It`s been eight years since a woman has messed-really messed-with the folks at 121 N. LaSalle St.
Then, she was a gum-snapping, loud-mouthed mayor named Jane Byrne. Now, she`s a slick, sharp-tongued city treasurer named Miriam Santos.
In the two years she`s been in office, Santos has stepped on enough of the most sensitive toes, picked enough of the right fights, slayed enough Goliaths and claimed enough of the limelight to establish herself as a force to be reckoned with.
When the City Council was in the throes of a heated debate in June 1990 over a proposed ordinance which would prohibit city government from doing business with any business with financial interests in South Africa, Santos orchestrated her own anti-apartheid statement. In front of lights, cameras and microphones, she had a Coca-Cola machine removed from outside her office.
It was Cecil Partee, though, Santos` predecessor as city treasurer, who was one of the first to run into her ire.
In the fall of 1990, she busted an embezzlement scam in her own office, a hand-me-down from Partee`s days. Instead of downplaying the whole incident like a good party politician, Santos went public with her crime-fighting, making Partee look incompetent. It was a particularly bad time for Partee to look bad-he was in the middle of what turned out to be an ill-fated run for Cook County state`s attorney against GOP challenger Jack O`Malley-and many a status quo Democrat questioned Santos` timing.
Her battles have gotten bigger and badder since then.
Earlier this fall, she blew the whistle on top mayoral aides who, she says, ”kept (me) from doing a lot of the things I wanted to do,” ”ordered me to hire their friends versus bringing in people who were qualified” and, generally, ”made my job incredibly difficult to do.” She put a label on her charges: ”political harassment.”
Her ugliest brawl-to-date, though, saw her taking on Mayor Richard Daley, her former patron and former boss in the state`s attorney`s office. When the same mayoral aides snuck through legislation in Springfield which stripped her of her ex officio membership on several city pension boards, she retaliated-big-time.
She accused Daley of ”political greed,” called a news conference to air City Hall`s ”dirty laundry” and then dragged Gov. Jim Edgar into the infighting, putting him in the awkward position of referee.
Score another one for Santos. Edgar sided with her and vetoed the ”anti- Santos” portion of the pension bill.
For the people
”The bottom line,” says the 35-year-old Santos who manages $60 billion of city, Board of Education and pension fund monies and who is the first woman, the first Hispanic and the youngest person ever to hold that office,
”is when people mess with me, I hope that what they understand is that this isn`t about me. … It`s about the taxpayers who went to the polls and who got up on a cold February morning to send a message and that I take my job very seriously.”
She goes on: ” I`m not going to put up with interference.”
And on: ”I just feel that I have to do what I have to do, and it`s just part of who I am.”
Reading between the lines
Who Miriam Santos is, and what she may be up to next (which has included speculation of a run for the congressional seat in the new Hispanic district, a run for mayor and a run for U.S. Senate on the Republican ticket), is the subject of great debate around City Hall and beyond these days-though many would prefer to keep that a quiet debate and steer clear of any verbal one-on- one with the fiery city treasurer.
Daley, for one, takes the few-words approach. Asked if he`s been pleased with her job performance, he says, ”Oh, yeah, I think so.”
Asked to comment on their ”personality differences,” he says: ”I don`t have any personality differences with her at all.”
And asked if he expected Santos, whom he plucked out of the ranks of corporate attorney-dom as his appointee for city treasurer in 1989, to turn into the politician she is, he answers with an enigma: ”Some people like politics rather than government.”
But like good government, good politics also pays off. When the Democratic primaries rolled around in February of this year, Santos won a staggering 69 percent of the votes cast in her race, compared to the 63 percent Daley got in his successful mayoral bid. She later won the general election in April, adding a full-term onto the partial one she served following Harold Washington`s death.
Edgar qualifies his statements about Santos with several caveats: he doesn`t know her personally, he has never spoken with her, and his job and her job just happened to cross paths during the ”pension controversy.” He says he was ”impressed” with the way she handled what was a ”difficult situation” both during the controversy and after it was over. ”She didn`t gloat after she got her way,” says the governor.
”Bruise” is more the operative word used by Adlai Stevenson Jr. in commenting on Santos` fighting spirit, which was in particularly fine form during the pension controversy.
”I think there was something else going on here,” says the former U.S. senator who supported Santos during the controversy and who chairs an advisory committee to her office. ”She streamlined the cash management operations of that office, really making it one of the best treasuries in the United States, and she needed new worlds to conquer. And pension fund reform was important-it was the only remaining world for her to conquer in that office. In taking the issue on frontally, she established her independence. She established a ground swell of public support. She received favorable recognition in the media. She also bruised a lot of people.
”She`s just going to have to temper that a bit, but without compromising principles.”
Sticks and stones
At a slim 5 foot 8 with shoulder-length dark brown hair, equally brown eyes and a vivacity that spills out in her openness and in her frequent laugh, Santos has an undeniable presence. She speaks passionately, yet with poise and the utmost control.
”I don`t know how much of who I really am gets across,” she says, flashing a wide smile. ”My family sees me in a completely different context than everybody else. Image is something that evolves over time and I haven`t been here long enough.”
Who is this woman who`s been called everything from ungrateful to
”hyperbolic” and whose crusading has been likened to a ”tempest in a teapot”-really?
Santos offers a few surprises: ”homebody” and soap opera devotee.
She says a perfect evening is spent in her Lincoln Park townhouse curled up with a Sara Paretsky mystery and a Lean Cuisine. Her ”deepest darkest secret”: She`s an ”All My Children” fanatic, tapes it every weekday and watches the tapes from atop her exercise bike. The exercise, she adds, is a must-she tipped the scales at 200 pounds when she was in college.
Santos is not married, although she says she would like to be someday, and have children.
And, no, she and Ray Hanania, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times political reporter who either resigned or was forced to resign (depending on who you talk to) allegedly because of his involvement with the city treasurer, are no longer a couple and haven`t been since March.
”We stopped dating in March of `91,” she says, calling Hanania ”a real dear and close friend of mine” and noting that they dated for about a year, on and off.
Family matters
”Part of who I am is someone who is very much into her family and in a lot of ways very traditional about family and values,” says Santos. ”And then there`s the side of me when I come to work that is very focused and very professional and very strong and very tough and has to provide leadership and has to do certain things to get goals accomplished. But when I`m with my family that isn`t the case.”
Santos calls her family her ”support system.” Her sister, Nydia, a graphic artist in Chicago, is her best friend. Sundays are reserved for spending time with her four siblings, their spouses and her seven nieces and nephews. And she talks to her parents, who moved back to their native Puerto Rico 10 years ago, ”a couple of times a week.”
”When I was going through this (pension controversy) crisis, my nephew
(11-year-old) Rene called me to say `Yeah, I saw you on TV. When are you going to come by? I got a bull snake. You haven`t seen my new snake,` ” says Santos, adding a well-placed giggle. ”I just sort of realized that life is about more than showing up and being embattled all the time.”
Santos maintains she never aspired to be a politician-she just wanted to be a lawyer: ”Initially, I just made the move because Rich Daley asked me to.” She chuckles at being called one of the most powerful women in Chicago politics and insists she is not the bruiser she`s made out to be.
It`s just that she`s been fighting battles her whole life-and she`s gotten good at it.
All work, almost no play
Born in Gary, the second eldest of five children, Santos describes her family`s economic situation back then as ”working poor.” Her father worked in the steel mills and was disabled there. Her mother suffered an industrial accident, too; her hands were maimed in a factory machine. All of the children contributed to the family income early on-Santos at age 12. She worked as a bookkeeper at the machine shop which occupied the ground floor of the apartment building where they lived.
”My parents really believe in the American dream,” says Santos, who put herself through college and law school at De Paul University, part of the time working the 3-to-11 p.m. shift in a factory. She got her MBA at Northwestern University`s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in June 1990.
”My parents taught us-all five of us-that equality was very essential and a way to achieve equality was through education, but that you could never compromise yourself, that you had to be honest and hard-working and you had to bring integrity and values to your workplace.”
Turning negatives to positives
Although Santos professes pride for her biculturalism, she admits language was a significant problem. Her parents spoke only Spanish, and she, being one of the oldest children in the family, started public school in Gary knowing no English.
”I must have spent my entire 2nd grade in a corner because I didn`t speak very much and didn`t understand very much,” she says, noting that the school sent her and her cousin to ”speech therapy.” ”They didn`t understand we didn`t speak the language.”
Santos recalls one incident in particular in which a teacher berated them for not speaking English well.
”I went home and told my mother what had happened and my mother said
`Oh, but you see, you have to understand, you`re a very special child. So is your cousin. You speak two languages, and you have two backgrounds. That`s why you`re special, but she (the teacher) can`t show favoritism.`
”She (mother) took a very damaging and very negative experience and changed it to a very positive experience. We`d go to school and kids would make fun of us, but we`d go, `Yes, but it`s because we`re special,` ” she continues, letting out a roar of laughter.
English came quickly and easily for her, though, and before she was 10, Santos was accompanying Spanish-speaking neighbors in Gary to court or to the doctor to interpret for them.
Sisterly praise
”She`s always been very sure of what she`s doing,” says Santos` sister Nydia. ”She evaluates everything that she`s going to do. She just doesn`t step into things.”
So what does that foretell for Santos and her future in politics or elsewhere?
”I don`t know,” Santos says earlier this month. She won`t corroborate any of the speculation that she`s seeking a higher office. ”I know that I could go back to the private sector. I know that I can probably move on to another political office.”
She prefers to talk about now: ”I enjoy the work that I do tremendously. What I`ve learned is that if you can separate being a good government person and just doing your job from the politics, your job would be a whole lot easier.
”This isn`t a 9-to-5 for me. … When I walk away from this, I want to know I`ve done everything I can to make sure that it`s an office that`s doing its job, it`s serving its purpose.”
