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He never moved his family out there. They always stayed here.

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Okay, I'm speeding.

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Just try to stay where you are.

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Yeah, I will not move.

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Be aware of the tripod light.

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Um, you know, since I was telling you about it, if I was going to ask you what Chicago politics is, what Chicago politics is like.

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How do you describe it?

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It's probably the last vestige of the old traditional organized form of politics and the nation today.

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Clearly, in big cities in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, there were tightly controlled political machines, for lack of a better word,

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which relied to a great extent on patronage and jobs to fuel the success of the political machinery.

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Most of those jobs are gone now.

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But here in Chicago, there still is a last vestige of that type of precinct-oriented, ward-oriented organization politics.

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What is it about Chicago?

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Can we break this for a second? Steve, we never check levels.

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How many did you get?

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Okay, that was fine. What is it about Chicago that makes it different?

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I mean, why here for the, why here for the being the last vestige?

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Is there something about people's interest or is it politicians?

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Chicago has always been a very political town and the newspapers in Chicago traditionally have given a lot of attention to Chicago politics.

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Whereas in New York, if you read the New York Times, you won't see very much about New York politics or government that focuses on international affairs or national affairs.

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But then too, I'm convinced that much of the reason why Chicago still does have a remnant, if you will, of a political organization

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is the fact that Richard J. Daly dominated the scene here in Chicago as both the mayor and the head of the party for a considerable period of time,

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from 1953 when he became party chairman and then in 1955 when he was elected mayor until 1976 when he died.

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And so when a lot of other cities were going through those changes that resulted in the collapse of the political organization or the abandonment of the political organization,

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Richard J. Daly still held that together up until the middle 1970s and then of course part of that continued on and survives until today.

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What did the machine, the organization, depend on? You know, and say is the machine?

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It depended on...

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You'd start off with saying the machine or the organization depended on?

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The organization or the machine as the critics would refer to it depended on a highly organized type of administration

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that basically rewarded precinct workers who developed loyalty from the voter and delivered votes on election day with patronage jobs.

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Of course that was expanded a great deal during the Depression when charity to a very great extent,

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coal for the stove and turkey on Thanksgiving or holidays also became part of the political currency

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and although there are those who would criticize that as being a callous way of exploiting people's hardships,

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as a matter of fact I could argue that indeed it did fill a void during those years and that in many instances those politicians

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who may have at least in part been motivated by selfish interests still accomplished a great deal of good.

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Now the city jobs, the stuff that the old organization depended on, that doesn't exist anymore?

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No, as a result of a federal decision the existence of patronage politics for all intents and purposes has been wiped out.

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Well then you need to explain something for us because in other places the connection between city stuff and politics

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partially because the organization stuff exists is really hard to see.

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But last night for instance we were at a phone bank, really wonderful folks, very enthusiastic, they spent a lot of time there

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but they were all water department guys at the phone bank. I mean is this a coincidence or is there some sort of ties still on some level?

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It's probably true that you didn't see too many young people there,

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there were probably mostly people who were recruited into the Daily Organization in the 60s and 70s

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and have continued an interest and a certain loyalty to the Chicago form of politics.

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It's changed a lot as you mentioned, now there's phone banks, whereas 30 years ago

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the practitioner of Chicago politics would traditionally be walking the streets, ringing doorbells,

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delivering campaign literature, doing a check and minus on the poll sheet to determine whether or not

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the family was either in favor of or opposed to that particular precinct worker's candidate

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and then a follow up on election day to get the voters that had pluses behind their names out to the polls.

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And of course those means of getting to the polls were any variety,

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whether it involved hiring the person in the household, pay them to stand at the poll for an hour

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and make sure that they got their fellow family members out to the poll

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or providing a ride to the polling place for the person that didn't want to vote

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or couldn't vote unless they got a ride

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or providing a babysitter to watch the kids while mom and dad would go to vote

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or arranging for an incapacitated ballot.

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But those are all nuts and bolts kinds of politicking that probably are foreign to most other cities in America today.

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They don't really have anybody that's been brought up in that tradition of going door to door

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and knowing the voters and being able to deliver services.

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Now there seems to be different career paths for politicians here.

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I mean as if for instance when we were talking the other day,

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I mean one of your earliest jobs, not your first job, was as a policeman

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and you ended up getting into politics and eventually becoming an Altman.

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Actually this doesn't seem to be unusual.

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We've met it in a number of other people that have the same thing.

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Tell us about the career paths of how people get into politics

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or used to get into politics in Chicago or use your own example.

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I think it's safe to say that a lot of the people who are in politics in Chicago and Cook County

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are sons or daughters of prominent politicians.

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The most notable of course is the mayor whose father served as mayor and head of the party.

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The county clerk, circuit court clerk, is Aurelia Pachinsky

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whose father was a long time member of Congress and a long time alderman.

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Former attorney general was Neil Hartigan whose father served as a member of the city council here and as city treasurer.

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And so there are a legion of those kinds of examples.

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And yes too there are a number of Chicago police officers who have gone on into politics.

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But I think that there's not a great deal of difference between policing and politicking.

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There are a lot of similarities.

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Our present county sheriff, Mike Sheen, is a former Chicago police officer

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and although I'd have to think about counting up the number of former cops who are present in the city council today

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there have to be at least six of us.

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But Chicago is more like a small town.

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There's more of an identity.

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People know one another.

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They know what buttons to push to get things done.

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Unlike a huge metropolis like New York where no one knows anyone.

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It certainly is an observation that I would find valid.

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It's a politics of neighborhoods and people identify with locally elected public officials.

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They may not be able to name their congressman or state senator or state representative

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but they certainly can tell you who their alderman is.

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The city's gone through a lot of changes.

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Let's go deal with the political changes first.

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If I come to Chicago a decade ago

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the city looked like it was going in one direction politically.

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You had a mayor who was building up a lot of power.

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You had a very, very active black community.

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It looked like Chicago politics was going to go in that direction in terms of a dominant coalition.

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Now ten years later things seem to totally change.

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There's a different coalition which not only seems like it's going to win easily

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but there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that it's going to be defeated any time real soon.

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Can you describe to us what happened and how that happened?

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Simply put, Harold Washington died and there was no one of his stature to take his place.

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That's a simple answer.

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It's obviously much more complicated.

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But it's true that it appears now that the emerging coalition will be between the Hispanic and the white.

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And if that coalition remains together

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it's highly unlikely that a black politician will emerge

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to be elected to the mayor's office or any other prominent local office.

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Why is that coalition being so successful?

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Part of it is because the present mayor has nurtured that relationship

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and there's a growing understanding that that's the wave of the future.

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And part of it can't be ruled out and that I think is the similarity

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between the Hispanic family and religious orientation

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along with the old middle class white ethnic family and religious orientation.

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Can you explain that similarity?

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The growing Mexican-American population in Chicago is very similar to the immigrant population

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that came from Europe to Chicago many years ago

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in that they share a Catholic religion

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and they have a tight family structure where there is a father figure

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and a desire for upward mobility.

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Whereas it appears that those kinds of things are lacking in the black community

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and the tremendous poverty and hopelessness

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that has unfortunately afflicted vast areas of the African-American population in Chicago

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has resulted in a lack of organization, a lack of unity,

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a lack of desire to forge that kind of a political coalition.

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It's not an easy one.

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It takes timing and hard work and there is no unity in that community.

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So is the key here partially Catholicism?

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Is the Catholic immigrant experience similar?

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I think there are sociologists that are now looking at that

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as part of an answer to the question you pose.

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It does seem to make some sense.

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How about your own district? How is your district changing?

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How has it changed over time?

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It's changed from...

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Start by saying my district has changed.

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The area I represent has changed dramatically

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from being an all-white ethnic kind of community

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to being about 30% Hispanic.

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By ethnic I mean Polish, Slovak, Irish, etc.

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It's probably kind of setting to not include Mexican-Americans or Hispanics

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in that category, ethnics, because they in truth and in fact are an ethnic division.

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It's just that the common parlance, the common descriptive terms

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have generally lumped ethnics into a category which is assumed to be all Caucasian.

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So as a politician representing people, how has this change affected you?

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Well, I'm aware of the fact that in politics

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it's a game of addition and multiplication,

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not a game of division and subtraction.

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The key to politics is putting people together and adding up votes.

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As the learned philosopher Edmund Burke once observed,

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in politics there are no permanent enemies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

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The interests of most politicians involve getting elected

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and forming coalitions that can continue to hold power.

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And if indeed we are going to be able to form coalitions to hold power,

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we're going to have to form coalitions with willing groups

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that are on the same wavelength as we are.

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And as a necessity, given of course the huge division

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between the Democratic Party on the one hand, the blacks,

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and on the other hand the whites,

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and the lack of a willingness on the part of a lot of those blacks

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to cooperate with the whites,

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I think that the white politicians were driven to coalescing and unifying with the Hispanics.

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So with the influx of Hispanics and Mexicans in your district,

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how has that affected your political style and what you have to do as a political representative?

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Well, I've tried to be more culturally aware of the Mexican-Americans' needs and requirements.

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I'm trying to learn some Spanish.

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I'm trying to, if you will, address the needs of those new residents.

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And they're no different than what the needs and requirements of the rest of us are.

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They want a safe neighborhood. They want clean streets.

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They want responsible city services.

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They want good schools.

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They want an opportunity to bootstrap themselves up in society,

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just as the waves of immigrants did 60, 70, and 80 years ago.

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So how's your Spanish?

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It's muy importante hablar español con mis amigos, pero es muy difícil también.

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And when you speak Spanish to your constituents, how do they react?

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They enjoy it. They love to see that somebody is trying to be open

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and take that one step toward them to understand their needs

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and to try and be aware of their cultural identity.

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And I enjoy it. It makes me feel good.

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Okay. One last question that I want to walk us over to the pictures.

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You know, a large part of your district...

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Incidentally, my Spanish is not very good, as you can see.

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At least you're trying.

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Yo atento.

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A large number of your constituents have moved out of the city.

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You were driving around Englewood between 50th and 63rd.

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Obviously, the community has changed a lot.

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What does that mean in terms of change in politics?

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Having so many people has moved completely out of the city.

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What's the consequences of politics?

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Well, first of all, the population of Chicago has dropped dramatically

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over the last several years.

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And the population of the suburbs has gone up dramatically.

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And it has resulted in a shift of power in the state capital

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from the city to the suburbs.

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And now state politics is dominated by the suburban area

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as opposed to being dominated by the city as it was for so many years.

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So that's going to change the results.

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And you can see what happened here in Illinois in the last election.

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The Republicans swept every statewide office

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and gained control of both the Illinois Senate

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and the Illinois House of Representatives for the first time in memory.

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Last question.

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I just have one question.

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You know, while we would go in all over the country,

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and people always say, well, our politics is tough, but it's nothing like Chicago.

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Chicago just has this reputation for sort of being the PhD of political strategy.

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I mean, why is that?

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It's not just that everybody's into politics.

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It's also rough and tough and sort of take no prisoners.

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It probably goes back to the 1930s.

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And it was Anton Cermak who was assassinated

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who really put together the ethnic kind of politics in Chicago.

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And then through the 30s and the 40s,

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the Kelly-Nash political machine functioned in tandem with organized crime.

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The local Democratic leader in each ward in the city

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picked the local police captain.

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And a lot of the political workers

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and a lot of the political revenues that were available

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came from gambling at that point, horse betting.

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That continued on until the time of Richard J. Daley

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and probably created that original basis

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for the impression that Chicago was a rough-and-tumble political town.

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There is no way of denying the fact that historically

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there have been a great many acts of violence connected with politics in Chicago,

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but I suspect that in other large urban areas that was also the case.

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It probably never was the case in the emerging areas in the West

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because by that time things had changed so dramatically

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in terms of our overall society that there was a system

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that simply wouldn't stand for violence to be connected with political activity.

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Malden, Burke, you've been all over the country.

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What is that quality you need here that you might need more of here than someplace else?

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Well, Harold Washington was fond of saying that politics ain't beanbag.

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Probably take somebody that's resilient and doesn't have a thin skin

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and is willing to come back after defeat

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and that factor can be cited time and time again,

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not only with Richard J. Daley who was defeated for county sheriff in 1946

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who ultimately came back to be the premier politician of Chicago,

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but also is the case with his son who was defeated in 1983

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in the Democratic primary for mayor, but yet was able to come back in 1989 and become the mayor.

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Now obviously there was some elements of fate that played a role in that,

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but it still demonstrates resilience and the ability to stick at it.

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Why don't we go over the pictures?

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Let's do the room tone first over here.

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Thirty seconds of no sound and then we'll go over the pictures and wrap it up.

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And room tone.

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Okay, ready when you are.

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So whenever you're ready, what are these pictures?

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Well, these are former chairman of the Committee on Finance.

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Traditionally the chairman of the Committee on Finance is the leader of the city council

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and there are some very interesting characters here,

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including some who went on to be mayors of Chicago.

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I think my favorite is probably Levi Boone who got to be mayor in 1855.

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He was elected on the Know Nothing ticket.

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A lot of politicians don't know anything,

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but some of them actually proclaim it as he did during the middle of the 19th century.

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First thing he did when he got elected mayor of Chicago

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was close down all the German beer gardens on Sunday,

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which prompted the first riot in Chicago's history known as the Lager Beer Riot.

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This is another interesting character.

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Alderman James Bowler served here as chairman between 1941 and 1947.

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And in Tip O'Neill's book, Man of the House,

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he recounts how Mr. Bowler was elected to the United States Congress when he was in his 80s.

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Obviously that's something that doesn't happen very often.

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And so Tip O'Neill walked over to him and he said,

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Mr. Bowler, why is it that you're here in the Congress in your 80s?

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That's not very common.

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He said, well, I'll tell you what happened.

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He said, 50 years ago, myself and my predecessor Al Sabbath were both members of the city council,

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and the Democratic leaders were undecided who would be the next congressman.

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So after about 12 ballots, we finally just flipped a coin,

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and the winner of the towing cost would go to the Congress,

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and whomever lost the towing cost would then replace him when he retired or moved on.

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He said, well, he died.

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And 50 years later, here I am.

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And Tip O'Neill's observation in his book was, only in Chicago.

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Is there some sort of a tradition or situation where someone might actually go to Congress first

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and then come back to the city council?

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I have to admit that at one time being a member of the city council was a far higher calling

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than being a member of the Congress, at least in the opinion of Chicagoans.

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Why was that?

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To say it was strictly for corrupt reasons would probably be unfair,

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but I think a lot of Chicagoans simply didn't want to leave Chicago.

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They liked it too much here.

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Who's the power in the wards? I forgot to ask you this before.

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Now and then, Alderman, ward committeeman?

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At one time, the Democratic ward committeeman was the principal power in the local ward.

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That's changed a great deal, again, with the loss of patronage

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and with the rooting out of gambling and corruption.

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The Democratic committeeman becomes increasingly irrelevant.

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It's more often the case, however, that whomever the committeeman is also is the Alderman or vice versa.

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So generally speaking, if you're the Alderman, you're also the Democratic committeeman.

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There are exceptions to that, but ordinarily that's the case.

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Do you think Chicago politicians are aware of the tradition in which they've inherited?

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This is like being, I don't know, it just has a huge amount, a rich amount of history and tradition.

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The whole country knows about it.

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Well, increasingly, the people who presently get elected to office are not really very aware

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of the rich legacy of historical political involvement,

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mainly because there really is no political organization in vast areas of Chicago.

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And I would venture to say a lot of the members of the city council today could name three of their predecessors.

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Well, you're aware of it, so how do you feel about being in this place, in this history?

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I enjoy Chicago history.

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I think it's very interesting and I'm a believer in the fact that you can learn a great deal from history.

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OK, can I do one last thing with you?

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Sure.

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I want to very much for bearing with us.

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OK, I'll see.

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You ready?

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Yep.

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Hi, my name is Ed Burke and I'm running for reelection to the Chicago City Council in the 14th Ward.

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Sorry, good.

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Let me just get one wider vision.

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That was great.

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That was great.

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OK.

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One more time.

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Hi, my name is Ed Burke and I'm running for reelection to the Chicago City Council in the 14th Ward.

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This is, I mean, this is for us in 96.

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We want a project.

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Oh gosh.

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Yeah, we've been doing it two years already.

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I'm ready to move on.

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So lucky the elections.

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Oh my gosh, I have to put another roll in there.

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What are they doing?

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Are they wandering around somewhere?

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Is this run by some outfit in Washington?

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Probably.

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Yeah, we actually were with a group like that in Oklahoma.

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Well, it was funny because I actually was...

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I went down to Washington while they were...

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They had about six different votes.

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And how could you do it so it appeared to be a different group?

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It was illegal. That was their question.

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At Kiev, politics and absolutely no idea what to make of the situation?

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Who set you up with them?

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I came through the mayor's office of information and inquiry.

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That might be interesting if there's a group running around during the election.

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Trying to catch up with them.

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I bet it's the same people.

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I bet it's the national democrats.

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Why don't we talk to the mayor's office about it?

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We'll either do that or we could just have...

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Cut the gene.