As Chicagoans paid their final respects to Mayor Harold Washington Monday, it appeared increasingly likely that his replacement would be Ald. Eugene Sawyer (6th).
The mayor`s funeral Monday morning and burial Monday afternoon caused only a temporary cease-fire in the furious politicking that has consumed the energies of the city`s 50 aldermen since Washington`s death Wednesday.
Sawyer`s allies contended early Monday, about nine hours before the funeral began, that they have forged a coalition of black and white aldermen that would provide more than the 26 votes needed to elect him as the city`s acting mayor.
The City Council could meet as early as Wednesday to vote for an acting mayor, but there were reports Monday that pro-Sawyer aldermen were signing a resolution designed to ”elect” him without holding a formal council meeting. ”If a majority of aldermen sign such a resolution, it would be hard for a court to throw it out,” said attorney David Epstein, an election-law expert with ties to the local Democratic organization. He said state law is ambiguous on whether a council meeting is required to elect an acting mayor.
”You can make a persuasive legal case that no meeting is needed,” said Epstein, who helped write the state elections law when he was a legal adviser to Democratic legislators.
The resolution reportedly was being circulated to keep Sawyer`s supporters from backing off in response to emotional appeals from black independents, who favor Ald. Timothy Evans (4th) for the job of acting mayor. Though both Evans and Sawyer are products of the old Democratic machine, Evans is considered more independent.
”If someone files a piece of paper that was, in fact, duly signed by a sufficient number of public officials to make the appointment, my guess is that there`s a minimum of a 50-50 chance that it would be upheld by the court,” said Epstein, who acknowledged that he had consulted with backers of Sawyer.
The Sawyer coalition solidified Sunday night, during a 3 1/2-hour session at the home of Ald. Joseph Kotlarz (35th).
Following that meeting, several aldermen contended that Sawyer has 28 solid votes in the City Council. Unless tentative agreements with a bloc of white aldermen fall apart, that would give the job of acting mayor to Sawyer, a former Democratic organization stalwart who was one of the first to switch to support Washington.
”At this point, a tentative agreement has been reached,” said a participant at the meeting. ”A substantial number of the white aldermen were put together behind Sawyer to get him elected mayor. Now the discussions and negotiations begin to put together the administration.”
Some of those discussions undoubtedly continued on the way to the mayor`s funeral Monday morning, as Sawyer and one of his top intermediaries, Ald. Robert Shaw (9th), shared a limousine with Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), a longtime Washington nemesis.
Burke, who was toppled last year from his powerful post as chairman of the council`s Finance Committee, had attended the meeting at Kotlarz`s home but had not been listed among Sawyer`s 28 ”solid” backers. His support would give additional momentum to the Sawyer bandwagon.
After the meeting at Kotlarz`s house, the pledges of support from the white aldermen were delivered by Ald. Richard Mell (33d) and his ally, State Rep. Al Ronan (D., Chicago), to Shaw in a parking lot at a North Side restaurant at about 12:15 a.m. Monday, according to sources close to Sawyer.
The Sawyer coalition, it appeared, comprised 16 white aldermen and 11 blacks who have held fast in their support for Sawyer in the face of heavy pressure over the weekend from Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had been privately backing Ald. Timothy Evans (4th). Sawyer`s vote for himself is included in his 28 votes.
Jackson, without specifying Sawyer, seemed to warn against exactly the kind of dealing with Washington`s old enemies that was underway Sunday.
”Keep the team together. It took Mayor Washington four years to break the back of the City Council,” Jackson preached Sunday night to a service in the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, 45th Place and Princeton Avenue.
”Selling the dream is wicked. Negotiating away the power for a job is wicked and stupid.”
But an anti-Jackson backlash, which first surfaced Saturday, appeared to continue Sunday, even among some of the black aldermen who rushed to greet him when he arrived by plane from the Middle East Friday afternoon. Aldermen of both races have privately grumbled that he had no businesses interfering in what they considered council business.
Before and after Jackson`s eulogy at the mayor`s funeral, only six aldermen-none of whom is identified with the Sawyer camp-joined most of the rest of the audience in jumping to their feet and applauding. The rest of the aldermen-and almost all 50 were there-remained seated.
According to sources, the 16 white aldermen who have agreed to support Sawyer are: Patrick O`Connor (40th), Fred Roti (1st), Mark Fary (12th), Bernard Stone (50th), Thomas Cullerton (38th), Anthony Laurino (39th), George Hagopian (30th), Mell, John Madrzyk (13th), Robert Kellam (18th), Terry Gabinski (32d), Kotlarz, William J.P. Banks (36th), Roman Pucinski (41st), Bernard Hansen (44th), and Eugene Schulter (47th).
Sawyer is also hoping that at least four more white aldermen will sign on give him 32 votes. They are Patrick Huels (11th), Kathy Osterman (48th), Edwin Eisendrath (43d) and Michael Sheahan (19th).
Sheahan, though, flatly ruled our supporting Sawyer in a statement to reporters after the session at Kotlarz home that ended near midnight.
”I think we`ve got it,” said Ald. William Henry (24th), a key strategist for Sawyer. ”They`re still negotiating some things.”
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Said one Northwest Side alderman, ”It`s all over. The others see it as a reality.”
If Sawyer can hold together his majority, it will be a sharp blow to Evans, who made a belated attempt Sunday to reach some accord with white aldermen when he visiited Osterman`s ward office. Evans, though, was 50 minutes late for a general meeting of mayoral hopefuls and North Side aldermen that drew Sawyer and another contender, Ald. Danny Davis (29th).
Evans was left denying that Jackson was trying to exercise undue influence on local politics.
”He had every right to come home. He is a peacemaker, not a kingmaker,” Evans said during the meeting with Osterman in her lakefront ward office on the North Side.
Evans` comments, made after Osterman had told him publicly that her constituents were concerned about Jackson`s intervention, were remarkably similar to those Jackson made to reporters earlier in the day.
”What I have been doing basically is the role of a mediator or a peacemaker, not a kingmaker,” Jackson said.
While Evans` supporters worked the telephones Sunday, Sawyer was working the streets. He met at various locations with white ethnic politicians in an attempt to jar their cohesiveness and pick up the 26 votes he will need when the council meets, perhaps as early as Wednesday, to choose an acting mayor from their midst.
Mell met with Sawyer at the Northwest Side home of O`Connor, but the two said publicly then that they had not reached an accommodation.
”I sat down earlier with Ald. Sawyer,” Mell said, ”and he tried to persuade me to drop out, and I tried to persuade him to drop out, and there were no deals.”
They then both went to what was quickly dubbed the ”Osterman meeting.”
At least 15 aldermen, most of them from the white bloc for which Osterman has been named a spokeswoman, huddled inside her ward office at 5457 N. Broadway. Outside, 20 pickets carried placards reading ”No Deals” and charged that the aldermen inside were violating the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
State law forbids the majority of a quorum of any elected body-in this case, 13 of 26, which represents a quorum of the 50-member City Council-to meet secretly while discussing public business.
Aldermen leaving that 90-minute meeting, answering questions about the possible illegality, said they had been careful that no more than 12 aldermen were in one room at the same time.