Richard Daley and the Cook County Democratic Party
With Richard J. Daley as its Chairman, a position he held for 22 years, the Cook County Democratic Party was a political machine with power unexcelled by any in American history. For twenty of those years Daley held office as Mayor of Chicago. Officially Chicago has a weak mayor system, with power lying in the hands of city council. Daley’s position as Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party provided him with powerful influence over the city’s wards and primaries, and thus over who sat on the council.
Under Daley, the machine held sway over a sub-machine which focused on the needs of African American voters and was led by William Dawson. In primarily African American wards, Dawson acted as his own boss, dispensing political patronage and rewards in the form of political appointments just as Daley did throughout the rest of the city. Dawson’s support was critical to the overall machine, yet at the same time dependent upon it, since the patronage he dispensed first had to be dispensed to him via Daley.
When John Kennedy ran for President in 1960 – one of the closest elections in American history – the state of Illinois was critical, with 27 electoral votes available. Kennedy carried Illinois by 9,000 votes. In Cook County Kennedy won by more than 450,000 votes, a victory which has been credited to the effectiveness of the Cook County Democratic Party in getting out the votes in all of the city’s wards.
Daley didn’t create the political machine in Chicago, it was formed in the early 1930s by Anton Cermak. But Daley brought the machine to its highest point, controlling more than 35,000 patronage jobs. Daley circumvented civil service regulations by hiring workers to fill “temporary” jobs, thus keeping them in the hands of Democratic loyalists and reducing the strength of the opposition party. It was common practice when a civil servant retired to fill the position temporarily with a Democrat who needed a job, with a civil service exam to be scheduled sometime in an undefined future.
The Chicago political machine was significantly weakened after Daley when the Shakman Decrees ended the practice of politically motivated hiring or firing of workers. Since Daley no Mayor of Chicago has served as the Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, limiting the Mayor’s influence on the wards, and the Mayor of Chicago today has little of the power which was so evident under Richard Daley.