Picking Up the Pieces

By WALTER ISAACSON

After a bitter campaign, Harold Washington tries to heal a divided city

Even as they chanted and cheered into the night, the 15,000 excited supporters who crammed into cavernous Donnelley Hall on Chicago's South Side seemed to hold back their full emotions. There was a tentative chorus: "We want Harold!" Then a note of caution from someone in the crowd: "Let's get some damn figures. We may be partying too soon." An aide appeared at the podium around midnight to say the race was too close to call. Some wards were still missing. "If the man don't win, I'm going to hate white folks forever," growled a partisan. Finally the result began to sink in. Chicago, that bastion of segregated neighborhoods and brawling Democratic machinery, had elected a black as mayor. The chants began to mock the racially charged campaign slogan of the white Republican opponent. "We want Harold--before it's too late!"

When Harold Washington finally appeared to a thunderous ovation in the early hours of the morning, he knew that the task ahead was as daunting as the one just completed. He had beaten the incumbent. He had beaten the heir apparent to the legendary Daley machine. And now he had triumphed in one of the bitterest and most racially divisive political fights in recent American history. But his election had swung a wrecking ball into the political foundation of The City That Works, the patronage-fueled Democratic machine. So with soothing and inspiring words befitting the son of a preacher, he tried to bandage the wounds. "I want to reach out my hand in friendship and fellowship to every living soul in this city," he said. "I charge each and every one of you to rededicate your efforts to heal the divisions that have plagued us . . . Chicago is one city."

The city seemed to drop its broad shoulders in a sigh of relief as the racial tensions of the past seven weeks began to subside. A black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, had run a front-page warning the day before the vote that police were planning to make mass arrests of Washington supporters on the day of the election. But the balloting was remarkably free of chicanery, proceeding without significant fraud or intimidation. "Be cool, be cool, don't blow it," black radio stations urged their listeners as the results came in.

The day after the election, Washington was host at a unity luncheon. He was flanked by the two rivals he had defeated in the Democratic primary last February: Jane Byrne, the departing mayor, and Richard Daley, son of the legendary boss. Bernard Epton, last Tuesday's Republican loser, skulked off to Florida, leaving his brother to fill in at the lunch. Epton's lack of grace seemed to diminish rather than heighten the tensions: at that moment, it was hard to argue that the better man had lost.

For blacks nationwide, Washington's win was a symbol of the fruits of political participation. "This is the most significant black political movement since the Selma-to-Montgomery march" 18 years ago, said Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson. RIZZO IS NEXT read a banner at the victory celebration. Indeed, if Wilson Goode, now well ahead, beats former Mayor Frank Rizzo in next month's primary in Philadelphia and goes on to become mayor, the leaders of four of the nation's six largest cities will be black, an impressive buildup of political muscle.

The results in Chicago reflected the racial divisions evident in the campaign. Across the city, the turnout was a record: almost 80% of those registered cast ballots. Washington carried many black wards by more than 95% of the vote. In the 24th Ward on the heavily black West Side, for example, he tallied 24,259 votes to Epton's 129. He handily won all 19 of the city's black wards and took almost 60% of the Hispanic vote.

Conversely, the white ethnic wards, which have voted solidly Democratic since William ("Big Bill") Thompson was elected the last Republican mayor in 1927, went heavily for Epton. In the Polish-Irish-Russian 13th Ward on the Southwest Side, Epton took 34,856 votes to Washington's 1,457. Even the famed Eleventh Ward of Bridgeport, the bedrock Democratic base of the late Mayor Daley, voted overwhelmingly Republican. Holding the electoral balance were the city's six affluent "Lakefront Liberal" wards. Undecided until the very end, they finally gave Washington 40% of their vote, enough to assure his 51.8% majority.

During the final few days, Washington tried to capitalize on the growing revulsion, particularly in the Lakefront wards, with the squalid campaign. He took the offensive by publicly confronting baseless rumors that he had been arrested for child molesting. He also aired a powerful television ad that showed a series of violent scenes from America's past: a Ku Klux Klan rally, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the Kent State shootings. It culminated with pictures of Epton supporters jeering Washington at a church on Palm Sunday. "There are moments in our history of which we are thoroughly and profoundly ashamed," said the narrator. "One of these moments may be happening in Chicago right now."

The hard-hitting ad, which was pulled off the air after only four showings, caused dissension within Washington's already fragmented campaign staff. But the candidate was unfazed. With rising adrenaline, he spent 16-hr. days stumping in white, black and Hispanic areas, assailing the "greed merchants" who feed off the city's patronage trough. Through it all he remained upbeat. What had he learned about himself? "I have infinitely more patience than I thought I did."

Epton continued his attacks on Washington's dubious financial past, charging that his conviction in 1972 for failure to file tax returns and the suspension of his law license for professional malfeasance represented "documented evidence of a long and disturbing pattern of behavior." Despite Epton's distinguished record of opposing racial prejudice, he continued to strike chords designed to appeal to fearful white voters. "Nothing will be done in this city without the consent of the neighborhoods involved!" he shouted in one ethnic area.

But at the end of the campaign, Epton seemed beaten down by the pressure. "He conked out at the end," said Political Analyst Milton Rakove of the University of Illinois. Epton testily withdrew from one national television interview on Sunday, claiming that one of the panelists was biased against him, and insisted on being in a separate studio from Washington during another broadcast. "He thinks he's in South Africa," chided Washington. On election night Epton raged to a television interviewer that some Chicago reporters were "slime, beneath contempt." He was particularly bitter that blacks, who always backed him for the state legislature, had turned against him in the mayor's race. "I will certainly save a lot of money in the future on charitable causes," he said. When he stalked from his suite without delivering a concession speech to supporters gathered in the ballroom below, one woman was prompted to proclaim, "Now I know why I don't like Republicans."

The Democratic machine was wobbly after the traumatic campaign. "It's been declining for ten years," said Chicago Political Consultant Don Rose, "but this is the most devastating blow." Eight of its 50 ward leaders actually endorsed Republican Epton. Many others who remained officially neutral ended up working against the party nominee, including Alderman Edward Burke, a ward leader on the Southwest Side. He spoke of the feelings of his white ethnic constituents: "They're afraid of what might happen, and that fear is not unrealistic."

On election day, one of Burke's precinct captains greeted voters in Polish, but the final word of his lecture was clear in any language: "Epton." Urging people to vote Republican "is a big nut to swallow," the precinct worker explained, "but I've lived in this neighborhood 76 years, and we don't want it to change." Race was clearly the overriding concern. "The whites should be with the whites and the blacks with the blacks," said another precinct captain.

In addition to the mayoral debacle, the machine lost control of seven seats on the 50-member city council. Washington predicted that the organization would now "drift off into the woods and die." Yet the machine has shown remarkable resilience in the past, rising from defeat to wheel and deal again. Washington has only 20 sure supporters on the powerful city council, six short of a working majority. "He will probably have to cut a deal with at least part of the organization," says Rakove.

Indeed, despite his longstanding disdain for Boss Daley's lockstep army, Washington stressed that building coalitions has always been his political style. "I reach out to people," he said last week. "There will be no exclusions." He has already shown that he can seek accommodation with the city's conservative business elite by placing many corporate leaders on his transition team. "When the dust settles, Chicago's standing will not be impaired," promises James O'Connor, chairman of Commonwealth Edison and co-chairman of the transition group.

To govern effectively, Washington must mend fences with the city bureaucracy, which is composed mostly of machine loyalists. He will also have to make peace with the police department; many officers openly worked for Epton and the chief, under bitter attack from Washington, announced his resignation a week before the election. By declaring during during the campaign that taxes would have to be increased, Washington has allowed himself room to tackle Chicago's growing financial problems, that is if he can get the necessary support from the city council. For all his talk of conciliation, the mayor-elect quickly served notice that he concerns of his black constituents would not be neglected. He announced plans to push for he construction of low-income housing, a bugbear in the city's white neighborhoods.

Washington's win had important implications for the relations between blacks and the national Democratic Party. His candidacy represented the growing desire of blacks to share more of the power in the party that they have loyally supported for the past 50 years. Washington made the point when he announced his candidacy last November: "We've been giving white candidates our votes for years and years and years unstintingly, hoping they would include us in the process. Now it's come to the point where we say, 'Well, it's our turn, it's our turn.' " Jesse Jackson said the same thing more vividly after Washington's victory. "Blacks are like the Harlem Globetrotters in the Democratic Party," he told a press conference. "We provide the excitement, the soul, the margin of victory. But all the proprietors in the other room are white. That arrangement must change."

Jackson has been promoting the idea that a black should seek the Democratic nomination in 1984. (He seems to have himself in mind.) Although a black would stand virtually no chance of getting the nomination next year, Gary, Ind., Mayor Richard Hatcher argues that "winning is not the only reason to run." A working paper by the Joint Center for Political Studies, a black-run think tank in Washington, cites several advantages: giving prominence to issues of concern to blacks, increasing black voter registration and providing a bloc of delegates that could play an important role at the Democratic convention.

But the paper notes the disadvantages of a black candidacy. It could draw support from viable liberal candidates sympathetic to blacks, intensify racial polarization among voters and even lead to an embarrassingly small show of strength. For these reasons, many black leaders, including Mayors Andrew Young of Atlanta and Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, oppose the idea. The election of Washington, many argue, worked to mitigate the need to challenge the Democratic Party power structure.

For Washington, who will be sworn in next week, the national implications of his victory are far less important than the local ones. Whatever influence he may hope to have beyond the city--and whatever effect his election may have for black political power--will depend on whether he is able to fill the potholes and calm the fears of Chicago's prickly neighborhoods. --By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Christopher Ogden and Don Winbush/Chicago

With reporting by Christopher Ogden and Don Winbush/Chicago This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.