Cook County Democratic Organization
Encyclopedia
The Cook County
Democratic Organization is one of the most powerful political machine
s in American history. Historically called the "Chicago
Democratic machine", or simply the "Chicago Machine", the organization has dominated Chicago politics (and consequently, Illinois politics) since the 1930s. It relies on a tight organizational structure of ward committeemen
and precinct
captains to elect candidates.
in Chicago was divided along ethnic lines - the Irish
, Polish
, Italian
, and other groups each controlled politics in their neighborhoods. Under the leadership of Anton Cermak
, the party consolidated its ethnic bases into one large organization. With the organization behind, Cermak was able to win election as mayor of Chicago
in 1931, an office he held until his assassination
in 1933.
After Cermak's death, Patrick Nash
and Edward J. Kelly
took control of the machine. They were able to add African-Americans to the organization's fold, as they had been previously loyal to Republicans
since the Civil War
. Due to scandals and liberal policies on housing, Kelly lost favor with the machine.
Jacob Arvey
assumed the chair of the organization after Nash's death in 1943 and Kelly's ouster in 1947. Arvey wanted to clean up the image of the machine, so he put reformers on the slate, such as Martin H. Kennelly
for mayor, Paul Douglas
for United States Senate
, and Adlai Stevenson for governor of Illinois.
Worried about the power of the reform movement, the organization turned to Richard J. Daley
, who brought the Cook County Democratic Organization to the height of its power and notoriety. Daley took the reins of the machine in 1955, and successfully put himself on the machine's slate for mayor. He won election fairly easily, and ruled the city and machine for the next twenty years.
The most famous example of the Chicago machine in action was in the 1960 presidential election
. Daley believed John F. Kennedy
would be a tremendous help to Democratic candidates on the ticket, and so he used all the machine's power to turn out the vote for Kennedy. Kennedy won Illinois by only 9,000 votes, yet won Cook County by 450,000 votes, with some Chicago precincts going to Kennedy by over 10 to 1 margins. Illinois' 27 electoral votes
helped give Kennedy the majority he needed.
Under the regular machine was an African-American "sub-machine" led by William L. Dawson. In the predominantly African-American wards, Dawson was able to act as his own political boss, handing out patronage and punishing rivals just as Daley could in the larger machine. However, Dawson's machine had to continually support the regular machine in order to retain its own clout.
in Woodlawn and Lincoln Park
, red lining, open housing
and public school desegregation
drove African-Americans and Latinos from the machine, as the machine tended to side with its white ethnic base (who started to flee the city for the suburbs). Though Daley himself never faced any criminal charges, a number of his associates did, including Thomas Keane and Arvey. After Daley's death in 1976, the machine lost even more of its influence. Michael Bilandic
, Daley's successor, did not have nearly the power that Daley did, and indeed lost in a 1979 mayoral primary to Jane Byrne
. Reform movements also eliminated many of the patronage jobs that it previously could hand out, reducing the number of voters who owed their livelihoods to the Democratic party.
Some argue that the machine ended when Bilandic lost the mayoral Democratic primary to Jane Byrne
, and that the last remnants of the machine finally collapsed during the racially charged three-way mayoral primary in 1983. This is an oversimplification of a complex network of relationships and political structures; the reality is that the machine was never monolithic and that damage to some of the machine's branches never destroyed its roots. It is true that after Byrne's victory, the machine had no one central leader, and it became unusually divided as its chieftains vied for power. Byrne's base of support, both politically and popularly, was on the Northwest side of Chicago, and to a lesser extent the Southeast, and she also benefited from the first flexing of independent African-American electoral power. However, while originally a Daley appointee, Byrne did not have the backing of the powerful Southwest Side political clans (Daley, Madigan, Hynes, etc.), and while she enjoyed for a while the support of George Dunne, her election occurred without her ever taking simultaneous control of the city or county Democratic Party; thus she could not wield the power of a boss
.
The split between Party and City Hall did lead to a period of demise of the Machine, and when Richard J. Daley's son Richard M. Daley
challenged Byrne for mayor in 1983, it enabled a historic coalition of African-American, Hispanic, and "good government"
or "lakefront" liberals to coalesce.Latinos who had been displaced for years from the downtown and lakefront neighborhoods joined the West Town Coalition and the Young Lords Harold Washington
and he emerged as the victor in the three-way primary election.The Young Lords leader Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez,introduced the new victorious mayor in June,1983 in Humboldt Park,before a crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans.The machine, for the next five years, was weaker and more divided than ever before. The split in the Chicago City Council and Chicago Democratic politics, largely along racial lines, led to several prominent machine Democrats, notably Cook County Democratic Party chairman Edward Vrdolyak
, defecting to the Republicans. Washington's supporters and allies waged unprecedented battle not only for positions such as alderman and state representative, but for the relatively obscure (to the public) party positions of ward and state central committeeman, as well as some countywide positions, and achieved numerous successes, primarily on the largely African-American South and West Side, in the Hispanic communities on the north lakefront, and in the liberal communities clustered around the University of Chicago
. However, the dominance of machine politics on the northwest and southwest sides, and in some of the western and southern suburbs of Cook County, was never seriously challenged.
Similar to the weakening of the machine after Richard J. Daley's death, the Washington coalition wobbled and then collapsed after Washington's death in the fall of 1987, only a half-year into his second term. No subsequent African-American candidate was able to unify the West and South Side African-American communities as Washington had, nor mobilize the same degree of support among white liberals. In the 1988 primary election, the machine was able to woo several prominent formerly independent, anti-machine leaders, such as Carol Moseley Braun
and Luis Gutiérrez
, to back the county organization's slate, further splintering the loose independent coalition.
was elected mayor in 1989, and rebuilt a powerful political organization that has reelected him five times. This bloc has involved Daley reaching out to the growing Hispanic community, as well as retaining old machinist wards, and raising unprecedented campaign funds. Unlike his father, the younger Daley also reached out to those who initially opposed him, and primarily through negotiated apportionment of city funds for aldermen's local projects, was able to gain control of the City Council to a degree that even the elder Daley never enjoyed. Most of the former "independents," granted a share of the budget and thus the ability to fund their support base, became, themselves, permanent incumbents; in return they supported Daley and gave up on efforts to challenge City Hall's control over the largest contracts and projects, and the machine's control over slating.
In recent years, investigations, indictments, and criminal convictions for hiring fraud and graft, including the federal conviction of the current Mayor Daley's patronage chief, have left little doubt that the machine, if it ever died, was reincarnated since its apparent collapse in the early 1980s. In July 2005, a federal court-appointed monitor reported widespread abuses of a previous court decree against patronage hiring, and the President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners
alone still controls 200+ political jobs. The U.S. Attorney's office contended in 2006 that the machine had been rebuilt.
Today, as has been the case for over half a century, no one individual or even small group holds central power in the party. Schisms such as that between South and West Side persist, and the likelihood of the various machine politicians continuing to act as free agents, rather than automatic team players, creates the potential for further change.
On February 1, 2007, Joseph Berrios was unanimously elected Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...
Democratic Organization is one of the most powerful political machine
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...
s in American history. Historically called the "Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
Democratic machine", or simply the "Chicago Machine", the organization has dominated Chicago politics (and consequently, Illinois politics) since the 1930s. It relies on a tight organizational structure of ward committeemen
Committeemen and Committeewomen (Cook County)
Ward Committeemen and Township Committeemen are political party officials who serve many standard committeemen and committeewomen duties on behalf of their political party in Cook County, Illinois....
and precinct
Precinct
A precinct is a space enclosed by the walls or other boundaries of a particular place or building, or by an arbitrary and imaginary line drawn around it. The term has several different uses...
captains to elect candidates.
Early history
Before the 1930s, the Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
in Chicago was divided along ethnic lines - the Irish
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
, Polish
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
, Italian
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
, and other groups each controlled politics in their neighborhoods. Under the leadership of Anton Cermak
Anton Cermak
Anton Joseph Cermak was the mayor of Chicago, Illinois, from 1931 until his assassination by Giuseppe Zangara in 1933.-Early life and career:...
, the party consolidated its ethnic bases into one large organization. With the organization behind, Cermak was able to win election as mayor of Chicago
Mayor of Chicago
The Mayor of Chicago is the chief executive of Chicago, Illinois, the third largest city in the United States. He or she is charged with directing city departments and agencies, and with the advice and consent of the Chicago City Council, appoints department and agency leaders.-Appointment...
in 1931, an office he held until his assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
in 1933.
After Cermak's death, Patrick Nash
Patrick Nash
Patrick A. Nash was a political boss in the early and mid-twentieth century in Chicago, which is in Cook County, Illinois, United States. He was in large part responsible for consolidating what became the Chicago Democratic political machine, which was regarded as the first political machine in...
and Edward J. Kelly
Edward Joseph Kelly
Edward Joseph Kelly served as chief engineer of the Chicago sanitary district in the 1920s, and later as mayor of Chicago, Illinois for the Democratic Party....
took control of the machine. They were able to add African-Americans to the organization's fold, as they had been previously loyal to Republicans
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
since the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Due to scandals and liberal policies on housing, Kelly lost favor with the machine.
Jacob Arvey
Jacob Arvey
Jacob M. Arvey was aninfluential Chicago political leader from the Depression era until the mid-1950s. He may be best-known for his efforts to end corruption in the Chicago Democratic organization, and for promoting the candidacies of liberal Democratic politicians such as Adlai Stevenson and...
assumed the chair of the organization after Nash's death in 1943 and Kelly's ouster in 1947. Arvey wanted to clean up the image of the machine, so he put reformers on the slate, such as Martin H. Kennelly
Martin H. Kennelly
Martin H. Kennelly served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois for the Democratic Party.-Early Life:...
for mayor, Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...
for United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
, and Adlai Stevenson for governor of Illinois.
Worried about the power of the reform movement, the organization turned to Richard J. Daley
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley served for 21 years as the mayor and undisputed Democratic boss of Chicago and is considered by historians to be the "last of the big city bosses." He played a major role in the history of the Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F...
, who brought the Cook County Democratic Organization to the height of its power and notoriety. Daley took the reins of the machine in 1955, and successfully put himself on the machine's slate for mayor. He won election fairly easily, and ruled the city and machine for the next twenty years.
The most famous example of the Chicago machine in action was in the 1960 presidential election
United States presidential election, 1960
The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th American presidential election, held on November 8, 1960, for the term beginning January 20, 1961, and ending January 20, 1965. The incumbent president, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not eligible to run again. The Republican Party...
. Daley believed John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
would be a tremendous help to Democratic candidates on the ticket, and so he used all the machine's power to turn out the vote for Kennedy. Kennedy won Illinois by only 9,000 votes, yet won Cook County by 450,000 votes, with some Chicago precincts going to Kennedy by over 10 to 1 margins. Illinois' 27 electoral votes
United States Electoral College
The Electoral College consists of the electors appointed by each state who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States. Since 1964, there have been 538 electors in each presidential election...
helped give Kennedy the majority he needed.
Under the regular machine was an African-American "sub-machine" led by William L. Dawson. In the predominantly African-American wards, Dawson was able to act as his own political boss, handing out patronage and punishing rivals just as Daley could in the larger machine. However, Dawson's machine had to continually support the regular machine in order to retain its own clout.
Temporary weakening of the machine in the 1980s
The power of the machine began to wane during the 1960s and 1970s. Racial tension over issues such as urban renewalUrban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
in Woodlawn and Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park is an urban park in Chicago, which gave its name to the Lincoln Park, Chicago community area.Lincoln Park may also refer to:-Urban parks:*Lincoln Park , California*Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California...
, red lining, open housing
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
and public school desegregation
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
drove African-Americans and Latinos from the machine, as the machine tended to side with its white ethnic base (who started to flee the city for the suburbs). Though Daley himself never faced any criminal charges, a number of his associates did, including Thomas Keane and Arvey. After Daley's death in 1976, the machine lost even more of its influence. Michael Bilandic
Michael Anthony Bilandic
Michael Anthony Bilandic was an Illinois politician who served as the mayor of Chicago, Illinois and as Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. He was a member of the Democratic Party....
, Daley's successor, did not have nearly the power that Daley did, and indeed lost in a 1979 mayoral primary to Jane Byrne
Jane Byrne
Jane Margaret Byrne was the first and to date only female Mayor of Chicago. She served from April 16, 1979 to April 29, 1983. Chicago is the largest city in the United States to have had a female mayor as of 2011.-Early political career:...
. Reform movements also eliminated many of the patronage jobs that it previously could hand out, reducing the number of voters who owed their livelihoods to the Democratic party.
Some argue that the machine ended when Bilandic lost the mayoral Democratic primary to Jane Byrne
Jane Byrne
Jane Margaret Byrne was the first and to date only female Mayor of Chicago. She served from April 16, 1979 to April 29, 1983. Chicago is the largest city in the United States to have had a female mayor as of 2011.-Early political career:...
, and that the last remnants of the machine finally collapsed during the racially charged three-way mayoral primary in 1983. This is an oversimplification of a complex network of relationships and political structures; the reality is that the machine was never monolithic and that damage to some of the machine's branches never destroyed its roots. It is true that after Byrne's victory, the machine had no one central leader, and it became unusually divided as its chieftains vied for power. Byrne's base of support, both politically and popularly, was on the Northwest side of Chicago, and to a lesser extent the Southeast, and she also benefited from the first flexing of independent African-American electoral power. However, while originally a Daley appointee, Byrne did not have the backing of the powerful Southwest Side political clans (Daley, Madigan, Hynes, etc.), and while she enjoyed for a while the support of George Dunne, her election occurred without her ever taking simultaneous control of the city or county Democratic Party; thus she could not wield the power of a boss
Political boss
A boss, in politics, is a person who wields the power over a particular political region or constituency. Bosses may dictate voting patterns, control appointments, and wield considerable influence in other political processes. They do not necessarily hold public office themselves...
.
The split between Party and City Hall did lead to a period of demise of the Machine, and when Richard J. Daley's son Richard M. Daley
Richard M. Daley
Richard Michael Daley is a United States politician, member of the national and local Democratic Party, and former Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. He was elected mayor in 1989 and reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He was the longest serving Chicago mayor, surpassing the tenure of his...
challenged Byrne for mayor in 1983, it enabled a historic coalition of African-American, Hispanic, and "good government"
Good government
Good government is a normative description of how government is supposed to be constituted. It has been frequently employed by various political thinkers, ideologues and politicians.- Thomas Jefferson and Good government :...
or "lakefront" liberals to coalesce.Latinos who had been displaced for years from the downtown and lakefront neighborhoods joined the West Town Coalition and the Young Lords Harold Washington
Harold Washington
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who became the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987.- Early years and military service :...
and he emerged as the victor in the three-way primary election.The Young Lords leader Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez,introduced the new victorious mayor in June,1983 in Humboldt Park,before a crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans.The machine, for the next five years, was weaker and more divided than ever before. The split in the Chicago City Council and Chicago Democratic politics, largely along racial lines, led to several prominent machine Democrats, notably Cook County Democratic Party chairman Edward Vrdolyak
Edward Vrdolyak
Edward Robert Vrdolyak is a noted Chicago lawyer and politician and a convicted felon. He was a powerful longtime Chicago Alderman and also head of the Cook County Democratic Party before running unsuccessfully for Mayor of Chicago as a Republican...
, defecting to the Republicans. Washington's supporters and allies waged unprecedented battle not only for positions such as alderman and state representative, but for the relatively obscure (to the public) party positions of ward and state central committeeman, as well as some countywide positions, and achieved numerous successes, primarily on the largely African-American South and West Side, in the Hispanic communities on the north lakefront, and in the liberal communities clustered around the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. However, the dominance of machine politics on the northwest and southwest sides, and in some of the western and southern suburbs of Cook County, was never seriously challenged.
Similar to the weakening of the machine after Richard J. Daley's death, the Washington coalition wobbled and then collapsed after Washington's death in the fall of 1987, only a half-year into his second term. No subsequent African-American candidate was able to unify the West and South Side African-American communities as Washington had, nor mobilize the same degree of support among white liberals. In the 1988 primary election, the machine was able to woo several prominent formerly independent, anti-machine leaders, such as Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun is an American feminist politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first and to date only African-American woman elected to the United States Senate, the first woman to defeat an incumbent senator in an...
and Luis Gutiérrez
Luis Gutiérrez
Luis Vicente Gutiérrez is an American politician and the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. Gutiérrez was the first Latino to be elected to Congress from the Midwest. From 1986 until his election to Congress he served as a member of the Chicago City Council representing the 26th ward...
, to back the county organization's slate, further splintering the loose independent coalition.
Recent years
Richard J. Daley's son Richard M. DaleyRichard M. Daley
Richard Michael Daley is a United States politician, member of the national and local Democratic Party, and former Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. He was elected mayor in 1989 and reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He was the longest serving Chicago mayor, surpassing the tenure of his...
was elected mayor in 1989, and rebuilt a powerful political organization that has reelected him five times. This bloc has involved Daley reaching out to the growing Hispanic community, as well as retaining old machinist wards, and raising unprecedented campaign funds. Unlike his father, the younger Daley also reached out to those who initially opposed him, and primarily through negotiated apportionment of city funds for aldermen's local projects, was able to gain control of the City Council to a degree that even the elder Daley never enjoyed. Most of the former "independents," granted a share of the budget and thus the ability to fund their support base, became, themselves, permanent incumbents; in return they supported Daley and gave up on efforts to challenge City Hall's control over the largest contracts and projects, and the machine's control over slating.
In recent years, investigations, indictments, and criminal convictions for hiring fraud and graft, including the federal conviction of the current Mayor Daley's patronage chief, have left little doubt that the machine, if it ever died, was reincarnated since its apparent collapse in the early 1980s. In July 2005, a federal court-appointed monitor reported widespread abuses of a previous court decree against patronage hiring, and the President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners
Cook County Board of Commissioners
The Cook County Board of Commissioners is a legislative body made up of 17 commissioners who are elected by district for four year terms. Cook County, which includes the City of Chicago, is the nation's second largest county with a population of 5.2 million residents...
alone still controls 200+ political jobs. The U.S. Attorney's office contended in 2006 that the machine had been rebuilt.
Today, as has been the case for over half a century, no one individual or even small group holds central power in the party. Schisms such as that between South and West Side persist, and the likelihood of the various machine politicians continuing to act as free agents, rather than automatic team players, creates the potential for further change.
On February 1, 2007, Joseph Berrios was unanimously elected Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.