The 1987 mayoral campaign, sidetracked most of this week by disputes over electoral procedure and debates about debates, returned to the issues Thursday with the candidates crisscrossing the city, accusing, criticizing and promising.
Former Mayor Jane Byrne, dubbed the city`s ”festival queen” during her administration, promised to resurrect the popular ChicagoFest music and food extravaganza as early as this summer if she is re-elected.
Cook County Assessor Thomas Hynes, running in the April 7 general election on the Chicago First Party label, attacked Mayor Harold Washington`s record on revenue collections. Though he will not be on the ballot, Hynes has successfully defended the right of those who signed his nominating petitions to vote in the Feb. 24 mayoral primary.
Ald. Edward R. Vrdolyak (10th), who will be on the primary ballot as an Illinois Solidarity Party candidate, made a blunt and often emotional speech, saying that loyalists of Mayor Harold Washington have unfairly painted Vrdolyak as a racist and given Chicago an ”extremely tragic” image as a racist city.
And Washington, the target of them all, returned from a fundraising foray to Washington, D.C., and traveled through the city doing mayoral things:
breaking ground for a new library in the Bridgeport neighborhood, taking credit for financing the restoration effort of the newly refurbished Chicago Theatre and refusing to respond to Vrdolyak`s charges because he considers the alderman`s candidacy insincere.
Vrdolyak, responding to comments the day before by members of the Congressional Black Caucus that he is a ”Reagan racist,” plaintively told an audience at a candidates` forum, held at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center, 3003 W. Touhy Ave., that the label is part of a ”double standard.”
”How do you defend yourself?” he asked the 250 gathered. ”They put the badge on you. They put the star on you. They put an armband on you. They identify you: You are bad.
”For the past few years, the jacket is now: `Chicago is the most racist city in the country.` Our mayor has taken a position of not selling the city in the best way. We have not only a bad image, but an extremely tragic and sad image.”
Speaking at the same forum, Washington responded to Vrdolyak only by declaring: ”I have not called anybody a racist” and ”I`m not responsible for what other people do.”
The mayor chose, instead, to expend his verbiage attacking the management policies of his predecessor. Under Byrne, he said, ”Chicago had been mismanaged so wrongly, so ruthlessly and so quietly . . . that people got to think that was the way a government should be.
”But they were being ripped off. Whole sectors of the city were being discriminated against. (The city) has been restructured. It`s been put on the right track.”
Byrne, earlier in the day during a taping of WMAQ-AM`s ”Chicago News Conference” program, which broadcasts at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, spoke of reviving ChicagoFest, which lured nearly a million people a year to Navy Pier.
The former mayor, however, cautioned that the event may not be held at Navy Pier if she is re-elected this year, continuing her charges that Mayor Washington has allowed the lakefront facility to fall into disrepair and decay.
She said she would revive the festival because it would be ”symbolic of unity,” which she has pledged to create as mayor.
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”At ChicagoFest, you never heard people say, `I`m one of the 29,` or
`I`m one of the 21,` ” she said, referring to the partisan battles that split the Chicago City Council into during the first three years of the Washington administration.
”At ChicagoFest… you saw people enjoying the music and the ethnic food, standing with their backs to the lake, looking at Chicago growing out of the ground, and saying to themselves, `This is Chicago, it works,` ” Byrne said at a later press conference.
At a later press conference, Byrne repeated her contention that the Washington administration has allowed the expansion program at O`Hare International Airport to fall far behind schedule and has neglected development of as much as 1,200 acres of city-owned land near the airport which could yield up to $20 million a year in revenue.
In what is becoming a standard campaign tactic, the Washington administration produced two city cabinet officers to rebut Byrne`s statements just hours after she made them.
In a late-afternoon press conference, city controller Ron Picur and budget director Sharon Gist Gilliam scoffed at Byrne`s revenue-gaining plans for vacant land at O`Hare, saying it was ”doubtful” that Byrne`s program would produce the large amount of revenue she claimed it would. Dampening Byrne`s call for a ChicagoFest revival, Gilliam said the extravaganza always cost the City of Chicago money and ”did not pay for itself.”
Also Thursday, Byrne accepted an offer of a studio debate from WTTW-TV
(Channel 11) with a live feed to any other television stations that wish to carry the debate. Byrne has rejected the mayor`s requirement that a debate be held before a live audience.
At a candidates` forum later Thursday at Daley College on the Southwest Side, Washington called on Byrne to continue debate negotiations and insisted on his condition for any debate.
”I want all the cameras there and all the people there,” the mayor said.
Washington also promised increased social programs if elected to a second term.
”We`ve got to do something about the dropouts, family, church, vanity,” the mayor said. ”They`ve got so many things impinging on our young people. Dope. You got everything.”
The mayor said the new programs would provide ”the wherewithal, the motivation, the incentive” for youths to continue their high school education.
Hynes, who won a 2-1 victory before the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners Wednesday when it was ruled that the 70,000 persons who signed his nominating petitions could participate in the Feb. 24 primary, came off the defensive Thursday.
Speaking at a Quaker Oats Co. luncheon at the M & M Club in the Merchandise Mart, Hynes described the city`s financial management as ”more fitting for a pawn shop,” and proposed his own 15-step plan to improve the collection of city revenues.
Hynes blamed the ”increasingly hostile environment for Chicago businesses” partially on the poor fiscal management of the city, and he laid the blame on both Washington and Byrne, saying they both won the mayor`s office on promises of strict fiscal reform.
”Like two peas in a pod, they shelved those standards once they became mayor,” Hynes said. ”Each has brought the city one step closer to fiscal insolvency.”
As mayor, Hynes said, he would modernize and streamline revenue collection efforts, return parking meter maintenance and collections to private firms and establish a permanent Chicago Future Revenue Commission to annually develop a five-year financial plan for the city.
Washington`s city revenue director, Patrick Quinn, when informed of Hynes` fiscal management plan, responded by calling it ”old wine in a new bottle” and saying that Hynes` own assessor`s office is in ”chaos,”
resulting in ”millions of dollars” in underassessments of downtown properties.
Vrdolyak, who is unchallenged on the Illinois Solidarity primary ballot, turned his attention Thursday to the Chicago public school system and told students at Maria High School, a Catholic school in the Marquette Park neighborhood, that they were fortunate they were not attending city public schools.
”The schools of Chicago are not like the blessings you have here. Here, there`s motivation. You get it from home, from teachers, from each other,” he said.
”Most of the students in Chicago high schools are minorities,” he said. ”Ever hear Harold Washington say, `We`ve got to do something about the most terrible crime being committed in the city–that our young are leaving high school without an education?` ”
Vrdolyak then told the largely white student audience that he would speak often about minority issues during the mayoral campaign, but didn`t expect to get a sizable black vote.