Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2 The Politics of Clout
by Chris Serb
To understand Chicago, you must first take into account its two greatest pas-
sions: politics and sports. In this town the two are often indistinguishable from
each other. Forget Tammany Hall. More than any other city, Chicago has earned
a reputation for machinations and shady dealings among its politicians. It has
always been a city where “clout” rules. A place where any $40,000-a-year alder-
man can amass a million-dollar fortune by making a few key zoning changes. A
place where a sewer worker's job is safe only if he delivers 200 registered Demo-
crats to the polls each election day. A place where cops can pocket a couple hun-
dred dollars a week by giving gamblers and prostitutes special “protection.” A
place where dead people regularly turn out to vote by the thousands.
“Chicago ain't ready for reform,” once declared Alderman Paddy Bauler, a
jolly, beer-drinking character who ran his ward office out of the back of a saloon
during one of the city's more colorful political eras.
Bauler was speaking of the 1950s and 1960s, when Mayor Richard J. Daley's
“Machine” Democrats had a stranglehold on the cops, the courts, the bribes,
and, most important, the jobs. He could just as easily have been talking about
1999, when City Treasurer Miriam Santos was convicted of twisting business-
men's arms for political “donations” from her City Hall office. (She was later
retried on the same charges and exonerated, and she waltzed right back into her
office, much to the chagrin of Mayor Richard M. Daley.)
Corruption was nothing new to the Windy City, even in Bauler's day. Turn-
of-the-20th-century First Ward bosses Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and
“Bathhouse” John Coughlin put the organization in “organized” crime by col-
lecting fees from the gambling and prostitution houses. During Prohibition,
Mayor William “Big Bill” Thompson and his Republican Machine made a for-
tune in bribes from Al Capone and his bootleggers—and, in the process, Big Bill
disillusioned the voters so much that the GOP hasn't won the mayor's office in
the 70 years since then.
Until the 1970s, however, being on the take not only was profitable business,
but it also was safe: Cops and precinct workers and lesser public servants might
have done a little time in jail, but the big fish were never caught. U.S. Attorney
Jim Thompson changed all that, winning convictions against Gov. Otto Kerner,
who took a racetrack bribe; Alderman Paul Wigoda, who took payoffs in return
for zoning changes; and the elder Daley's top lieutenant, Alderman Tom Keane,
who found out where the city wanted to build parks or schools or housing proj-
ects, bought the land, and then sold it back to the city at inflated prices. By try-
ing—and winning—so many high-profile cases, the Republican Thompson swept
right into the governor's mansion and left the squeaky-clean U.S. Attorney's office
and the FBI trying to match his record. So far, they've done a good job, winning
convictions against almost 50 aldermen and key city officials in the past 25 years.
Large-scale corruption investigations include “Operation Silver Shovel,” which
nabbed six aldermen (including the once-saintly Lawrence Bloom) for taking
bribes connected to an illegal construction-debris dumping site; “Operation
Haunted Hall,” which trapped several city officials paying friends and relatives
full salaries for jobs that didn't exist; “Operation Incubator,” which convicted 15
aldermen, city officials, and businessmen in a city-hall bribery sting; and, the
granddaddy of them all, “Operation Greylord,” where after hearing reports that
