling was a noble one. “My opponent says, ‘I took politics out of the schools; I took politics out of
this and I took politics out of that.’ I say to you: There’s nothin’ wrong with politics. There’s nothing wrong with good
politics. Good politics is good government.” In Daley’s speeches, the Chicago machine took on an almost religious quality
— as if he were confusing it with the other Irish-Catholic, hierarchical institution that loomed so large in his life, the
Catholic Church. “I am proud to be the candidate of this organization,” he told a rally of precinct captains at the Morrison
Hotel. “No man can walk alone.” For the black precinct captains, Daley often hauled out Congressman Bill Dawson to do some
country-style preaching. “If we were not successful we’d be just an organization,” Dawson told one group of the submachine
faithful at a rally during the 1955 mayoral election. “May we always be a machine!” Before he was done, an audience member
shouted from the balcony, “Pour it on!”
⁵⁴

Daley’s ministrations to the Democratic foot soldiers had an electrifying effect. “This election has revived the whole damn
party,” North Side alderman Paddy Bauler would say after the primary. “It’s fired up the precinct captains like they ain’t
been in thirty years. My guys are going all out for Daley in the general election. They like a guy who takes care of them.”
Mayor Kennelly, who had been the machine’s candidate twice but never bothered to understand machine politics, never grasped
the significance of Daley’s work in the ward organizations. He believed that politics was about standing up for the right
principles, and he was convinced that if the voters were told of his views on such issues as civil-service reform, they would
naturally support him over Daley. “Television is our precinct captain,” a Kennelly aide boasted during the campaign. But Daley
understood Chicago politics far better than Kennelly ever would. “Can you ask your television set for a favor?” he responded.
⁵⁵

Daley’s campaign benefited from some of the machine’s more un-savory practices. The machine’s patronage army — government
workers who knew that their jobs were at stake — went into battle for Daley in this election as they had never battled before.
And the campaign was flush with campaign money extracted by the machine from its usual sources. Companies doing business with
the city and county kicked back thousands of dollars, knowing that failure to do so could mean the end of their government
contracts. Daley, who subscribed to his own version of Tammany Hall leader George Washington Plunkitt’s famous distinction
between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft,” saw nothing wrong with the kickbacks. “A real crook, in the eyes of Daley, was
somebody who’d take the $5,000 for himself,” said Lynn Williams, a township committeeman and member of the Cook County Democratic
Central Committee. “A fellow who would ask someone to make a $5,000 contribution to the party was a loyal party worker.” The
machine also had a tradition of charging “assessments” to each of the ward organizations for the cost of a citywide campaign.
Ward organizations came by this money in a variety of legal and illegal ways, including forcing patronage workers to give
back 1 percent to 2 percent of their salaries, shaking down businesses for zoning variances, and siphoning off protection
money from illegal activities in the ward. During the campaign, an unidentified man appeared on TV with his back to the camera
to say that fully 10 percent of the city’s illegal gambling revenues went to politicians in the form of “juice money.” This
year, much of that juice money would be used to turn out voters for Daley.
⁵⁶

Daley’s supporters were not above using violence or threats to intimidate the opposition. In the final days of the 1955 campaign,
an anti-machine aldermanic candidate in the South Side 6th Ward — a hotly contested ward the black submachine was trying to
move into — had to dive into his basement window for cover when he was shot at outside his home. A month earlier, Dawson had
asked him to withdraw from the race. And just days before the primary, the 11th Ward alderman whom Daley had handpicked after
his defeat of Babe Connelly — Stanley Nowakowski — was charged with threatening a campaign worker who allegedly pulled down
some of his signs. “They told me I’d better watch myself going home, and to lay off, or we’ll take care of you once and for
all,” said Frank Serafini, owner of the Automatic Heating and Equipment Company. “They said they had Daley’s okay on it.”
⁵⁷
s

Kennelly declared that his reelection battle was a fight of “the people against the bosses.” He told a luncheon audience at
the City Club on January 31, 1955, that he had won the enmity of the machine because he had moved employees out of the patronage
system and into civil service. Twice as many civil-service exams were held during his two terms as mayor, he said, as in any
other comparable period in Chicago history. A machine alderman had approached him six months earlier, he said, and told him
he could have the party’s backing if he dumped the Civil Service Commission chairman. “With me, dumping is an ugly word,”
Kennelly said. “Why would I do it? He was doing a good job. All we tried to do was live up to the law we were sworn to uphold.
The pressure to ‘go easy’ was very great. It still is.” At a February 6 candidates’ forum at Temple Sholom on Lake Shore Drive,
Daley exploded when Adamowski and Kennelly accused him of having fixed the machine’s nominating process. “The hocus-pocus
is over,” Adamowski said. “He can’t deny that he picked the committee to run him for mayor.” Daley seethed as Kennelly added
to the point. “[T]hey gave me three minutes and 56 seconds to tell about what has been done in eight years, how the city government
has been improved,” the mayor said. At this, Daley jumped up in a rage. “The mayor took two minutes,” Daley shouted. “He could
have had all day if he wanted it! Nobody stopped him! He could have had all afternoon.” When Kennelly told the audience about
how he had spotted Daley “almost hidden on the sofa” while the slate-making committee met, Daley jumped up to the microphone
only to be blocked by the female moderator.
⁵⁸

Kennelly was helped in his anti-machine crusade by a well-timed scandal. The newspapers were reporting that Alderman Benjamin
Becker, the machine’s candidate for city clerk, had been sharing zoning case fees with an attorney and former 40th Ward machine
operative. It was classic machine-style corruption: the powerful elected official who extracted a favor from city government
in exchange for a kickback. The alderman refused to respond to the allegations, saying he was “not going to be tried in the
newspapers,” and he argued that only the Chicago Bar Association, not the press or the public, was in a position to evaluate
the charges. The bar association was willing to conduct an inquiry, but the organization’s president said there was no guarantee
it would be completed before the primary. Pressure mounted to dump Becker from the ticket, but Daley stood by his running
mate. “Don’t you think this man is entitled to a fair trial in accordance with American tradition?” Daley demanded. Employing
a technique Daley would use time and again in his career, he lashed out at those making the accusations. “There are false
charges and malicious remarks being made about us,” he told a rally of ward committeemen. “Where is the proof? Where are the
facts behind the rumors? I have not heard of the facts because there are no facts!”
⁵⁹

Daley’s shrewder, and ultimately more effective, strategy for blunting the anti-machine charges against him was to wrap himself
in the mantle of reform. Following the model of Arvey’s shrewd slating of Stevenson and Douglas, Daley convinced a respected
reform lawyer who had been an important backer of Douglas in 1948 and 1954 to lead a “Volunteers for Daley” committee to rally
nonmachine Democrats to the cause. At the same time, Daley drew on his own long association with Stevenson, leader of Illinois
reformers and the man
Time
magazine had recently called “the nation’s top Democrat.” Breaking his rule against endorsing in primaries, Stevenson backed
Daley. He was acting, he said, out of “personal respect and friendship,” but there were more practical reasons at work. The
Chicago machine had launched Stevenson’s political career, and he would need its backing when he sought the 1956 Democratic
nomination for president. Win or lose in the race for mayor, Daley would be head of the machine when that decision was made.
Daley also convinced Douglas, the machine’s other loyal reformer, to endorse him. At a February 4 rally of party workers at
the Morrison Hotel, Douglas spoke of his respect and admiration for Daley and the entire machine. “On the basis of my own
experience, I have never been treated more honorably by any group than by the Democratic organization here in Cook County,”
Douglas declared. “[T]hey having stood by me when I was under fire, I believe unjustly, I think I should testify to the truth
now when they are under fire.” As with Stevenson, any genuine warm feelings Douglas may have had for the machine were mixed
with an appreciation of its practical value to his career. Douglas had lost the 1942 Senate primary when he ran without the
machine’s backing, and was elected to the Senate six years later when the machine was with him. Keeping company with distinguished
reformers like Stevenson and Douglas, Daley almost seemed to be moving beyond the machine. To further support this impression,
he pledged that if he were elected mayor, he would step down as head of the machine. Daley said he had offered to resign on
December 20, when the machine slated him for mayor, but that the machine leadership had convinced him to stay on. If he were
elected mayor, though, he would resign his party post to “devote my full time and attention to the duties of the mayor’s office.”
Convincing though it sounded at the time, it was not a promise he intended to keep.
⁶⁰

While Kennelly and Adamowski wanted to make the election a referendum on bossism, Daley tried to shift the focus to populism.
He took every opportunity to contrast the working-class people of the neighborhoods who formed the backbone of his support
with the downtown business titans and blue-blooded reformers who were backing Kennelly. “There are worse bosses than bosses
in politics,” Daley declared. “They are the bosses of big business and big influence.” These “big interests” were using Kennelly’s
candidacy, Daley contended, “to retain control of the mayor’s office.” Fixing on a theme he would use throughout his career,
Daley insisted that the important division in the city was not between the machine and reformers, but between Chicago’s business
elites and its blue-collar neighborhoods. “What we must do is have a city not for State Street, not for LaSalle Street, but
a city for all Chicago,” Daley told an enthusiastic meeting of the Democratic Organization at the Sherman Hotel. “I’m a kid
from the stockyards,” he reminded a brass-band rally for 3,700 precinct captains. Though Daley headed up the nation’s mightiest
political machine, he presented himself as a struggling David to Kennelly’s Goliath. “I know, and so do you, that they have
control of the communications — of radio and of television,” Daley complained.