The Making of a Litmus Test

Chicago's mayoral race goes down to the wire, and the mire

There may be other issues in the Chicago election in addition to the fact that Democrat Harold Washington, 60, an undistinguished Congressman with a disconcerting disregard for filing income tax returns happens to be black, and that Republican Bernard Epton, 61, an equally undistinguished former state legislator happens to be white. But it was getting increasingly hard to find any. The racial partisanship that dragged the mayoral race to a new low last week removed any doubt that next Tuesday's election was, alas, likely to turn out to be essentially a black-and-white matter.

It was mainly because he is black that Washington was able to win the Democratic nomination over Jane Byrne, the current mayor, and Richard Daley, son of the legendary mayor. They split the votes of the white population, while Washington took more than 80% of the city's black vote, which makes up 41% of the electorate. And now it is mostly because he is black that Washington faces a tight battle against a Republican who otherwise could have counted on little more than the votes of his family and a few close friends.

Bigotry spewed into the open on Palm Sunday, when Washington, accompanied by former Vice President Walter Mondale, went to pray at St. Pascal Church at the invitation of the pastor. NIGGER DIE was freshly spray-painted on one door of the Roman Catholic church on the city's lily-white northwest side. "Carpetbagger!" an angry crowd of about 200 standing outside shouted at Mondale. A cordon of police was needed to protect the pair as they quickly departed.

Mondale, who had endorsed Daley in the primary, was part of a parade of national Democratic leaders who went to Chicago to appeal for party unity and cultivate black voters. Congressman Claude Pepper of Florida, the octogenarian hero of the elderly, also was booed by a white audience last week. Douglas Fraser, the president of the United Auto Workers, confronted the race issue headon. Said he: "This election would have been over the day after the primary except that Harold Washington is black." Ohio Senator John Glenn said the Chicago campaign showed that "we're at the hardest part of the civil rights movement... How do you change hearts and minds?" One prominent personality the Washington campaign has been keeping out of the picture lately is the Rev. Jesse Jackson, aggressive leader of the civil rights group Operation Push. At Washington's primary victory party, Jackson led a cry of "We want it all!," which Epton supporters are now using as an anti-Washington slogan.