If there ever were a caucus of City Council Republicans, Ald. Brian Doherty (41st) would be in a unique position: most powerful member, most senior member–and the only person in the room.
Doherty’s role as the sole GOP alderman in a Democratic city run by a powerful Democratic mayor would seem to relegate him to back-row obscurity in the Council Chamber.
But Doherty’s profile took a sudden jump Wednesday when his was the only dissenting vote of 47 cast on a resolution urging Congress to hold hearings into reparations for the descendants of African slaves.
Though some council colleagues criticized his action, Doherty said it was playing well in his overwhelmingly white and ethnic Northwest Side ward.
“I can’t walk down the street without somebody pulling over and saying, `That-a-boy Brian. We appreciate you had the nerve to do that,”‘ he said.
Doherty acknowledged that his vote might cause some to label him a bigot. But the onetime West Sider, a refugee from tumultuous racial change and violence who lost a boyhood friend to a race-related shooting, insisted that he assesses people one at a time, regardless of color.
“I judge on an individual basis,” he said. “But there are competing interests between white ethnics and blacks in the city for resources and jobs. If I represent my people and their best interest, does it make me a bigot? I don’t think so.”
Even Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd), the most passionate supporter of the reparations resolution and its prime sponsor, considers Doherty a stand-up guy, though misguided on the reparations questions.
“He was honest” by voting no, she said.
But Doherty “represents whites in America we have to educate,” Tillman said. “I think he is operating out of ignorance. I am going to have to spend a little more time with him and teach him.”
Ald. Ed Smith (28th), who spoke eloquently in support of the resolution, said, “I don’t think [Doherty] is a racist by any stretch of the imagination.”
But Smith, who is African-American, said, “If it had been me in this particular case, I think I would have left the council floor rather than vote against it. I think it sends a bad message.”
Doherty, 42, grew up in Austin, one of nine children of Irish immigrant parents.
His father was a Sears, Roebuck & Co. janitor who worked a second job in construction. His mother was a waitress.
As a youngster, “I didn’t know anybody existed in the world unless they were Irish, Italian or Polish, and everybody was Catholic,” Doherty said.
But things changed dramatically as African-Americans began moving into previously all-white sections of the West Side and riots erupted after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I was 11 in 1968,” he said. “We could see fires from our house and I remember the fear.”
One day on Chicago Avenue, one of his best friends made fun of the way an African-American was walking and paid with his life when he was gunned down by the person he was ridiculing, Doherty said.
“It was a time of white flight and panic and racial violence,” he said. “It made the ethnics who were there at the time very close-knit. … You got kind of a siege mentality and, unfortunately, an us-against-them mentality.”
Instead of sending their spindly, 90-pound son to nearby Austin High School, the Dohertys enrolled him at Lane Technical High School on the North Side, despite a 3-hour roundtrip daily commute.
Ultimately, Doherty’s parents decided to flee Austin for the Northwest Side.
“To escape the violence and what was going on, they had to sell the home for less than it was worth,” he said. “That made a lasting impression.”
Doherty worked at a Jack-in-the-Box and in construction before getting a degree in business management at Northeastern Illinois University.
He dabbled in politics in his spare time, becoming a protege of the late state Rep. Roger McAuliffe, a Northwest Side Republican. With McAuliffe’s backing, he ran for alderman in 1991 and managed to unseat Democratic warhorse Roman Pucinski.
Since joining the council, Doherty has become a dependable supporter of Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat with Republican-like leanings on many issues. But on reparations, Doherty parted the mayor’s company. While Daley and other aldermen, particularly the African-Americans, view black Americans as victims because of a history of slavery and discrimination, Doherty sees white ethnics as victims because of quotas, affirmative action and reverse discrimination.
“I think at times certain things need to be said and certain points of view must be expressed [in spite of] political correctness,” he declared. “Nobody will argue [African-Americans] were wronged. But do we get equity by punishing white ethnics who have been here for only two generations? I don’t think that is appropriate either.”
“Brian made the vote based on principle,” said Ald. Thomas Allen of the neighboring 38th Ward, and a longtime friend. “Nobody will take it personally.”
