A Chicago-Style Contest

THERE are a number of reasons why Alderman Tim Evans didn't win last week's mayoral election in Chicago. The biggest problem was pointed out by Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, the consummate Chicago political pundit. "It boils down to what the late Mayor Richard J. Daley"--father of the new mayor, Richard M. Daley--"used to say when one of his candidates lost. The reporters would ask: 'Why did he lose?' With a straight face, Daley would always say: 'He lost 'cuz he didn't get enough votes.'"

As badly phrased as this is, in Daley's inimitable style (his most famous malaprop occured during the 1968 Democratic primary, at which Chicago police forcefully attacked student demonstrators, when he said, "The police are not here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder."), this is not a quaint piece of folksy, Midwestern wisdom; this is the heartbeat of politics.

The reason Mayor Daley won every election he ever ran in--including six for mayor--was that he always made sure that he had enough votes to win, even if he had to buy them or stuff the ballot box. Mayor Washington won his amazing upset in 1983 because the white community was divided, and the Black community--unified around the cause of getting a Black mayor for the first time in Chicago's history--made sure he had enough of their votes to win.

THE new Mayor Daley deserved to win because he made sure that he would have enough votes to win from the outset, and he ran a smart, fair campaign. In Chicago, since everyone is a Democrat, political lines must be drawn on different factors. Race is a particularly useful factor for lining up allegiances, since the Black community no longer trusts the white politicians who have abused them for years, and the white community is afraid that Black politicians will allow their city to fall into ruin.

The late Mayor Daley went to great lengths to cultivate this antipathy. He gathered Black votes by saying he was doing everything he could to move them out of the ghettos while at the same time sending a message to white communities that electing him would ensure that Blacks stayed out of their neighborhoods. Harold Washington changed this for a short time by keeping his promises of reform--winning fair and square and giving everyone, white and Black, an equal chance to work for the city or to have their neighborhood receive city funding, and by the time of his reelection, had begun to convince white voters that he was going to help both them and the city.

This Daley is not the man his father was, but it is extremely difficult for me to have any confidence in the new administration. His father was an abject racist who did everything he could to exclude Blacks from holding important positions in government. Daley has pledged to give everyone a chance and is keeping some holdovers from the Washington administration, including the police superintendant and the head of the housing authority, but his previous record as Cook County State's Attorney, where he hired no Black or Hispanic lawyers, leaves me doubtful about his sincerity or that things really will be different.

GOING into this election, it was a battle of the heirs. Evans was Washington's protege and the man most able to carry on his agenda, while Daley, of course, was the son of "the Boss" for the white community. What Daley did right was to play down his heredity; what Evans did wrong was to play up his heredity.

Even though there are an approximately equal number of Blacks and whites in the city, many more whites than Blacks are registered, and Blacks have poorer turnout percentages. In order for a Black candidate to win, they must get a large turnout of Black voters and win 15 to 20 percent of white voters. Washington had done this, but Evans could not even get the support of the Black community because he was running in opposition to interim Mayor Eugene Sawyer, a Black man, whose supporters did not take so kindly to Evans saying that he was the one Black politician who could carry on the Washington agenda.

A coalition of white aldermen who had opposed Washington throughout his years in office supported Sawyer, a little-known Black alderman who had reluctantly supported Washington's administration, to cause infighting among Blacks. Daley had his political base of white voters, he just had to make sure that he and his supporters didn't make any racist statements that would unite Black voters against him.

Evans, on the other hand, was not the clear choice among Blacks, made no attempt to heal the rifts that had developed in the Black community and did not follow Washington's precedent of appealing to white voters.

These were his fatal mistakes, and he now has two years to convince the city's Black community that he does have qualifications beside the fact that he was Washington's heir apparent. But it may be too late. Barring a complete Daley disaster or enormous change in the voting and registration habits of Chicago's Black populace, Daleys have a nasty habit of staying in office.