Divide and Rule in the Windy City

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Back when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and his powerful political machine ran Chicago, winning a Democratic nomination was tantamount to victory in the general election. These days the machine is falling to pieces, and candidates have little to lose by running without its support. The point was made abundantly clear last week when Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, kicked off his campaign for a second term by threatening to skip the Feb. 24 Democratic primary altogether and run as an independent in April's election. Not to be outdone, a brigade of would-be successors, all lifelong Democrats, proclaimed that they too might shun the party and enter the fray as independents or even -- horrors! -- as Republicans. Crowed the mayor, whose best hopes for re-election depend on a crowded field: "Monkey see, monkey do. The more the merrier."

What explains the rush away from the long-preferred Democratic label is the fact that in Chicago racial voting has become a habit. Blacks and whites each account for about 42% of Chicago's 3 million population, and Hispanics for most of the remainder. If two or more white contenders carve up the white vote, blacks -- voting as a bloc -- have the numerical strength to elect a mayor on their own. That is what happened in 1983, when Washington narrowly won the Democratic nomination in a three-way primary race against former Mayor Jane Byrne and Cook County Prosecutor Richard M. Daley, son of the legendary boss. Chastened, Washington's white opponents are now trying to unite behind a single challenger. Says Chicago Political Scientist Paul Green: "The name of the game is to get Harold Washington one-on-one. That's the only way you can beat him."

The trouble is that Washington's enemies, whose dislike for one another seems to be exceeded only by their distaste for the mayor, have been unable to decide which great white hope to get behind. This year, for the first time in 70 years, Cook County's Democratic Central Committee, Mayor Daley's former stronghold, could not agree on a standard-bearer. So neither Byrne nor the mayor's archenemy, Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, leader of the anti-Washington faction on the city council, has the blessing of the machine.

For his part, Washington is taunting his challengers by playing a masterly game of political chicken. Last week the mayor filed a huge stack of petitions qualifying him for a spot on the Democratic primary ballot. Should only one Democratic contender square off against him, reducing his chances of winning, the mayor may duck the party contest and jump straight into a three- way general election as a black independent running against a white Democrat and a white Republican. Washington clearly relishes forcing his opponents to play a guessing game. "I am getting a tremendous amount of pleasure out of watching the opposition squirm and wonder what I'm doing," he gloats. "Let 'em sweat."