Dear Political Patrons:

I’m not a Chicago native, but I’ve spent nearly three times as many years as a resident of the Windy City as I had in my hometown of Omaha, and all of that time on the South Side (if one counts Hyde Park as the South Side). When I arrived in Hyde Park, Michael Bilandic was Mayor, and the fact that he was Croatian was of little consequence to my newfound awareness of Chicago politics. The Irish were kings of the South Side ever since Mayor Richard J. Daley’s mother, Lillian, announced that she wanted more for her son than being a policeman. Richard J. didn’t disappoint.

Daley (the elder) had a keen sense of optics, making sure that his base constituencies were well represented when handing out credit and meting out power. His was a carefully crafted machine in which the component parts were not universally interchangeable. A coalition of North and South Side Irish (who, by the way, don’t get along to this day, with terms shanty and lace curtain still insultingly tossed about), Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Bohemian, Croatian and other ethnic descendants were carefully balanced, so each group felt adequately compensated for their carefully choreographed ground game each election.

Mayor Richard J. remained Democratic committeeman of his beloved 11th Ward (Bridgeport), a position he held from 1940 until his death. The 11th was not only his home, but also the home of his mother, so he took active interest in keeping his neighborhood ‘friendly’, as he defined it. The story goes that some public works project was completed in the ward in the mid-1960s. Daley, who had been Mayor since 1955, would arrive for the ribbon cutting. It didn’t matter if it was a major infrastructure project or the dedication of a bus stop bench, Daley paid attention to the details of his photo ops. Carefully selecting the men who would stand behind him, they were arranged to reflect their rising or falling prominence in the machine’s performance.

As the story was related to me by a curator of Daley lore, Fr. James Creighton (yes, my old chaplaincy supervisor), when the mayor arrived, he was informed that his regular Croatian ringer was sick and would not be available for the photo. Daley told his old friend and then current 11th Ward alderman, Matthew Danaher, to go get Bilandic from the ward office. Filling the Crotian gap, this was Bilandic’s moment, grinning behind the mayor with the members of the patronage patrol. Four years later, when Danaher’s drinking and shadows of scandal encroached on his favor with Daley, it was Bilandic who filled the breach and became the 11th’s new boss.

The current term is DEI, for diversity, equity and inclusion. Some pretend that including someone because of their ethnicity or constituent background is new and somehow scandalous. In fact, it’s as old as politics. Even soon to be disciple Nathanael, upon hearing of Jesus’ regional origin, asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1.46). We’re confident it’s a meritocracy when our kind gets promoted, but we scream favoritism when the face in the picture doesn’t look like ours.

I’ve tried to verify Fr. Creighton’s account, which he said was shared with him by his old friend Richard J. himself. I checked with my friend Gary Washburn, who wrote the Tribune obituary for Michael Bilandic in January 2002. Gary could neither confirm nor deny the account, but he did tell me it had a ring of Chicago political authenticity.

All this background was lost on me when I arrived in Hyde Park in the fall of 1978. I knew little about the complex power brokers that made Chicago ‘the city that works.’ But I soon learned that being the mayor of America’s second city could be complicated. Four months after I arrived in the Windy City, it began to snow.

Musing about current and past political blizzards, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor