In a bygone era, when Chicago politics seemed consumed by a stark racial divide, Lessie Hill’s vote might have been automatic for a black mayoral candidate.
But a generation after Council Wars, after two decades of Richard M. Daley, after Barack Obama and a withering recession that has saved its harshest economic toll for minority neighborhoods, the calculus of race and politics has become more complicated for Hill as she weighs her choices in the February election for mayor.
“Race will definitely be a factor in how I vote,” said the guidance counselor from the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, who is African-American. “That doesn’t mean that the person I pick will be black. But the person I choose has to understand that Chicago is very diverse and you have a large pool of people who pay taxes like everyone else and who are consumers like everyone else and have not been getting their fair share.”
Chicago, home of the nation’s first African-American president, remains one of America’s most segregated big cities, and the wide-open election in February for a new city leader has the potential to rip apart old racial scars.
But a new Tribune/WGN poll indicates that race-based politics could be a far tougher sell with voters these days than it was 25 or 30 years ago when racial groups were at each other’s throats and election appeals brazenly exploited that.
Of those surveyed, 75 percent said the race or ethnic backgrounds of the mayoral contenders would have little or no influence on how they vote, and 70 percent said they didn’t think a mayor would be more receptive to the concerns of voters who shared his or her skin color.
Blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to say race mattered in picking a mayor. At that, about two-thirds of minority voters still said they would give little or no weight to the race of a candidate.
The poll of 708 registered city voters was conducted Jan. 15-19.
More than a century ago, Chicago newspaper humorist Finley Peter Dunne famously declared that “politics ain’t beanbag,” a saying often invoked by Harold Washington to explain the rough and tumble of his battles in the 1980s as the city’s first black mayor.
Indeed, the path to power in this city often has been paved by criteria more raw than lofty: who you know, what you pay, how you worship, where your ancestors hailed from and the hue of your skin.
Before Washington, white control of City Hall and of the spoils of government had been a given even as Chicago grew increasingly black and brown. With Washington’s election in 1983, decades of pent-up and racially tinged resentments and fears erupted into the open and fed a near paralyzing municipal grudge match between white and minority aldermen that came to be known as Council Wars.
The theatrics and inertia gradually subsided, perhaps helped by time and perhaps by Daley’s brand of more inclusive bossism — a policy whose effectiveness and sincerity never quite escaped skepticism — during his long run as mayor.
But the city’s racial divisions and disparities didn’t evaporate. With a few exceptions, the lines remain sharply drawn between white, Latino and black neighborhoods, and poverty, crime and joblessness are concentrated more heavily where minorities live. The latest U.S. Census Bureau projections show Chicago’s population of 2.8 million split almost in thirds among African-American residents, Anglos and Hispanics.
With Daley bowing off the political stage, the question pondered by many is whether the void will rekindle an instinct to balkanize or whether the notion that there is strength in diversity has gained a broader acceptance.
As the contest stands, four major candidates remain on the ballot for the initial round of voting on Feb. 22: two Hispanics, one white and one African-American. Two other major black candidates recently bowed out as part of an agreement to avoid carving up the black vote.
To some, that drive to field a “consensus” black candidate smacked of something out of a time warp, borne by the assumption that race trumps all else in the minds of voters. To others, winnowing the ranks of major black candidates from three to one was simply a matter of smart political math, especially since only one white candidate survives on the ballot.
Gauging the political impact of shifting racial attitudes is tricky on its face and rendered even more so these days because a growing black and Latino middle class has opened socioeconomic fault lines in once very cohesive minority communities.
One voter’s perception of what constitutes racial harmony or discord may be quite different from another’s, and many people find it difficult to speak frankly about such a touchy subject. A variety of factors — some serious, some frivolous — play into the complex equation of how people cast votes, and race may be just one of them.
But the Tribune poll, as well as interviews with opinion leaders and some of those surveyed, pointed to a growing sentiment among voters that they were less interested in seeing their own physical reflection in their political leaders than seeing results in tough economic times.
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“They want good schools for their kids, they want jobs and they want safe streets and they don’t care what color skin the person who can bring all that has,” said the Rev. Robin Hood, an African-American community activist. “It’s not the ’60s, ’70s or the ’80s. People just aren’t thinking, ‘We need a black man in the mayor’s office.’ They’re thinking, ‘We need someone in there who’s going to get things done.'”
A similar sentiment came from Roger Mueller, a 45-year-old white Rogers Park resident.
“It does not mean that someone represents me better because of who I am or who they are,” said Mueller, an administrative assistant at a health care company. “What’s important has to do more with the candidate’s background and character and where he stands on the issues.”
That’s not to suggest that Chicago’s major demographic groups eye the city and its opportunities and perils through the same lens. Take neighborhood diversity. A majority of blacks said it’s lacking where they live, while 70 percent of Hispanics and nearly 80 percent of whites considered their surroundings somewhat or quite diverse.
And 57 percent of whites surveyed considered their neighborhoods safer to live in than other city neighborhoods, while only 42 percent of Hispanics felt that way and just 26 percent of blacks.
Carmen Rodriguez, a bilingual assistant at a public school in Pilsen, sees safety as the pivotal issue in the mayor’s race and promises her vote to whoever she concludes will be most adept at battling gangs.
Rodriguez, 54, grew up in Puerto Rico and said she never really experienced racial tension until she came to Chicago 25 years ago.
“In Chicago, I started to learn about racism,” she explained. “I heard about black people living in a different neighborhood, whites in a different neighborhood, Hispanics in a different neighborhood. Now I understand it and it bothers me.
“I work with different nationalities and I don’t have any problems there. But I’m afraid to go to different neighborhoods by myself because I don’t know if they are going to do something or say something to me. I’m even afraid to go into some Hispanic neighborhoods.”
Feelings of isolation are not uncommon among voters in poor neighborhoods, especially African-Americans who complain City Hall is myopically focused on developing the Loop, said John Zeigler, managing director at DePaul University’s Egan Urban Center. Some potential voters in those areas still tend to view anyone who isn’t black as “an other” unable to sympathize with their concerns, Zeigler said.
The drive for a unity black candidate was in part aimed at tapping into those resentments, and the tactic is drawn from an old political playbook in Chicago.
For decades, ethnic Irish, Polish, German and Italian candidates made heritage a centerpiece of campaigns for a variety of offices, and it was not uncommon for candidates from one ethnic group to try to dilute the vote for rivals from another group by fielding stalking-horse candidates.
Washington’s upset victory in the 1983 mayoral primary was made possible because two white candidates — Daley and then-incumbent Jane Byrne — split the white vote. In 1992, Carol Moseley Braun became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate after a surprise victory over two white rivals in the Illinois primary. She won that contest with just 38 percent of the vote.
Braun, now out of office for 11 years, is attempting a comeback in the mayor’s race and is the beneficiary of those efforts to clear the field of significant black challengers. Unlike in the past, however, the move has met with mixed reaction among minority voters.
Robert Blackwell Jr., a South Side technology entrepreneur, said the city’s financial plight means that the next mayor is going to have to make tough choices on programs and spending, and many black voters worry that will come at their expense.
“It’s a question of who blacks believe cares about them and makes sure we get to participate,” said Blackwell, 50. “At the end of the day, if they thought a Martian could provide better opportunities for them and their family, I think they’d vote for a Martian.”
But Blackwell and others said it’s also natural for voters of any race to gravitate toward candidates they can identify with, and African-Americans should not be criticized for doing what white ethnic voters have done for decades.
“All of a sudden, blacks think they want to vote for someone who looks like them and they are evil, idiot people,” Blackwell said.
On the other hand, Dinah Morris, an African-American mother of three who lives and works on the West Side, bristled at the idea that some black leaders consider the black vote a monolith.
“It shouldn’t be a racial thing,” said Morris. “Who can come in and clean up? You have to look at Chicago and all the corruption. It doesn’t matter what color the person is as long as you believe they can get things moving in the right direction.”
Tribune reporters Antonio Olivo, Rex W. Huppke and Kristen Mack contributed to this report.