Grafters and Goo Goos: Corruption and Reform in Chicago

Preface

Preface More than twenty years ago when I started reporting for a Chicago newspaper , I thought the city’s reputation for lurid political wickedness was overblown, that it was an indelible but mythical hangover from the time of Al Capone. Surely, after decades of reform and the emergence of a welleducated , professional political class, public corruption—while it still made headlines—was the exception and not the rule. With more experience, I marveled at the regular procession to jail of Chicago aldermen, judges, and state legislators, joined by Illinois governors and congressmen. My perspective was journalistic, and I wondered at how often media exposés of their wrongdoings demand little exertion in what is called investigative reporting. Not to disparage the Chicago media’s tradition of aggressive investigations, but the task at times was like strolling through a field of rocks and choosing at random which ones to turn over. In fact, some turned over by themselves as prosecutors leaked damaging information about public officials to the news media. At this point, protocol requires one to stipulate that most public officials are honest and dedicated and that the media sensationalize the relatively few felons. I readily so stipulate. But that does not dispose of the issue. How is it that so many Chicago-area politicians are crooks, even after more than a century of good-government reform campaigns, with reformers among the city’s most lauded citizens? Is this experience peculiar to Chicago, or does the city’s history have something to say to the nation as a whole? While doing research for a biography of former U.S. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Daniel D. Rostenkowski of Chicago, I was surprised to find no general history of Chicago corruption and reform. There are many biographies of Al Capone, Richard J. Daley, and other figures, along with studies of various reform and crime-fighting movements —but no overview of the entire dynamic. This omission is perplexxi ing because Chicago’s mythology of constant crookedness easily matches or surpasses that of the Barbary Coast era in San Francisco,Tammany Hall in New York City, or the Pendergast machine in Kansas City (to name just three), or of the historically corrupt state governments of Illinois, Maryland , Massachusetts, Missouri, and Texas (to name just five). Further research turned up many analyses of the Progressive reform movement of a century ago and of big-city political bossism. Yet both of those phenomena are mostly gone with the wind. Thus the need for this book, aimed both at general readers and political, history, and urban studies specialists, seemed clear. The topic is current because America is confused about what exactly constitutes public corruption nowadays. With local, state, and federal governments regulating and subsidizing nearly everything, the line between legal and illegal manipulations of the system is blurred. For example, when Dan Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to the misuse of public and campaign funds in , his defenders saw him as the victim of overzealous prosecutors and media scandalmongers who condemned him for activities that used to be legal—indeed, almost encouraged. The indictment and plea left many unconvinced that Rostenkowski was crooked. Such a viewpoint suggests another question about Chicago: despite its delightfully colorful history, is the city really all that corrupt? Perhaps mythology overtakes reality. The scanty comparative data are suggestive but inconclusive. An academic survey of newspaper articles stated that the eastern north-central region, which includes Chicago, compiled  public corruption cases from  to . The nearest competitor, the south Atlantic region, had fifty-eight. Similarly, a  study by the Justice Department showed that the northern district of Illinois led the country with  convictions of public officials in the previous seven years, compared with  in New York City and sixty-six in New Jersey. By themselves , these figures prove nothing. They might reflect exceptionally ambitious prosecutors in Chicago or any of a number of other factors. Still, when I described this book project to colleagues and friends, the response was almost always a joke to the effect that it would take multiple volumes. Chicago’s reputation for corruption is, if nothing else, a basis of xii Preface local and even national folklore and humor. Indeed, the history is so rich that one of the difficulties in writing this book was deciding what to leave out. At the least, the names of many indicted public officials have been omitted as redundant if not tiresome...