The legendary Democratic machine, the political war horse that has stampeded through Chicago for decades, threw a shoe Tuesday, primarily because its stalwarts chose to use old rules in a new game.
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And as crucial as the results were in realigning the city council`s balance of power, they also indicate that given Chicago`s changing
demographics, the way the machine used to work is not the way it will have to work in the future.
Tuesday`s case in point was the candidacy of Manuel Torres. Two weeks ago, when the dour, husky weightlifter learned that his 20-vote March 18 election defeat by Luis Gutierrez, the bantamweight street fighter, was being thrown out by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, he hailed the April 29 runoff election as a ”second chance.”
And at that time, Democratic Party leaders, from Ald. Edward Vrdolyak
(10th), the party chairman, down to the lowest-level precinct worker, saw that the 26th Ward aldermanic election, Round 2, was the only game in town.
Ald. Frank Brady, the bad luck incumbent from the Southwest Side 15th Ward, faced insurmountable odds. His ward had become 75 percent black under the federal court-ordered reapportionment. In addition, Mayor Harold Washington and such political heavyweights as Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. Gus Savage (D., Ill.) were moving their forces into the ward to give Brady an early retirement at the hands of Marlene Carter.
So it was determined that the 26th Ward was the final battle site to keep Washington, in the final year of his term, from getting a 25-25 council split that would allow him to take advantage of a crucial tie-breaking vote.
The official results are to be certified Thursday morning by the election board, and Gutierrez and Carter are expected to take office at the May 14 council meeting.
On Election Day, the Near Northwest Side 26th Ward had a carnival atmosphere, with supporters of both Torres and Gutierrez riding cars and trucks through the streets, loudspeakers blaring, getting out the vote.
But there were others in the streets as well.
Vrdolyak, in his big, dark car with the ”EV 10” license plates, drove up to Torres` Western Avenue headquarters, and Ald. Richard Mell from the neighboring 33d Ward stood on street corners, shaking hands and voicing support for Torres, his former precinct captain and political protege.
Ald. William Krystyniak from the Southwest Side 23d Ward was there for Torres, and Ald. Roman Pucinski from the Northwest Side 41st Ward came in to ask the remaining Polish residents of the primarily Hispanic ward to vote for Torres.
But the strategy of shifting all of the Democratic organization`s citywide resources to the ward race apparently backfired, with Gutierrez winning Tuesday`s race not by 20 votes, as he had on March 18, but by 880 votes, with the overall turnout about 30 percent higher than in the first election.
A Torres strategist confided Wednesday that the influx of outside
”pros” gave Torres the image of being a party ”tool,” a symbol of the plantation politics that had been identified in earlier years in Chicago with go-along black politicians being given party positions in exchange for unquestioned party loyalty.
Helping Gutierrez, on the other hand, were volunteers working for Slim Coleman, the political organizer from the blue-collar Uptown community. These volunteers, unlike many of the Democratic regulars, had a real affinity for the political sensibilities of the 26th Ward.
Though Gutierrez was solidly and publicly backed by the mayor, he brushed by Torres with the image of being an independent, sometimes radical former student organizer, unhappy with the system and bent on tearing down icons.
It was an image that could hurt a candidate in Pucinski`s conservative Northwest Side neighborhood, but was not a particularly unpopular one in the lower-income Puerto Rican community in West Town and Humboldt Park.
Torres, on the other hand, wore dark, pinstriped suits, wire-rimmed glasses and a surly expression, looking at times more like a candidate`s bodyguard than a candidate.
It was Puerto Rican versus Puerto Rican, and it turned out to be a race to see who could be most Hispanic.
Gutierrez won hands down.
Torres, though born in Puerto Rico, had moved to the United States at an early age and his ability to speak Spanish was poor. Gutierrez, on the other hand, was born in the United States but was reared in Puerto Rico, and he was not only fluent, but glib, in both tongues.
Torres ill-advisedly accepted a Gutierrez challenge to a live televised debate in Spanish the night before the election. Moments into the telecast, Torres lapsed into English, explaining that his Spanish was faulty.
”That hurt Manny,” Vrdolyak acknowledged in an interview Wednesday.
”There were precinct captains reporting in all day long that voters were upset with the decision. People were saying, `Why didn`t he speak Spanish?` as if that were a denunciation of his heritage, which is a lot of baloney.”
Other workers on both sides also said Wednesday that the invasion of ethnic aldermen and workers from other parts of the city hurt Torres.
Aldermen such as Pucinski and Krystyniak, making their one-day visits to the 26th Ward, gave the appearance of a patronizing political party taking for granted that its endorsement was a valuable thing.
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”You had precinct workers coming in from all over the city,” observed Ald. Juan Soliz (25th), who is associated with the Vrdolyak bloc and who campaigned for Torres.
”They worked the Hispanic neighborhoods like they worked their own neighborhoods. That just isn`t done, and it didn`t work.”
If such comments are theory, the figures out of Tuesday`s election were fact.
Despite the heavy influx of political workers and money–more than $50,000 is estimated to have been spent by each candidate–Gutierrez did even better the second time around than he did in March.
In 24 of the ward`s 44 precincts, he did better. And in some, such as the 34th precinct, where he lost by 2 votes last month but won by 33 Tuesday, he did much better.
Voter turnout also was a key. Of the 29,656 voters registered in the ward, 11,291 voted last month. On Tuesday, 13,978 voted, an increase of 2,687. Gutierrez especially made inroads in precincts that previously were part of the 33d Ward, winning in two of them and decreasing Torres` victory margins in others.
Those areas provided overwhelming margins for Torres last month, and the 33d Ward Democratic organization had hoped to increase that support.
Some of the increased turnout can be attributed to the large amount of media attention given to the race. The Hispanic vote, only recently large enough to merit the attention of political professionals and formerly diluted by craftily drawn ward lines, suddenly made a difference, and the voters were being courted.
It was a point not missed by residents of the 26th Ward, and the campaign took on the enthusiastic level usually found in high school class elections, where personalities are as important as issues.
Gutierrez took the posture of a candidate who had the March 18 election taken away from him, but who, rather than whining, got up, dusted himself off and vowed to win again.
”Twenty-sixth Ward voters, especially in the Hispanic community, got the idea that something had been taken from them and, given what happened in the past to them, it was easier to motivate them to vote this time,” said mayoral aide Ben Reyes, Gutierrez`s campaign manager.
Torres, on the other hand, had the appearance of a Vrdolyak-controlled regular, using such age-old machine tricks as cranking up the number of absentee ballots requested to, in effect, get a head start on the election process.
Though only about 9 percent of the ward`s residents were black, when the issue became more than just two Hispanic candidates fighting it out–the added element being the head-to-head clash involving Washington and Vrdolyak–they turned out at about a 90 percent rate in the precincts where they live.
In the Southwest Side 15th Ward, the more traditional political wisdom did prevail. Black voters, energized by the strenuous campaigning of Washington and whipped up by last-minute charges by Carter that the Ku Klux Klan was helping Brady, turned out in even larger numbers than in March, giving her a whopping 10,463 to 5,525 edge over Brady.
When the election smoke cleared Tuesday night, it was apparent that the Democratic organization lost in the old game in the 15th Ward and the new game in the 26th Ward. And looking ahead, politicians were pondering whether it was time to change strategies for the games that lie ahead.