Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [64]
In many important ways, he has proved that he lives by this motto. It was both good politics and good government to bring Orlando W. Wilson to Chicago as Police Superintendent, and to back him in his program to clean up certain unsavory elements not only on the police force, but at the root, in the party machine itself. Under Daley, as under no other administration in the history of Chicago, the Democratic organization derives its power from service to the community. Daley may be the last of the big-city bosses, but he is also the first of a new type of political leader – the boss who knows how to use the machinery of government and politics to get positive results, who has the power to do things and who does them.
Probably no other big-city mayor has the political savvy, experience, and drive of Daley. He is not only a former city precinct captain and holder of several county offices, but also is a veteran of administrative and legislative offices in the State government. He served as Director of Finance during Adlai Stevenson’s administration as governor. Before that, in the days of the Kelly-Nash machine, he had been State Senator and floor leader of the Upper House. An encyclopedic memory has enabled him to take advantage of all this experience. As one assistant after another has said in awe, “There’s nothing Dick doesn’t know about government.”
The mayor is the most energetic man in his office. He is usually the first to arrive in the morning, after walking the last few blocks for exercise. And when he leaves at night, he almost always takes along a document-filled brief case. And he’s a determined boss when it comes to carrying out his programs. One day, for instance, he saw his press chief, Earl Bush, unthinkingly drop a cigar butt on the sidewalk. A strong believer in clean streets, the mayor immediately pounced on him.
“My own staff members littering the streets!” he shouted, in a voice that caused passers-by for half a block to turn and stare.
Bush meekly removed the butt to a trashcan.
There were times in his early years when Daley showed frequent signs of an old-fashioned Irish temper, but since becoming mayor, he has brought himself under control. He can still get so angry that his face turns red, but he has never flown completely off the handle in public.
Daley is one of the most family-minded of all Chicago’s mayors. No matter what his official schedule, he always eats breakfast and an early dinner with his attractive wife, Eleanor, and their seven children. And when he has to attend a banquet later in the evening, as he usually does, the mayor sits at his seat of honor and picks politely at the food. He still lives in a modest brick bungalow on South Lowe Avenue in the Back-of-the-Stockyards district, a neighborhood that has produced many of Chicago’s mayors (Kelly and Kennelly also came from there). And he has season box seats for all White Sox games – all the Daleys are avid American League fans.
The power center of Daley’s domain is party headquarters in the Morrison Hotel. But except for election nights, when the Democratic Suite is an ocean of bottles, coffee cups, and tally sheets, the atmosphere is invariably calm. To the dismay of most reporters, the important stories break quietly. Policy decisions for the organization may be hammered out in stormy caucus among such powerful leaders as Daley, Congressman William Dawson, County Board President John J. Duffy (successor to the late Dan Ryan), and County Clerk Edward J. Barrett – but these sessions have always been held behind closed doors. Once, as the entire Cook County Democratic Central Committee was filing into a meeting room, an enterprising reporter did break the monotony by slipping in with them. Not long afterward he was spotted and evicted. (He wasn’t even a Democrat.)
Chicago has many other outstanding public officials. Behind the biggest executive desks in the County Building you will find such men as County Clerk Eddie Barrett, who once was elected Illinois Secretary of State without making a single campaign speech