American Pharaoh (34 page)

Daley also owed a more personal debt to the syndicate. There are some who say it was responsible for giving Daley his start
in politics. Alderman Edward Burke figures that Daley won his first important machine position, 11th Ward committeeman, because
syndicate-connected Italians from the north end of the ward dumped “Babe” Connelly and backed him. “They were sick of the
old man,” says Burke. “He was probably taking too big a slice of the gambling and whatever.” At the very least, the syndicate
delivered its precincts strongly for Daley in his citywide campaigns. In the 1955 mayoral primary, Daley beat Kennelly in
the syndicate-controlled 1st Ward by 13,275 to 1,961 and carried the syndicate’s 28th Ward handily. The syndicate also appears
to have given Daley substantial financial help in his campaigns. FBI files indicate that Daley’s key connection to organized
crime was Thomas Munizzo, a childhood friend from the 11th Ward. “Munizzo reportedly collected vast sums of money from the
hoodlum element for the Daley mayoralty campaign,” the FBI’s files state. Once Daley was elected, Munizzo was “considered
the contact man . . . between the hoodlums and the mayor’s office for favors... with respect to gambling or the crime Syndicate.”
¹⁷

Daley’s critics had warned all along that he was the candidate of the “hoodlum element.” On the eve of the general election,
the
Chicago Tribune
advised that “[i]f Mr. Daley is elected, the political and social morals of the badlands are going, if not to dominate City
Hall, then surely to have a powerful influence on its decisions.” The
Tribune
was not far from wrong. Daley’s practice was to let the machine’s various constituent groups have input on the decisions
that affected them — Polish leaders would help select the Polish candidate on the machine slate, and labor unions would give
advice on labor policy. In many ways, Daley treated the syndicate as just one more machine constituency that was able to help
make calls on matters of interest to organized crime. Syndicate leaders were apparently able, under Daley, to replace an honest
police captain from the district that covered the 1st Ward with a corrupt one. According to an FBI report, when the honest
captain stepped down, a Chicago mobster named Murray “The Camel” Humphreys contacted D’Arco and asked him to use his influence
with City Hall to get the syndicate’s man the job. “D’Arco then contacted Mayor Daley and advised him that he wanted this
captain to command his district,” said the FBI report. “The appointment was then announced by Commissioner O’Connor.” Paul
McGrath, a veteran Chicago newspaperman, says it was well known that Daley had an assistant whose job it was to field requests
from the syndicate, and if necessary intervene with the police commissioner’s office.
¹⁸
The FBI believed that Daley was cooperating with Chicago organized crime, and that Munizzo was not his only conduit to the
syndicate leaders. John Scanlon, a good friend of Daley and his former law partner, William Lynch, acted as a “go-between”
for the syndicate and city government, according to FBI files.
¹⁹

Daley aided the syndicate and syndicate-backed business on other occasions. Ward committeeman John D’Arco co-owned an insurance
company called Anco., Inc. with other 1st Ward Democratic leaders, including Benjamin “Buddy” Jacobson, who had been linked
to a number of syndicate bosses. Major hotels, nightclubs, and department stores in the Loop found it was easier to get city
licenses and permits if they insured with Anco. Businesses that declined to use Anco had city inspectors show up shortly after
the refusal looking for code violations. But when the Chicago Crime Commission included Anco on a list of thirty-one “hoodlum-tainted”
businesses, Daley rose to D’Arco’s defense, saying the commission’s charges were all based on “hearsay.” Daley never publicly
expressed any discomfort about a relationship that the
Chicago Daily News
referred to as “the crime-politics alliance.” One former board member of the Building Service Council recalls that he asked
Daley how he managed to be so tolerant of the syndicate. “Well, it’s there, and you know you can’t get rid of it, so you have
to live with it,” Daley said. “But never let it become so strong that it dominates you.” And the syndicate was generally pleased
with the treatment it received from Daley. “This mayor has been good to us,” the FBI overheard Humphreys saying to D’Arco
in 1960 in a wiretapped conversation. “And we’ve been good to him,” D’Arco responded. “One hand washes the other.”
²⁰

The Democrats held their 1956 National Convention in August in Chicago’s International Amphitheatre. Daley attracted some
national media attention as host mayor. On August 5, a week before the convention started, he appeared on the popular television
show
What’s My Line?
Daley was introduced to the blindfolded panelists as someone who was “salaried,” and after fifteen questions journalist Dorothy
Kilgallen correctly identified his “line” as mayor of Chicago. Daley, who was usually cagey about whom he was backing, went
into the convention committed to Adlai Stevenson, Illinois’s native son and a good friend of the machine. Stevenson had beaten
Estes Kefauver in the primaries — capped by a nearly two-to-one victory in California — and on August 1 Kefauver withdrew
in favor of Stevenson. That left New York’s Governor Averell Harriman as Stevenson’s main opposition. Daley did his best to
shore up support for Stevenson. After the Texas governor, Allan Shivers, came out against him, Daley responded that Stevenson
would win the nomination “by acclamation.” And when former president Truman caused a small furor by making positive comments
about Averell Harriman, Daley rushed to bring the momentum back to Stevenson. “Mr. Stevenson is the titular head of the Democratic
Party and the greatest statesman of our era,” Daley said. “I am hopeful and confident he will win the Democratic nomination
in 1956 and then go on to become the next president of the United States.” Jake Arvey did his part by insisting that newspaper
reports of Truman’s comments must have been “garbled.” Eleanor Roosevelt, an ardent Stevenson supporter, suggested to reporters
that Stevenson was better qualified to be president than Truman had been when he succeeded her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
By the start of the convention it was clear that the nomination was Stevenson’s.
²¹

The convention had an air of futility about it. The Democrats had briefly gotten excited about their chances when it looked
as if President Eisenhower might not seek reelection. The previous September, he had suffered a heart attack after playing
golf. In June, after he had already declared that he was running, he was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital for emergency surgery
for an abdominal obstruction. But Eisenhower continued to insist that he was a candidate. Even most Democrats conceded that
Stevenson did not have much chance of defeating him. Four years earlier, Stevenson had lost in a landslide, winning only 44
percent of the popular vote and only 89 of 531 votes in the Electoral College. As a popular incumbent in a time of peace and
prosperity, Eisenhower would likely run even more strongly this time. But winning the White House was not Daley’s highest
priority. As always, he evaluated the candidates based on what kind of coattails they would provide to the machine’s slate.
As a native son and former governor, Stevenson was the strongest candidate for the machine to have at the top of its ticket.
It also counted, of course, that Stevenson had been a loyal friend of the machine over the years. When the time came for the
roll call, Stevenson won with 905½ votes to Harriman’s 210, and 80 for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas.

After winning the nomination, Stevenson defied convention and put the selection of his vice president up to the delegates.
Tradition held that the nominee chooses his own running mate, and Daley would have preferred it that way. He did not like
alienating candidates for vice president by telling them he could not support them. In his eagerness to please all sides,
Daley came up with an ingenious solution. Asked what he thought about Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler of Kentucky as a candidate
for vice president, Daley told reporters that in light of the many strong candidates it might be a good idea to elect more
than one vice president. He did, in fact, have his eye on one particular candidate. The real race was between Senator Estes
Kefauver of Tennessee and thirty-eight-year-old Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Daley was on good terms with Kennedy’s
father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who owned Chicago’s enormous Merchandise Mart, reportedly the largest commercial establishment
in the world. Perhaps more important, if the Irish-Catholic Kennedy were on the ticket, he could be expected to draw large
numbers of votes to the machine slate. Not least, Daley and the machine had not forgotten the damage Kefauver’s crime investigation
committee had done to them in 1950. Daley delivered most of the Illinois delegation to Kennedy, except for a few downstaters
who broke ranks to back Kefauver. Kennedy came within ten votes on the first roll call, but Kefauver won in the end.
²²

The real intrigue at the convention concerned the Illinois state ticket. Reporters got wind of a suspicious “flower fund”
in the office of county treasurer Paschen, the Democrats’ candidate for governor. Flower funds, also known as employee welfare
funds, were used to pay for flowers for wakes and funerals, and similar expenses. But for some reason, banks holding county
deposits had contributed more than $29,000 to Paschen’s fund, and Paschen had in turn used some of the money to advance his
political career. Federal and county grand juries were now investigating the matter. Democrats, fearing he would drag down
the whole ticket, urged him to withdraw, but Paschen refused. When news broke of another $4,000 contingency fund that Paschen
had failed to account for, it was over. Daley had decided to dump Paschen, and word of the ouster quickly spread through the
convention floor. When reporters asked Daley about the rumors, Daley confirmed them, although he had not bothered to tell
Paschen, who was sitting just three seats away from him in the Illinois delegation. When the press moved on to Paschen, he
insisted he was still on the ticket. Told by reporters about Daley’s comments, Paschen went over and confronted the mayor.
“Dick, what the hell is there to this thing the reporters are saying?” he said incredulously. Daley, looking straight ahead
and expressing little emotion, responded: “What did you expect?” Daley’s handling of Paschen was cold-blooded, and fully in
character. “With Daley, you know, it was always Daley who came first,” said former Illinois secretary of state Michael Howlett.
“The other guy always came in third with Daley, no matter who the other guy was.”
²³

When the convention ended, Daley met with the machine leadership to review a list of twenty possible candidates to replace
Paschen at the top of the ticket. Daley chose Chicago Superior Court judge Richard Austin, once again employing the old machine
tactic of selecting a good-government candidate to ward off a damaging corruption scandal. The selection of the relatively
obscure Austin revived rumors that swirled when Paschen was selected — that Daley was quietly throwing the election to Stratton.
Daley flew to Spring-field for a meeting of downstate Democratic leaders on October 9 and was confronted by published reports
that Austin was “a candidate set up to be knocked down.” Banging on the table for emphasis as water glasses went flying, a
red-faced Daley denied the charges and lashed out at those who had made them. “I defy anyone to point to any betrayal in the
history of the Cook County Democratic Organization,” he shouted. If the machine was setting Austin up for a fall, he seemed
oblivious. At appearances before machine audiences, he pledged his undying loyalty. “I want all of you to see me with your
problems, patronage or otherwise, after the election,” Austin invited. “I will be an organization governor.”
²⁴

The 1956 election was Daley’s first presidential campaign as boss and mayor, and Daley pushed the ward organizations to come
through as they never had before. At a September 20 strategy meeting at the Morrison Hotel, he directed the ward committeemen
and precinct captains to conduct a house-to-house canvass to register voters, and he ordered that 750,000 registration folders
be distributed across the city. Daley also organized a series of weekly luncheon rallies for precinct captains at the Morrison,
so they could meet the machine candidates they would be promoting to their neighbors. On October 11, state’s attorney candidate
Gutknecht was the featured candidate, with Austin following a week later. Daley also worked to draw organized labor even more
closely into the machine’s operations. He held a secret meeting at Chicago’s Machinists Hall at which William Lee — his Civil-Service
Commission chairman, who was also president of the Chicago Federation of Labor — urged the two hundred union leaders in attendance
to “kick in” money to the machine. The highest priority, Lee said, was defeating reformer Adamowski in his campaign for state’s
attorney. Daley had already advised the ward organizations that they could count on having a large number of rank-and-file
union members available to help out on election day. Daley’s many favors for organized labor since he took office were paying
off. But his most elaborate preparations were for a legendary event — the Chicago machine’s pre-election torch-light parade.
Organizers were predicting a turnout of 500,000 people, and representatives of all fifty ward organizations, labor unions,
and ethnic associations participated in the planning. This year’s march, Daley said, would be nothing less than “the greatest
spectacle in the history of America.” Plans called for 1,000 men with torches and sparklers to march a two-mile stretch of
Madison Street from Grant Park to Chicago Stadium. Lending an air of spectacle, there would be flatbed trucks with trapeze
artists and circus performers driving by at eight-minute intervals.
²⁵