LAT: Ticket Replay: How Illinois' machine survives corruption: One voter's story

[Pirate Smile]

Ticket Replay: How Illinois' machine survives corruption: One voter's story



For the next couple of weeks The Ticket will occasionally republish another of our favorite items from the past election season. This one originally appeared here on Dec. 12, 2008:

This is a true story about Chicago's Democratic machine politics, ....

-snip-
This story concerns a young woman named Cindy. It occurred some years ago but could have happened yesterday given the constant internal regeneration of the Cook County machine, currently under the command of Mayor Richard M. Daley and about four dozen loyal aldermen, each with their own longstanding loyal organizations.
Cindy was working her way through college in night classes. After school late one evening, she went grocery shopping and was walking home on a deserted residential street on Chicago's North Side carrying two bags.

Suddenly, a disheveled man waving a kitchen knife jumped out of the bushes. He knocked her down, grabbed her purse and ran off.
Shaken, Cindy later reported it to the police, who were ...
... sympathetic but offered little hope of catching the likely drug addict.

The next morning on her way to work Cindy walked passed the crime scene, hoping perhaps to retrieve at least her discarded purse. She found nothing but approached a nearby city garbage crew working its way down the miles of back alleys that honeycomb the Windy City.
Had they by any chance seen a new, red suede purse?

Yes, said the city worker. In fact, he'd just dumped it in the truck. He'd wondered why anyone would throw such a nice thing into a garbage can. Cindy said she'd been mugged the previous night and knew the money was gone but wondered about recovering her purse.
The garbage worker told his driver, who ordered both of them into the cab. While driving to his sanitation yard, he radioed the precinct captain to explain the situation.
The captain met the crew and Cindy at the yard. He ordered the truck dumped until the purse fell out. He waded into the stinking garbage and recovered it.
Then he drove Cindy to a dry cleaners near her apartment, paid in advance for the cleaning, gave Cindy the receipt and drove her downtown to work.
There, he asked to speak to her supervisor. He explained the circumstances and asked Cindy's boss to please excuse her late arrival, which the man readily did.

The precinct captain returned to his city job.

Cindy and her boss told that story often over time. Chicagoans nod their head. People elsewhere shake their heads.
But that's not the end. Several months later, on a Saturday afternoon, the precinct captain appeared at Cindy's apartment door. He was pleased to learn that Cindy got her clean purse back and all was well. He hoped she'd vote in the election coming in 10 days.
Cindy did indeed vote in that municipal election. She enthusiastically cast her ballot to reelect the man who was mayor the awful night she got mugged.

And in Chicago that makes perfect sense.

--Andrew Malcolm

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/12/obama-blagoje-1.html

Talk about your constituent services ...

[Radical Activist]

1. Pretty dumb.

It's obvious that the guy doesn't know anything about state politics or how Blago got elected Governor. But I guess it's easy to make uninformed generalizations all the way from Los Angeles.

No one ran against Rod for re-election in the primary because he had $10 million in campaign funds so all serious Democratic challengers were scared off. Then the Republicans ran a lousy candidate that would have been just as corrupt but for the other party. It was about big money campaigns and pay-to-play political corruption.

When he ran the first time he finished third place in Cook County in the primary. He mostly won based on the downstate vote, where the machine imagined in this blog is non-existent.

This blog is nothing but recycled legends about Chicago machine politics from a guy with his head up his ass.

[murielm99]

2. It speaks of the "Illinois machine."

There is no such animal. Chicago has its own machine, and the rest of us are considered downstate. As I understand it, the Chicago machine is nowhere near as efficient as it was under the first Mayor Daley. East St. Louis had a machine, the last I heard. And they are not exactly lily-pure, either.

City politics usually have little to do with the rest of the state. Fer chrissake, does this idiot think Dick Mell knows or cares what is going on in Carbondale? Big Brother was not that organized.

I wish we were half as organized here in Ogle County.

Edited for spelling.

[Greyhound]

3. Careful what you wish for...

If you haven't lived there, it is hard to comprehend just how bad it is there.

[murielm99]

4. There? Where is there?

If you are speaking of Chicago, I love that town. One of my children lives there. She and the people she work for are involved in Democratic politics, too.

She lived in her new apartment for about a month when her precinct captain came to see her. I want to find all our Democrats out here, too, but I am not as organized as that. I also have a much larger territory to cover.

Being organized and getting the vote out are good things. Finding new workers is a good thing. How do you suppose Obama got elected?

[crispini]

5. I don't know anything about Chicago politics.

But usually when somebody talks about a "machine," it's probably not a good thing. I've seen it here, and it doesn't always elect the best candidates, just the candidates with influence with the right people.