money Flashback: As Richard M. Daley turns 80, a look at his political rise and embrace of ‘lakefront liberals’
One Saturday in 1980, Richard M. Daley, a product of beer-chugging Bridgeport, paid a visit to Dawn Clark Netsch’s Old Town salon of pinot grigio-sipping liberals.
It was the least likely gathering of opposites since Napoleon had tea with Madame de Stael, a darling of the 18th-century literati. She reported that his French was atrocious.
Daley, who on Sunday turns 80, was famed for his abuse of English.
“People are getting hurt in drive-by shootalongs,” he once said.
But elections are won by votes, not grammar, and yesteryear’s enemy is today’s ally.
In 1972, Daley and Netsch were newly elected members of the Illinois Senate. She once called him “dirty little Richie,” a reference to his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, who belittled critics like Netsch with a rhetorical question, “What trees do they plant?”
In fact, Richard M. was destined to plant lots of trees on the median strips of Chicago’s streets, a favorite project of his wife, Maggie. But first he had to get elected mayor, and in 1980 he was taking a preliminary step by running for Cook County state’s attorney.
Richard J. Daley died in 1976, leaving Richard M. Daley something between an opportunity and a problem. As his brother Bill Daley told the Tribune: “In a way, it was easier because when my dad was alive, everything Rich did in the senate was seen as a move by Mayor Daley.”
Or as Richard M. Daley said of his father’s power: “He couldn’t hand it down. It’s not like kings and queens.”
In the year following Richard J. Daley’s death, potential claimants to the fifth-floor mayor’s office were chomping at the bit.
Michael Bilandic, an alderman from Bridgeport, succeeded Richard J. Daley after the Machine literally locked Wilson Frost, a Black alderman, out of the office he claimed he was entitled to as the City Council’s president pro tempore.
In 1979, Jane Byrne, once a no-name City Hall official, pulled off an upset victory over Bilandic, in part due to his disastrous response to a winter blizzard.
Among those waiting in the wings was Ald. Edward Vrdolyak, the Cook County Democratic chairman, who had a certain flair for putdowns. Asked about Richard M. Daley, the Tribune reported that he replied “with a mischievous grin”: “I just don’t know the man that well.”
Another future mayoral aspirant: Congressman Harold Washington.
The incumbent state’s attorney in 1980 was Bernard Carey, a Republican. Mutual opposition to the Machine put Mayor Byrne in Carey’s corner. He also had support in the African American community because his Democratic predecessor had staged the notorious West Side raid where two Black Panther leaders were murdered.
Daley recognized he couldn’t win as Democrats traditionally did: with precinct workers reminding voters of the garbage cans they got and relatives put on city payrolls.
He needed to run on the issues, which weren’t part of the Machine playbook he had grown up with.
Chicago politicians were prone to flubbing their lines when speaking to the issues. When a key City Council ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley went to prison, the Machine ran his wife for alderman. Declaring her support for bilingual programs in Chicago schools, as the city’s Latino population grew, Adeline Keane said: “When I went to grammar school, Latin was almost compulsory; today it’s almost non-existent,” the Tribune reported.
Richard J.’s legendary malapropisms led his press secretary to admonish reporters: “Don’t say what he said. Print what he meant.”
But the guests Richard M. Daley would meet at Netsch’s salon could speak eloquently to issues galore. Equitable election districts, civil rights, desegregated schools, affordable housing — you name the issue, the lakefront liberals had the answer. Their problem was a lack of political muscle to enact them.
Daley made the first move in reaching out to that crowd. In 1977, he showed up at a North Side softball game that was a fundraiser for Netsch. Could there be any better setting than a sandlot diamond for the first date of a Chicago political romance?
She played the shy but inwardly beaming teenager. “I don’t think it’s one of the great political events of the year,” Netsch told the Tribune.
Their political marriage was announced by a pair of 1980 Tribune headlines:
“Daley embraces lakefront liberals.”
“10 Independents give Daley support for state’s attorney,” above a story that announced Daley had won the backing of Netsch and others.
It was enough to put Daley over the top, making him the county’s top prosecutor and setting him up for higher office.
“Daley won, beginning an alliance with reform groups in Chicago, brokered in no small degree by Dawn Netsch, who was principled and pragmatic, not dogmatic,” Ald. Michele Smith recalled upon Netsch’s death in 2013.
That alliance wasn’t enough to hold off Washington in 1983, when Daley and Byrne split the white vote and fell short in the Democratic primary.
But Daley went on to become mayor in 1989. He served until 2011, holding office even longer than his father had even as the political machine Richard J. Daley had built slowly crumbled.
Join our Chicagoland history Facebook group for more from Chicago’s past.
