Mayor Harold Washington Saturday demanded that former Mayor Jane Byrne halt her commercials accusing him of racial divisiveness, Byrne categorically refused and Rev. Jesse Jackson called the entire matter ”silly.”
With slightly more than two weeks to go before the Feb. 24 mayoral primary election, the two major candidates in the heated Democratic race took time between traditional campaign activities to continue to swap barbs about who was bringing racial division into a campaign and demanding that each other apologize for statements made during the campaign.
Saturday night, speaking to Hispanic supporters at the Aragon Ballroom, Bryne belatedly apologized for a controversial comment she made in which she included Puerto Ricans and Hispanics in a remark about ”aliens.”
Although her comment was made a month ago, the controversy still rages in the Hispanic community, which is currently being read as a political toss up between the two candidates. One of the most sought after campaign buttons in the Hispanic community reads: Jane Byrne, I`m not an alien. I`m a human being. ”I apologize to anyone if anyone has been hurt by anything I have said,” Bryne told an appreciative crowd, which did not manage to fill the huge hall. ”For almost nine years the Puerto Rican community and Jane Bryne has had a good, strong, caring relationship.
”I not only apologize, I say I`m sorry.”
By apologizing at a public rally for Hispanics, Bryne is hoping to pick up crucial votes and diffuse the issue those remarks have made in the campaign. But at the same time, she stridently attacked Mayor Washington for refusing to repudiate the remarks that Illinois Appellate Court Judge R. Eugene Pincham made last week that any man living south of Madison Street should be hanged if he did not vote for Washington.
On Saturday morning, at a meeting of Operation PUSH, where the controversy first erupted, Jackson defended the remarks as being strictly
”harmless slang” and a ”cultural idiom.”
Jackson also said that he intends to start his own watchdog group over the election because he believes the existing group is ”inadequate” and
”has usurped the authority to be the referee and judges of the election.”
Jackson charged that the Committee on Decent Un-biased Campaign Tactics, or CONDUCT, was operating on a dual set of standards and announced that he will form his own watchdog group, to be called ”One Set of Rules,” or OSAR. John McDermott, chairman of CONDUCT, said later that his organization`s judgments ”have been balanced and fair. . . . We have been criticized by
(Ald.) Ed Vrdolyak (10th) for being a front for Harold Washington and now we`re being criticized by Jesse Jackson for being insensitive, so maybe we`re coming out right.
”It`s a free country and he is perfectly free to do that,” McDermott said of Jackson`s move. ”We are disappointed by the criticism of CONDUCT. We think that is unfounded and I might add that non-partisanship has never been Jesse Jackson`s strong suit.”
McDermott said CONDUCT, appointed to monitor the mayoral campaign, has received a complaint about Byrne`s new commercial and is investigating it.
Energized last Thursday by public criticism of Pincham`s statement, including the judgment of CONDUCT that the remarks were ”extreme and inflammatory,” Byrne ordered the hasty development of new television commercials accusing Washington of fomenting division in the city.
The ads picture the Chicago skyline being torn apart by a lightning bolt and replaced with a scowling photograph of Washington, as an off-camera narrator characterizes ”insults” the mayor allegedly has hurled at Byrne.
The commercials, which end with the new tag line, ”Jane Byrne . . . a mayor for all of the people,” are scheduled to begin airing on Chicago television stations Monday, but were previewed Friday at a news conference.
Washington issued a tempered apology for Pincham`s remarks, Friday night, saying, ”I am sorry because it gives the real polarizers of the city an excuse to do their worst, and today we`ve seen a perfect example of that,”
referring to Byrne`s new commercials.
He continued that theme Saturday while campaigning in the north Lakefront neighborhoods, considered to be another crucial swing area in the primary.
”I have done nothing and will do nothing and will tolerate nothing to make this campaign divisive,” he said. ”I regret what Judge Pincham said, and I regret it mainly because it gave an opportunity for the real polarizers to do their dirty work, and they`ve done it.”
Later, Washington also chastised the press several times for spending too much time on her charges and not enough time on a comparison of their administrations.
”Why would they permit Jane Byrne to lie then run around all day asking me to respond?” he told supporters at the Greater Walter`s A.M.E. Zion Church on the South Side. ”The campaign is running the possibility of being pulled into the mud by a candidate who doesn`t want to run on her record….I won`t be dragged into the mud.”
Byrne, however, said she was still smarting from earlier remarks in which she complained he compared her to Adolf Hitler and Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R., Wis.).
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”I`m not going to take those commercials off until he apologizes,” she said.
She said the Pincham remarks carried a threat to all voters in the city, especially blacks, and cited an anecdote when she was on an elevator: ”A black woman looked over her shoulder and then said, `I`m going to vote for you.` ”
At a South Side shopping mall, Byrne told reporters that she recently had been told by another black woman, ”I`m afraid for you to come to my home because my doorman would report me.”
”I`m not going to watch Chicago become a divided turn,” Byrne said.
”This is a free city, and it will remain a free city.”
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Washington appeared before a labor rally on the West Side and drew a sharp distinction between Byrne`s troubles with labor during her term and his success with organized labor.
”You can`t have it both ways,” Washington said. ”You`ve got to stand for something. The day you forget that you reward your friends and punish your enemies, you`re not going to have any power to do a damm thing.”
Meanwhile, County Assessor Thomas Hynes, whose first ballot appearance will be on the Chicago First label in the April 7 general election, dropped in at rallies and events throughout the city, stressing that he was the
”alternative” candidate to the feuding factions in the Democratic primary.
Donald Haider, who is on the Feb. 24 primary ballot facing only token opposition on the Republican ticket, spent Saturday as he spent most of last week, giving up attempts to capture headlines and concentrating on fundraising and staff reorganization preparing to meet the Democratic primary victor in the general election.
The other Democratic contender, Sheila Jones, a disciple of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche, continued her peculiar campaign Saturday at a news conference to announce the endorsement by her mother, Florence Jagers, and reiterate her call for mandatory health screenings to detect the deadly AIDS virus.