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95 11 Madame Mayor As far as I know, in his twenty-one years as mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley never felt the need to go to a television station to defend himself. His successor felt it. Mayor Michael Bilandic spent seventeen bizarre minutes live on camera telling me, Bill Kurtis, and our viewers that I was wrong in reporting hanky-panky involved in a substantial rate increase granted to Chicago taxicab companies. Here’s a brief history and the underlying politics of Bilandic’s extraordinary appearance: December1976.MayorDaleyisdead;thecitycouncilmaneuvershisBridgeport neighbor Alderman Michael Bilandic into office as acting mayor and schedules an election for the two remaining years of Daley’s term. Bilandic wins it and soon thereafter declares his intention to run in the next regularly scheduled election. (Had Daley lived and hinted at a successor, it would not have been Bilandic, the soft-spoken son of Croatian immigrants, who until age fifty-four was unmarried and living in his family home with his mother, brother, and sister. Mayor Daley much preferred Jane Byrne, the feisty Irish American daughter of an Inland Steel executive. Widowed in 1957 at age twenty-three with a oneyear -old daughter, Byrne taught school and became involved in Democratic politics. In 1968, Daley tapped her as commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs. Of all his lieutenants, he trusted her the most and depended on her to help him correct mistakes, the few he admitted making, and to keep him informed about what his enemies, and his friends, were up to. And contrary to what most people think, Daley valued the perspectives of women. “I guess I’m old-fashioned,” he once said. “I still believe that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” So he names Byrne cochairperson of the mighty Cook County Democratic Central Committee, the machine; and in the machine’s clubhouse in the Blackstone Hotel downtown, he tells his army of city and suburban committeemen 96 M A D A M E M AY O R that they’ll henceforth be jumping not only to his commands but to those of Ms. Byrne. They can’t believe it and don’t like it. Byrne can’t believe it either but loves it, especially when she hears him tell his sons, Richard, Michael, John, and Bill, that they, too, better believe it, and behave accordingly. Naturally, lady Jane of the Sauganash neighborhood on the northwest side begins having fanciful notions about a surge to center stage of Chicago politics and government. She’s being mentored by the master, and her résumé sparkles— member of the Illinois Commission on Women and the Democratic National Committee; chairperson of the DNC’s Resolutions Committee. Why not think about one day being mayor—an easy thought, but a labyrinthine journey. When the general dies, the troops in the Blackstone strip Jane Byrne of her party leadership. But she remains commissioner of consumer affairs and sets out to reach for the top in a run against Michael Bilandic. Janie, as Daley called her, has a lot going for her. She is a very smart, unusually articulate, fiercely independent woman who is charming and has a wonderfully edgy sense of humor. And she understands that politicians don’t leap anywhere in Chicago without the media. She works tirelessly at ripening relations with reporters who can do her the most good: the columnists in the newspapers and the commentators on television. With channel 2’s ratings sailing, that includes me. Byrne tells me that Mayor Bilandic “greased the way” through the city council for the taxicab companies to increase their rates by 12 percent. She’s kept a diary about it, from which she writes an eight-page interoffice memorandum about secret meetings in city hall: “I believe [the rate increase] was fraudulent and conspiratorial, and should not have been granted . . . the increase was greased. . . . I sincerely believed Mayor Bilandic was going to run things straight. . . . I do not think he did.” A memorandum like that, by the city commissioner who regulates cab rates? True or false, it’s dynamite. She gives me a copy. “When can I go with it?” I ask, knowing I have the makings of a very exclusive story. “I’ve already given it to the US attorney . . .” “You know, don’t you, that if I go with this, Bilandic’ll look for a way to fire you. “You can go with it whenever you like.” That has...

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