by Adam Cohen
Daley spent hours each day seeing visitors who wanted things from him. They moved through his office quickly, often given no more than five minutes to plead their case. Daley’s office was spare and his desk was empty, except for a pen or pencil and a small box, about six inches by four inches, with paper in it of slightly smaller size. When supplicants made their pitch, Daley usually absorbed it impassively. “He was not aggressive of speech,” says his human relations commissioner, Edward Marciniak. “He listened and asked questions.” Meetings often ended with Daley saying, cryptically, “I’ll look into it.” But Daley operated according to a routine that few of his visitors knew: if the matter was something Daley intended to act on, he generally took a piece of paper out of the box and scribbled a note to himself. “If he doesn’t make a note of it, you can forget it,” said one Chicago politician. “If he opens his drawer, takes out a pencil and starts making notes and asks a few questions, it’s just as good as done.” 7
If it was done, Daley wanted the credit. John Johnson, head of the Chicago-based black media empire that bears his name, wanted permission to build a private basement parking lot for the new corporate headquarters he was building in the Loop. His plan called for a driveway to be constructed directly on Michigan Avenue, something the city had not permitted in half a century. When Johnson made inquiries, the response was that he had to see Daley personally. The two men had a cordial meeting at City Hall, and the following day an official from the Buildings Department called to say that Johnson’s request had been approved. Johnson called Daley to thank him — precisely the result Daley wanted when he wrested this power away from the aldermen. “It was impossible to do business in Chicago at that time without dealing with Mayor Daley,” Johnson recalled later. “You couldn’t cut a deal with underlings; you had to see him personally. Which meant that you were personally obligated to him.” 8
The inner circle Daley assembled in City Hall was filled with men like him: working-class Irish-Catholics from Bridgeport and similar neighborhoods, with roots in the Democratic machine. A classic academic study, The Irish and Irish Politicians, speaks of Irish politicians’ tendency toward “clannishness,” but Daley press secretary Frank Sullivan put it more simply: Daley’s “idea of affirmative action was nine Irishmen and a Swede.” The man Daley looked to above all others to help him run the city was his old friend and political ally Tom Keane. Keane shared Daley’s conspiratorial approach to machine politics. The two men had spent years plotting together at meetings of the Cook County Democratic Organization, and Mayor Kennelly always suspected Keane had been the main strategist of the machine coup d’état that took the Democratic nomination away from him and gave it to Daley. The Chicago Daily News once observed that Keane’s rise was evidence of how far a man can go if he has “a little tin in the pot to start with; an I.Q. that goes into the stratosphere; a talent for mischief that would excite the envy of Boss Tweed; and no more scruples than the law requires.” The Daily News misjudged Keane in one respect: prosecutors would prove, before his career drew to a close, that he had fewer scruples than the law required. 9
Keane looked like an amiable leprechaun, but his looks were deceiving. He was a tough-talking street politician who had worked his way up the ranks of the 31st Ward Democratic Organization at the same time Daley was rising in the 11th. But Keane’s ascent had been eased by the fact that he was heir to an aldermanic seat that had previously been held by his father, an uncle, and his maternal grandfather. Keane shared Daley’s talent for acquiring power and using it imperiously. Shortly before Daley’s election as mayor, a newspaper matter-of-factly described Keane’s ruthless leadership style as chair of the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety. On the day a reporter observed him, Keane took up the first item of business, telling the committee secretary that two of the other aldermen on the committee seconded it, though neither had spoken. Keane then declared the motion carried. He did the same thing with six more pending matters, although in each case he was the only one to speak. “Then he put 107 items into one bundle for passage, and 172 more into another for rejection, again without a voice other than his own having been heard,” the reporter noted. “Having disposed of this mountain of details in exactly ten minutes, Ald. Keane walked out.” 10
Daley made Keane his City Council floor leader, and it proved to be a good fit. The Chicago City Council was a motley collection of rogues and mercenaries. They were men like Paddy Bauler, the legendary 43rd Ward alderman who was known as the “clown prince” of Chicago. Bauler, who ran a saloon when he was not making city laws, handled ward business and met with constituents over rounds of beers. Bauler once shot a police officer in a barroom altercation. He later explained that the policeman “swore at me and called me a fat Dutch pig.” Keane was just the man to keep a chamber full of Paddy Baulers in line. “Keane runs the City Council like a circus ringmaster,” a newsman who covered him wrote. “He designates who is to speak on what issue with the flick of a finger.” Keane had no trouble beating wayward aldermen into submission, sometimes by shouting “Sit down or I’ll knock you down.” It was little wonder that under Daley and Keane, the Chicago City Council became a notoriously pliable body — a quintessential rubber stamp. One alderman was famous for doing little but getting out of his seat from time to time to shout: “God bless Mayor Daley!” The Chicago City Council had a reputation for corruption that long pre-dated Keane. As early as 1894, one well-connected lawyer had declared, “There are 68 aldermen in the City Council, and 66 of them can be bought; this I know because I bought them myself.” Keane cherished this tradition, and was ever on the lookout for new ways to exploit his legislative office. Like many aldermen, he had real-estate and insurance businesses on the side, and he used them to translate political influence into personal fortune. “You can’t view him principally as an alderman,” independent alderman Leon Despres once said. “He’s in the business of making a living off of politics.” Years later, Keane would distill the difference between himself and Daley to a simple choice: Daley had spent his career pursuing power, Keane said, while he had always pursued money. 11
Daley’s leading staff were struck from a similar mold. He named Matthew Danaher, a twenty-eight-year-old Bridgeport neighbor, as his administrative assistant. Danaher had held the same position for Daley in the county clerk’s office. One of Danaher’s chief duties was maintaining his boss’s voluminous patronage records. Fire commissioner Robert Quinn was another classic Daley man. He had grown up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, and had been a friend for decades. Four days after Daley moved into City Hall, he elevated Quinn from the lower ranks of the department to assistant fire commissioner. Before long, Daley had pushed out longtime fire commissioner Anthony Mullaney to give his old friend the top job. Mullaney started the Daley administration off on a sour note when he stated publicly that Daley had fired him and then lied about it. “That’s the type of man he is,” Mullaney charged. In time, Daley worked more of his old cronies into top positions. His former law partner, William Lynch, would eventually become general counsel to the Chicago Transit Authority. And when he created the position of commissioner of conservation, Daley named his childhood friend Jeremiah Holland, a retired army brigadier general whose brother had been a politically connected Municipal Court judge. Daley was not deterred by the fact that, in the opinion of the president of the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, there was “nothing in the record that demonstrates that he is a qualified expert for this job.” Daley eventually appointed Ed Quigley, an Irish ward boss from the West Side’s 27th Ward, as sewer commissioner. Quigley readily admitted that he knew almost nothing about sanitation. Asked once if he had ever worked in the sewers, Quigley responded, “No, but many’s the time I lifted a lid to see if they were flowing.” Daley’s top city officials would soon be tagged with a nickname: “the Irish Neanderthals.” 12
Despite the critical role black voters and the black submachine played in his election, Daley appointed no blacks to an
y positions of consequence. It would be five years before Daley appointed a black to his cabinet, and that would be as public vehicle license commissioner. Chicago’s significant Jewish population, another mainstay of the city’s Democratic Party, was also largely excluded from the upper ranks of the Daley administration. Though Daley made a point of selecting Jewish candidates like Becker and Sachs in order to draw Jewish voters to the machine slate, he had only two Jews on his mayoral staff. One was his press secretary, Earl Bush, and the other was a secretary held over from the Kennelly administration. Frank Sullivan, press secretary toward the end of Daley’s reign, said he believed Daley “was not comfortable with blacks and Jews.” 13
Daley was discreet about his racial and ethnic preferences. In an age when southern politicians openly denigrated blacks, Daley was careful not to make racially offensive comments in public. This discretion was, if nothing more, smart politics. Unlike in the South, where few blacks were registered to vote, Chicago’s blacks were involved in the political process, and they were a critical part of Daley’s electoral coalition. Behind closed doors, however, it was another matter. Daley intimates, including those who retain a fondness for him, have conceded that racism was widespread within Daley’s inner circle. Dr. Eric Oldberg, a suburban doctor who became a friend of Daley’s and president of the Chicago Board of Health, says that one thing that set him apart from the “rather primitive group that [Daley] felt comfortable with” was that he did not share its prejudices. “He would never have had to ask, say, Bob Quinn the Fire Commissioner or Bill Lee the union fellow, or any of those guys in his circle, what they thought about something; he knew how they felt,” says Oldberg. “It was automatic; it was born and bred in them to think the same way about everything — including prejudice toward the blacks and things like that.” Frank Sullivan has written that “More than a few of the members of [Daley’s] staff could be described as racists.” And Sullivan tells an odd story of writing a speech for Daley to give at the dedication of a statue of three Revolutionary War patriots, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, and Hayam Solomon. Because Solomon was Jewish, Sullivan wrote a section paying tribute to the contributions made by Jewish-Americans to the nation. When Daley reviewed the remarks, he commented: “Don’t you think you have gone a little overboard about the Jews, Frank?” 14
In the months after Daley’s election, Chicago was just beginning to get to know its new mayor. Word spread that Daley would be leaving Bridgeport for a new home more befitting the mayor of America’s second-largest city. The Daley family — including Sis, six of the seven children, and Daley’s father, Michael — still lived in the simple brick bungalow at 3536 South Lowe Avenue that Daley and Sis had built two decades earlier. It was a modest house, no different from the ones owned by the policemen and government workers who lived on the same block. But those who were saying that Daley was looking to leave Bridgeport did not understand him. When the Chicago Tribune’ s Voice of the People floated the idea of providing mayors with an official residence, Daley said he was not interested. “Perhaps future mayors would like to have a home of this kind to live in and entertain dignitaries,” Daley told the newspaper. “I’m very satisfied to live at 3536.” Sis Daley also spoke out in defense of Bridgeport. “We have wonderful neighbors,” she told the press. “It’s true that their houses are very simple on the outside — but the interiors would surprise you. People around here are always remodeling and improving.” 15
Daley was deeply rooted in the Bungalow Belt, the vast expanse of white ethnic neighborhoods that spanned hundreds of blocks on the Southwest and Northwest sides. The Bungalow Belt is, a Chicago writer has observed, “like the South’s Bible Belt — as much a state of mind as of geography.” Its homes were plain, furnished in a simple working-class style. One visitor to Bridgeport noted that it was a place “of bronzed baby shoes on the parlor mantel, of television sets and undershirts and cans of beer, of corner saloons whose only patrons are ‘the boys on the block’ and whose windows bear signs such as ‘Your husband isn’t here.’” Daley fit in perfectly in this world. The Daley homestead was decorated with a large picture of Christ on a living room wall and a statuette of the Virgin and Child on the dining room sideboard. And the Daleys did, in fact, have bronzed baby shoes on the mantel — seven pairs, each engraved with the name of the child who had worn it. There was wall-to-wall turquoise carpeting, a hand-woven rug with the provinces of Ireland, and red-white-and-blue china bearing the Daley family crest, with its motto, “Deo Fidelis et Regi,” or “Faithful to God and King.” The home had its small luxuries: with an addition in the back, it had been expanded to five bedrooms, and there was a basement rec room with exercise equipment and a piano for the Daley daughters. Outside of family and close friends, though, few people ever got to see the house on South Lowe Avenue. It was, in the words of one member of the Daley inner circle, “the house nobody gets into.” 16
Daley’s election as mayor did not change his lifestyle: when he was not governing or engaging in politics, he continued to live much as his Bridgeport neighbors did. “Nobody catches him chatting about literature, music or French cooking,” Mike Royko once observed. “He likes White Sox games, fishing and parades.” After a rare outing to Chicago’s Lyric Opera, Daley is said to have exclaimed happily: “It’s just like baseball! You stand and cheer when it’s all over!” Daley’s one concession to his station in life was his clothing: he dressed himself as extravagantly as an adult as his mother had dressed him as a child. He wore hand-tailored Duro suits, and often made national ten-best-dressed lists. Daley rarely appeared in public in anything less formal than a suit, and almost never removed his jacket. 17
Daley woke early, and attended morning Mass at Nativity of Our Lord Church. After a quick breakfast at home, he was driven to work by a city policeman in a late-model Cadillac. Daley often got out of the car a few blocks south of the Loop so he could work in a short walk before arriving at City Hall — a gesture to exercise that did little to rein in his fast-growing girth. At lunchtime, he generally made his way over to the Morrison Hotel, where he had a separate office and secretary for his work as machine boss. After returning to City Hall for an afternoon of work, he usually went home for dinner with his family between 6:30 and 7:00 P.M. Daley worked most Saturdays until midafternoon, but spent more time at home on Sundays. On his rare vacations, Daley often went fishing with his father, and on weekends he liked to take his children to Comiskey Park, the “Base-Ball Palace of the World,” which was just a few blocks from home. 18
Sis Daley, for her part, remained every bit the Bridgeport matron. Like many of her neighbors, her life revolved around neighborhood, church, and family. She was active in charity work, preparing flowers for the Altar and Rosary Society at Nativity of Our Lord, and visiting the poor in the parish. She liked to cook, and baked an Irish soda bread twice a week throughout her married life. The secret to making a good soda bread, she once told a neighbor, was to “keep kneading — you get your hostilities and aggression out on the dough.” A few weeks into his first term as mayor, on May 15, Daley celebrated his fifty-third birthday with a simple dinner at home. Sis cooked his favorite dish, roast beef, and baked a birthday cake. Sis was interested in her husband’s political career and served as a sounding board for his important decisions. But in her public statements, she disclaimed all interest in politics. When she spoke to reporters, which was infrequently, the conversation usually hewed closely to domestic topics. Sis once advised a household-hints columnist that bowls of vinegar are the best air fresheners for stale, smoke-filled rooms. “I suppose if Dick is elected, I will have to be more active,” she said on the eve of her husband’s election as mayor. But after a year as Chicago’s first lady, she reported that her role had remained sharply circumscribed. “I guess you’d say I’m first lady to my children first,” she told a reporter. “Making a good, comfortable and happy home for them and Dick still is the thing I like and want to do most.” 19
When Daley sociali
zed outside Bridgeport, it was generally at public appearances that had the impersonal feel of campaign events. Most nights, he attended five or six of these gatherings. His first Sunday in office, Daley ate dinner at home, went out to a dinner at the Morrison Hotel for the Holy Family Villa Retirement Home, and then moved on to the Conrad Hilton for a dinner for Villa Scalabrini, another retirement home. And Daley was a fixture at the life events of people he did not know well. A few weeks into his mayoralty, he attended six weddings in a single day, none for relatives, and the next day he attended two more. He worked the crowd at wakes across the city. Daley’s “name is signed in more wake books than any name in the history of Chicago,” one associate said. Daley was skilled at making his way through these events. “One thing he learned,” says David Stahl, a deputy mayor who often went along with him, “was to work a crowd and keep moving.” This frenetic round of appearances came on top of a daily schedule that was filled with ceremonial events: bowling the first ball at Chicago’s Tuesday and Thursday Night Classic Bowling League, planting a kiss on six-year-old “Little Miss Peanut” as part of the Kiwanis Peanut Day in Chicago, or being honored with a 50,000-tree forest planted in his name in Israel at a Purim dinner sponsored by the Jewish National Fund. At these appearances, Daley usually offered up a short speech that was more upbeat than insightful. To kick off the first year-round athletic program sponsored by the city, he put on a glove and caught balls thrown by Chicago Cubs pitcher Don Kaiser, and declared that “boys and girls are the citizens of Chicago of tomorrow.” Daley also continued to make the rounds of the city’s fifty Democratic ward organizations. One such gathering was a tongue-in-cheek graduation ceremony thrown by Alderman Charlie Weber for fifty garbagemen who found their jobs through 45th Ward patronage. The colorful Weber doted on his sanitation workers, whom he referred to as the Knights of Cleanliness. For the ceremony, he distributed white academic gowns and mortarboards to the “graduating” garbagemen. Daley stood on the dais and conferred parchment diplomas, which had summa cum laude notations and five-dollar bills attached. A dinner of turkey and beer was provided. “Don’t steal any of them caps and gowns,” Weber yelled out to his guests. “I rented ’em. Leave ’em at the door when you go out.” 20
