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13 Balancing Acts T he night after the big council meeting, the telephone rang late at the Vrdolyak home. “Well, Alderman, did you have a good time today?” It was Washington. He extended an invitation to talk. “You and me have to shoot some pool,” Washington said. Prior to 1983, the two would occasionally get together. Every so often Vrdolyak would stop by Washington’s congressional office on a Saturday, postgolf, dressed in a polo shirt, and the two would talk politics for an hour or so. Now it was time to talk, adversary to adversary. The two met the next day, Tuesday, in Washington’s office. Washington suggested dumping a few of the freshmen committee chairs as a compromise . Name Frost the Finance Committee chair and give Burke a newly created Budget Committee. Vrdolyak balked; he would hear of no plan, he said, that stripped a committee from one of his people. Vrdolyak offered with a smile that he himself had nothing to bargain away for the sake of peace. “You got exactly what you wanted,” he needled Washington. “I’m not a committee chairman anymore.” There was to be another council session that Friday, but on Thursday at around midnight a police officer was sent to the home of each of the city’s fifty aldermen . The officers carried a message from Washington that he was vetoing the council’s call for a meeting the next day. Washington was still hoping that the two sides could work out a compromise. Lu Palmer was thinking about those three black committee chairmen: he hadn’t worked as hard as he did to see the black community settle for crumbs. Balancing Acts 147 He called a press conference to announce that he and other Washington supporters would “utilize continuous techniques of persuasion” to pressure the Vrdo­ lyak aldermen back to the negotiating table. Five wards that had ended up in the Washington camp during the general election were represented by aldermen aligned with Vrdolyak. His group, Palmer said, would picket each of their homes. He said he was speaking on behalf of a group called Chicago Black United Communities. Could you imagine, the Vrdolyak aldermen asked themselves , the outrage should a group call themselves Chicago White United Communities ? Seizing on Palmer’s press conference, Vrdolyak asked, Is this what the so-called Washington movement is about? Maybe Vrdolyak was thinking about the threats and the midnight police visits when he cooked up a Mother’s Day surprise for his allies. That Sunday morning delivery men bearing red roses arrived at the homes of each of his council allies. “With love, Ed Vrdolyak,” each card read. There were twentynine roses to a bunch. Getting nowhere in his negotiations, Washington made a plea at the next City Council meeting. Theirs was a city more than 60 percent nonwhite, yet the council leadership was nearly exclusively white. The 1983 election saw Chicago ’s racial troubles broadcast across the land. From the rostrum Washington asked if Chicago’s reputation hadn’t suffered enough? Washington called on council to adjourn for a week to give people time to talk. His motion was defeated twenty-nine to twenty-one. You can blame race all you want, the Vrdolyak aldermen said, but arithmetic still dictates that twenty-nine is greater than twenty-one. “This is absolute madness,” Vrdolyak said. “You can’t just keep throwing up race. People don’t buy that anymore.” The two sides met in a series of sessions ballyhooed in the media. A battery of reporters would camp outside their meeting room, waiting for word of any compromise. A few of the twenty-nine said in off-the-record interviews that they were sure the impasse would work itself out. “Eddie wanted to prove a point, and now he’s proven it,” one said. “But I don’t think he wants to be fighting with the mayor for four years.” But Ed Burke, Vrdolyak’s right-hand man, knew better. It would be Washington who compromised, Burke said—at least once he figured out that he needed twenty-six votes to get anything done. Byrne, after all, had held out for six months before cutting her deal with him, Vrdolyak, and others. Besides, what motive did they have to give in? Epton had won Burke’s southwest side ward by more than five to one. We’re “heroes” among our constituents, he said. Meanwhile, the two sides dug in deeper. Negotiations petered out, and...

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