Cook County Democratic Party

Cook County Democratic Party
Chairman	Joseph Berrios
Headquarters	134 N LaSalle, Chicago, IL
National affiliation	Democratic Party
Colors	Blue
Website
cookcountydems.com

The Cook County Democratic Party is a political party which represents voters in 50 wards in the city of Chicago and 30 suburban townships of Cook County. The organization dominated Chicago politics (and consequently, Illinois politics) since the 1930s. It relied on a tight organizational structure of ward and township committeemen and precinct captains to elect candidates. At the height of its influence under Richard J. Daley in the 1960s, it was one of the most powerful political machines in American history. By the beginning of the 21st century the machine largely ceased to exist due to the successes of politicians such as Jane Byrne and Harold Washington, as well as the indifference of mayor Richard M. Daley. After several decades of domination by Irish Americans, the Cook County Democratic organization today is diverse in its leadership. The current Chairman is Joseph Berrios.

Early history

In the nineteenth century, the city of Chicago and Cook County sustained a strong two-party tradition. The local Democratic Party grew even stronger in the decades that followed the Great Chicago Fire. With the support of the party, Carter Harrison and his son, Carter Harrison II, both were elected mayor five times between 1879 and 1911. Prior to the death of Cook County Democratic Chairman George Brennan in 1928, the Democratic Party in Cook County was divided along ethnic lines - the Irish, Polish, Italian, and other groups each controlled politics in their neighborhoods and municipalities. Under the leadership of Anton Cermak, the party consolidated its ethnic bases into one large organization. Cermak won 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 what was then a political machine.

Nash and Kelly were able to add African-Americans to the organization's fold, as they had been previously loyal to Republicans since the Civil War. Nash died in 1943 and Kelly took over as Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. The extensive corruption that took place during Kelly's tenure caused him to become unelectable. Jacob Arvey assumed the position of Chairman of the organization after Kelly's ouster in 1947. Arvey 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.

Under Richard J. Daley

The organization turned to Richard J. Daley, who brought the Cook County Democratic Party to the height of its power and notoriety. Daley assumed the leadership of the machine in 1955, and successfully put himself on the party's slate for mayor. He won election fairly easily, and ruled the city and the party machine for the next twenty years. 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. He amassed a considerable power base by awarding political appointments to his allies, just as Daley did in the larger machine. However, Dawson's machine had to continually support the regular machine in order to retain its own clout.

A noted example of the Chicago machine in action was in the 1960 presidential election. Daley helped turn out the vote for John F. 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. In recognition of this, the organization was selected to host the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Author Len O'Connor described this period as Richard J. Daley's "High Water Mark". At that time, the Cook County Democratic Party was of the most powerful political machines in American history.

Decline of the machine

The power of the machine began to decline during the 1960s and 1970s. The 1968 convention had ended in disaster. Racial tension over issues such as urban renewal in Woodlawn and Lincoln Park, red lining, open housing and public school desegregation drove African-Americans and Latinos from the machine. 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 activities, such as the Shakman Decrees, 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. 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 influential Southwest Side ward bosses (Daley, Madigan, Hynes, etc.,) and while she enjoyed for a short while after her election the support of George Dunne, her election occurred without her ever taking simultaneous control of the Cook County Democratic Party the way Richard J. Daley had.

The divisions between the County Party and City Hall led to a loss of power for the Machine. When Richard J. Daley's son Richard M. Daley challenged Byrne for mayor in 1983, it enabled an 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, and both groups backed Harold Washington. He won the three-way primary election. The Young Lords leader Jose Cha Cha Jimenez introduced the new mayor in June 1983 in Humboldt Park before a crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans. For the next three years, the Cook County Democratic Party was divided by crippling Council Wars in the city of Chicago. This was essentially a racially polarized political conflict that blocked the agenda of Washington and his allies.

After Washington was elected - and in spite of the fact that African Americans and Latinos comprised 55 percent of the votes in the city’s 49 wards - only 15 Blacks and one Latino served as alderman. Gerrymandering had prevented the Black and Latino majorities from electing candidates from their own communities. Washington's supporters and allies waged an unprecedented and successful battle over redistricting. Their broad, multiracial coalition then used grassroots organizing techniques that resulted in electoral wins. Those victories brought an end to the Council Wars that had paralyzed Chicago's city council since Washington was elected. The ensuing split in the Cook County Democratic Party, largely along racial lines, led to the defection of several prominent machine Democrats, notably Party Chairman Edward Vrdolyak, to the Republican Party.

Similar to the weakening of the machine after Richard J. Daley's death, the Washington coalition fractured and then completely 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 or mobilize the same degree of support among white liberals as well as Washington had. In the 1988 primary election, the Cook County Democratic Party was able to woo several prominent formerly independent leaders, such as Carol Moseley Braun and Luis Gutiérrez, to back the county Democratic Party's slate, further splintering the loose independent coalition.

Under Thomas G. Lyons

45th Ward committeeman Thomas G. Lyons served as a lawmaker, lawyer and lobbyist. He was elected chairman of the party in 1990 and would serve in that capacity for 17 years. During this time, the influence of the party declined due to the election of Richard J. Daley's son Richard M. Daley to the office of Chicago mayor. The younger Daley built a political organization of his own that reelected him five times. His power bloc included the growing Hispanic community, through a "powerful and feared patronage army" known as the Hispanic Democratic Organization. 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.

As Daley's time in office drew to a close, investigations, indictments, and criminal convictions for hiring fraud and graft, including the federal conviction of the Daley's patronage chief, left little doubt that a political machine had been 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. Because of this the party is still sometimes referred to derisively as the "Chicago Democratic Machine", or simply the "Chicago Machine".

Recent years

On February 1, 2007, Joseph Berrios was unanimously elected Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party and has headed the party ever since. In 2010 Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said "When Joe came in, for the first time, African-Americans, Latinos, women had a real opportunity for leadership in the party and had a real opportunity to be slated by the party." Berrios is the first and thus far only Hispanic to serve as Chairman.

Further reading

• Cohen, Adam and Taylor, Elizabeth, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley — His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (2000)
• Grimshaw, William J, Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931–1991 (1992)
• Rakove, Milton L, Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers: An Insider's Analysis of the Daley Machine (1975)
• Rakove, Milton L, We Don't Want Nobody Sent: An Oral History of the Daley Years (1979)
• Royko, Mike, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1972)

External links

• Cook County Democratic Party
• Democratic Party of Illinois