Ald. Ed Burke Interview

He never moved his family out there.

They always stayed here.

Okay, I'm speeding.

Just try to stay where you are.

Yeah, I will not move.

Be aware of the tripod light.

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.

How do you describe it? It's probably the last vestige of the old traditional organized form of politics and the nation today.

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

Most of those jobs are gone now.

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

What is it about Chicago? Can we break this for a second? Steve, we never check levels.

How many did you get? Okay, that was fine.

What is it about Chicago that makes it different? I mean, why here for the, why here for the being the last vestige? Is there something about people's interest or is it politicians? Chicago has always been a very political town and the newspapers in Chicago traditionally have given a lot of attention to Chicago politics.

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.

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

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, 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.

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

You'd start off with saying the machine or the organization depended on? The organization or the machine as the critics would refer to it depended on a highly organized type of administration that basically rewarded precinct workers who developed loyalty from the voter and delivered votes on election day with patronage jobs.

Of course that was expanded a great deal during the Depression when charity to a very great extent, coal for the stove and turkey on Thanksgiving or holidays also became part of the political currency and although there are those who would criticize that as being a callous way of exploiting people's hardships, 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 who may have at least in part been motivated by selfish interests still accomplished a great deal of good.

Now the city jobs, the stuff that the old organization depended on, that doesn't exist anymore? No, as a result of a federal decision the existence of patronage politics for all intents and purposes has been wiped out.

Well then you need to explain something for us because in other places the connection between city stuff and politics partially because the organization stuff exists is really hard to see.

But last night for instance we were at a phone bank, really wonderful folks, very enthusiastic, they spent a lot of time there 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? It's probably true that you didn't see too many young people there, there were probably mostly people who were recruited into the Daily Organization in the 60s and 70s and have continued an interest and a certain loyalty to the Chicago form of politics.

It's changed a lot as you mentioned, now there's phone banks, whereas 30 years ago the practitioner of Chicago politics would traditionally be walking the streets, ringing doorbells, delivering campaign literature, doing a check and minus on the poll sheet to determine whether or not the family was either in favor of or opposed to that particular precinct worker's candidate and then a follow up on election day to get the voters that had pluses behind their names out to the polls.

And of course those means of getting to the polls were any variety, whether it involved hiring the person in the household, pay them to stand at the poll for an hour and make sure that they got their fellow family members out to the poll or providing a ride to the polling place for the person that didn't want to vote or couldn't vote unless they got a ride or providing a babysitter to watch the kids while mom and dad would go to vote or arranging for an incapacitated ballot.

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

They don't really have anybody that's been brought up in that tradition of going door to door and knowing the voters and being able to deliver services.

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

I mean as if for instance when we were talking the other day, I mean one of your earliest jobs, not your first job, was as a policeman and you ended up getting into politics and eventually becoming an Altman.

Actually this doesn't seem to be unusual.

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

Tell us about the career paths of how people get into politics or used to get into politics in Chicago or use your own example.

I think it's safe to say that a lot of the people who are in politics in Chicago and Cook County are sons or daughters of prominent politicians.

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

The county clerk, circuit court clerk, is Aurelia Pachinsky whose father was a long time member of Congress and a long time alderman.

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

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

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

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

There are a lot of similarities.

Our present county sheriff, Mike Sheen, is a former Chicago police officer and although I'd have to think about counting up the number of former cops who are present in the city council today there have to be at least six of us.

But Chicago is more like a small town.

There's more of an identity.

People know one another.

They know what buttons to push to get things done.

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

It certainly is an observation that I would find valid.

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

They may not be able to name their congressman or state senator or state representative but they certainly can tell you who their alderman is.

The city's gone through a lot of changes.

Let's go deal with the political changes first.

If I come to Chicago a decade ago the city looked like it was going in one direction politically.

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

You had a very, very active black community.

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

Now ten years later things seem to totally change.

There's a different coalition which not only seems like it's going to win easily but there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that it's going to be defeated any time real soon.

Can you describe to us what happened and how that happened? Simply put, Harold Washington died and there was no one of his stature to take his place.

That's a simple answer.

It's obviously much more complicated.

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

And if that coalition remains together it's highly unlikely that a black politician will emerge to be elected to the mayor's office or any other prominent local office.

Why is that coalition being so successful? Part of it is because the present mayor has nurtured that relationship and there's a growing understanding that that's the wave of the future.

And part of it can't be ruled out and that I think is the similarity between the Hispanic family and religious orientation along with the old middle class white ethnic family and religious orientation.

Can you explain that similarity? The growing Mexican -American population in Chicago is very similar to the immigrant population that came from Europe to Chicago many years ago in that they share a Catholic religion and they have a tight family structure where there is a father figure and a desire for upward mobility.

Whereas it appears that those kinds of things are lacking in the black community and the tremendous poverty and hopelessness that has unfortunately afflicted vast areas of the African -American population in Chicago has resulted in a lack of organization, a lack of unity, a lack of desire to forge that kind of a political coalition.

It's not an easy one.

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

So is the key here partially Catholicism? Is the Catholic immigrant experience similar? I think there are sociologists that are now looking at that as part of an answer to the question you pose.

It does seem to make some sense.

How about your own district? How is your district changing? How has it changed over time? It's changed from...

Start by saying my district has changed.

The area I represent has changed dramatically from being an all -white ethnic kind of community to being about 30 % Hispanic.

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

It's probably kind of setting to not include Mexican -Americans or Hispanics in that category, ethnics, because they in truth and in fact are an ethnic division.

It's just that the common parlance, the common descriptive terms have generally lumped ethnics into a category which is assumed to be all Caucasian.

So as a politician representing people, how has this change affected you? Well, I'm aware of the fact that in politics it's a game of addition and multiplication, not a game of division and subtraction.

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

As the learned philosopher Edmund Burke once observed, in politics there are no permanent enemies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

The interests of most politicians involve getting elected and forming coalitions that can continue to hold power.

And if indeed we are going to be able to form coalitions to hold power, we're going to have to form coalitions with willing groups that are on the same wavelength as we are.

And as a necessity, given of course the huge division between the Democratic Party on the one hand, the blacks, and on the other hand the whites, and the lack of a willingness on the part of a lot of those blacks to cooperate with the whites, I think that the white politicians were driven to coalescing and unifying with the Hispanics.

So with the influx of Hispanics and Mexicans in your district, how has that affected your political style and what you have to do as a political representative? Well, I've tried to be more culturally aware of the Mexican -Americans' needs and requirements.

I'm trying to learn some Spanish.

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

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

They want a safe neighborhood.

They want clean streets.

They want responsible city services.

They want good schools.

They want an opportunity to bootstrap themselves up in society, just as the waves of immigrants did 60, 70, and 80 years ago.

So how's your Spanish? It's muy importante hablar español con mis amigos, pero es muy difícil también.

And when you speak Spanish to your constituents, how do they react? They enjoy it.

They love to see that somebody is trying to be open and take that one step toward them to understand their needs and to try and be aware of their cultural identity.

And I enjoy it.

It makes me feel good.

Okay.

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

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

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

At least you're trying.

Yo atento.

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

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

Obviously, the community has changed a lot.

What does that mean in terms of change in politics? Having so many people has moved completely out of the city.

What's the consequences of politics? Well, first of all, the population of Chicago has dropped dramatically over the last several years.

And the population of the suburbs has gone up dramatically.

And it has resulted in a shift of power in the state capital from the city to the suburbs.

And now state politics is dominated by the suburban area as opposed to being dominated by the city as it was for so many years.

So that's going to change the results.

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

The Republicans swept every statewide office and gained control of both the Illinois Senate and the Illinois House of Representatives for the first time in memory.

Last question.

I just have one question.

You know, while we would go in all over the country, and people always say, well, our politics is tough, but it's nothing like Chicago.

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

I mean, why is that? It's not just that everybody's into politics.

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

It probably goes back to the 1930s.

And it was Anton Cermak who was assassinated who really put together the ethnic kind of politics in Chicago.

And then through the 30s and the 40s, the Kelly -Nash political machine functioned in tandem with organized crime.

The local Democratic leader in each ward in the city picked the local police captain.

And a lot of the political workers and a lot of the political revenues that were available came from gambling at that point, horse betting.

That continued on until the time of Richard J.

Daley and probably created that original basis for the impression that Chicago was a rough -and -tumble political town.

There is no way of denying the fact that historically there have been a great many acts of violence connected with politics in Chicago, but I suspect that in other large urban areas that was also the case.

It probably never was the case in the emerging areas in the West because by that time things had changed so dramatically in terms of our overall society that there was a system that simply wouldn't stand for violence to be connected with political activity.

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

What is that quality you need here that you might need more of here than someplace else? Well, Harold Washington was fond of saying that politics ain't beanbag.

Probably take somebody that's resilient and doesn't have a thin skin and is willing to come back after defeat and that factor can be cited time and time again, not only with Richard J.

Daley who was defeated for county sheriff in 1946 who ultimately came back to be the premier politician of Chicago, but also is the case with his son who was defeated in 1983 in the Democratic primary for mayor, but yet was able to come back in 1989 and become the mayor.

Now obviously there was some elements of fate that played a role in that, but it still demonstrates resilience and the ability to stick at it.

Why don't we go over the pictures? Let's do the room tone first over here.

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

And room tone.

Okay, ready when you are.

So whenever you're ready, what are these pictures? Well, these are former chairman of the Committee on Finance.

Traditionally the chairman of the Committee on Finance is the leader of the city council and there are some very interesting characters here, including some who went on to be mayors of Chicago.

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

He was elected on the Know Nothing ticket.

A lot of politicians don't know anything, but some of them actually proclaim it as he did during the middle of the 19th century.

First thing he did when he got elected mayor of Chicago was close down all the German beer gardens on Sunday, which prompted the first riot in Chicago's history known as the Lager Beer Riot.

This is another interesting character.

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

And in Tip O 'Neill's book, Man of the House, he recounts how Mr.

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

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

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

Bowler, why is it that you're here in the Congress in your 80s? That's not very common.

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

He said, 50 years ago, myself and my predecessor Al Sabbath were both members of the city council, and the Democratic leaders were undecided who would be the next congressman.

So after about 12 ballots, we finally just flipped a coin, and the winner of the towing cost would go to the Congress, and whomever lost the towing cost would then replace him when he retired or moved on.

He said, well, he died.

And 50 years later, here I am.

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

Is there some sort of a tradition or situation where someone might actually go to Congress first and then come back to the city council? I have to admit that at one time being a member of the city council was a far higher calling than being a member of the Congress, at least in the opinion of Chicagoans.

Why was that? To say it was strictly for corrupt reasons would probably be unfair, but I think a lot of Chicagoans simply didn't want to leave Chicago.

They liked it too much here.

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

Now and then, Alderman, ward committeeman? At one time, the Democratic ward committeeman was the principal power in the local ward.

That's changed a great deal, again, with the loss of patronage and with the rooting out of gambling and corruption.

The Democratic committeeman becomes increasingly irrelevant.

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

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

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

Do you think Chicago politicians are aware of the tradition in which they've inherited? This is like being, I don't know, it just has a huge amount, a rich amount of history and tradition.

The whole country knows about it.

Well, increasingly, the people who presently get elected to office are not really very aware of the rich legacy of historical political involvement, mainly because there really is no political organization in vast areas of Chicago.

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

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

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

OK, can I do one last thing with you? Sure.

I want to very much for bearing with us.

OK, I'll see.

You ready? Yep.

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

Sorry, good.

Let me just get one wider vision.

That was great.

That was great.

OK.

One more time.

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

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

We want a project.

Oh gosh.

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

I'm ready to move on.

So lucky the elections.

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

What are they doing? Are they wandering around somewhere? Is this run by some outfit in Washington? Probably.

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

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

I went down to Washington while they were...

They had about six different votes.

And how could you do it so it appeared to be a different group? It was illegal.

That was their question.

At Kiev, politics and absolutely no idea what to make of the situation? Who set you up with them? I came through the mayor's office of information and inquiry.

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

Trying to catch up with them.

I bet it's the same people.

I bet it's the national democrats.

Why don't we talk to the mayor's office about it? We'll either do that or we could just have...

Cut the gene.