Jane Byrne contended that the city is too quiet. Mayor Richard Daley said the calm has enabled Chicago to move ahead. Danny Davis accused Daley of paying little attention to hate crimes and racial segregation.
It was the last weekend day of campaigning before Tuesday`s primary election, and the Democratic mayoral contenders on Sunday imparted to voters a final reminder of the major themes of their candidacies.
”I`m in this race because I really don`t like when it`s so quiet in Chicago,” Byrne, who was mayor from 1979 to 1983, told the congregation at Chatham Bethlehem Presbyterian Church on the South Side.
Byrne said that after nearly 50 years of City Hall domination by Bridgeport Democrats including Daley`s late father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, she ran in 1979 to break the 11th Ward`s control.
”That`s what this is about, an open city,” Byrne said.
”It`s always quiet when you don`t know what`s going on and when we`re not told what`s going on, and that`s the way it was, believe me.”
Byrne warned the small audience: ”Don`t go back to one neighborhood of ruling. We`ve been there, and I don`t think you`ll like it if we go back.”
Before departing for campaign stops at shopping centers on the predominantly white Southwest and Southeast Sides, Byrne even tried to claim some credit for the late Harold Washington`s election as Chicago`s first black mayor.
”If there hadn`t been one person that got up in `79 and said, `This all- powerful, all-invisible machine, stop right now,` there never would have been a Washington in 1983,” she said. Byrne lost to Washington in the Democratic mayoral primary that year and ran unsuccessfully against him in 1987.
Like Byrne, Daley and Davis campaigned at churches Sunday, and the mayor got a reaffirmation of an endorsement from the well-known Rev. Clay Evans of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, who challenged Daley ”to be the mayor of everybody.”
Both at the South Side church and at a restaurant in Uptown, where he was honored later by members of the African immigrant community, Daley told audiences, ”I don`t run away from a problem. I try to stand there and solve it.
”By working together and lowering our voices, more can be accomplished,” said the mayor, who has campaigned as having brought peace and unity to city politics after nearly a decade of racial divisiveness.
But Davis, a Cook County commissioner and former alderman, said that since Daley`s election in 1989 to fill the remaining two years in Washington`s second term, hate crimes against ethnic groups have increased.
”I recall when Mr. Daley was asked about human relations problems and the problems of blacks and whites and Hispanics and Asians, Mr. Daley shrugged it off and said, `We don`t have any problem,` ” Davis said at a news conference.
”Then we come back a few weeks later and we read the report issued by the Commission on Human Relations, which clearly tells us that there is a rise in hate crimes. The approach that has been used by the current mayor . . . has not been the most effective one.”
Davis said that as mayor he would ”reinstitute and reconstitute”
various groups to return them to the commission`s auspices and would push legislation to combat hate crime.
In response to Davis` assertion that the mayor has been lax on hate crimes, Daley`s campaign manager, David Wilhelm, said, ”That`s absurd, and nothing could be farther from the truth.” As Cook County state`s attorney, he said, Daley wrote laws against hate crimes that serve as a national model, and since becoming mayor has put teeth into the human relations ordinance. ”It`s one of the leading areas of accomplishment,” Wilhelm said.
Davis and his wife, Vera, received standing ovations at the churches he visited. ”From what I observe, the African-American community is at its highest level of unification since prior to the death of Harold Washington,” he said.
Daley campaigned during part of the day with City Treasurer Miriam Santos and a handful of candidates he has endorsed in aldermanic races along the lakefront.
The 272 hopefuls for 50 Chicago City Council seats have waged some of the fiercest campaigns, and there was further evidence of it Sunday.
For example, challenger Mary Baim, who refuses to endorse a mayoral candidate, showed up with supporters for an appearance Daley made with Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43rd). They waved Daley-Baim signs, even though Daley has endorsed Eisendrath, and Baim said: ”There are a lot of his supporters in my campaign.”
Ambrosio Medrano, challenging Ald. Juan Soliz (25th), accused the incumbent of sending out racially and ethnically bigoted material under Medrano`s name. Medrano said he would ask state and federal authorities to investigate. Soliz`s campaign manager, Frances Sandoval, denied the accusation and said the incumbent`s material ”is geared to his record of experience and accomplishments.”
The Republican mayoral primary has three candidates, but the race has been much quieter than two years ago, when former Ald. Edward Vrdolyak revved up his 10th Ward organization the final days of the campaign en route to a write-in GOP nomination.
George Gottlieb, the GOP-endorsed challenger to Daley, worked his shift as a police sergeant as a handful of Republican ward committeemen carried his campaign to the estimated 24,000 who will take ballots in that primary-about 2 percent of the number who typically vote in the Democratic primary.
Gottlieb said his campaign is based on tax accountability for the Chicago City Council, an educational voucher system intended to stimulate competition and competence in schools, housing for the homeless in vacant CHA units and an overhaul of police deployment to direct more manpower against crime.
”Nothing is certain,” Gottlieb said of the primary, recalling his own upset victory over a GOP-backed congressional primary candidate in 1988 as well as Vrdolyak`s write-in nomination.
Pervis Spann, radio personality and president of station WVON, campaigned door-to-door on the South Side, emphasizing his plan for additional publicly funded drug-rehabilitation centers to combat crime and narcotics. ”Remove the need for drugs, and you remove the crime,” Spann said.
Alfred Balciunas, a supervisor for United Parcel Service, campaigned on the Northwest Side in an effort to swing votes away from Gottlieb and said he would improve Chicago`s business climate.
Vrdolyak, out of politics and in the practice of law the last two years, summed up the attitude of many Chicagoans from in front of his television at home: ”I haven`t been following the campaign. I`ve been following the war, like everybody else, and everything else is second.”
Day 39 of the Persian Gulf war, the first full day of ground fighting, was Day 74 of the campaign for candidates in the primary.
