12/28/18
On several occasions over the last month or so, people have
asked me what Jerry Joyce is really
up to, or what he’s really after, in his longshot bid for mayor of Chicago. People
ask me this question, I presume, for two reasons. First, they think that I know something
about Chicago politics. Second, they
think that, since I grew up in the 19th
Ward on the Chicago side of St.
Walter, I know the players in that ward and thus have such special insight
into the machinations of its politics.
In the former, my questioners are correct. In the latter, they are incorrect.
Yes, I grew up in the 19th Ward. And the 19th Ward, specifically St. Barnabas, was our last stop in the
city before we moved to the promised land of DuPage County. Further, as I have mentioned before, my
second vote ever was for Jeremiah Joyce,
Jerry’s father, in his ironic insurgent 1975 run for alderman as the challenger
to the Machine candidate, a guy named Ryan (Maybe his first name also was Tom,
but I can’t remember.) who was the handpicked choice of Alderman and Committeeman
Thomas Fitzpatrick to be his
successor in the City Council. “Silent Tommy Fitz” was so monikered
because he never said anything on the City Council floor other than “aye” to
anything then Mayor Richard J. Daley
suggested. That was the smart move back
then. Speaking of smart moves, my first vote ever was for Mayor Richard J.
Daley in the aforementioned 1975 election, his last defense of the office that
had been his for 20 years at the time.
This is still probably the best, or at least the proudest, vote I have
ever cast, but I digress.
Despite my having the profound privilege of having grown up
in the 19th Ward, specifically in St. Walter, and still being in fairly regular touch with goings-on
in the old neighborhood, I don’t know anybody in the power structure of that
ward. Occasionally, I still see some of
the old timers whom I saw a little more often back when I lived in the ward and
they were not old timers. I will say hello
and they will, as would most good politicians when greeted by a stranger, do a
good job of feigning that they have some idea of who I am. But the new guys? They don’t know me and I don’t know
them. At Christmas Eve Mass at Sacred Heart in the eastern reaches of
the neighborhood, there was a car in the parking lot with the plate “Ward 19,”
so I assume somebody who was somebody in the ward was at Mass, but even in that
very small church I couldn’t pick out who it was despite my having helped pick
up the collection. I wouldn’t know the
current alderman, Matt O’Shea, unless
I had a timely copy of the Sun-Times
or the Tribune on hand, if we were sitting
next to each other at Wonderburger, the
reported re-opening of which would be better news for the ward than anything any
politician could do, but again I digress.
So those who might suppose that I know something, other than what I read
in the paper, about the 19th Ward would be wrong. While they are right when they assume I know
something about the politics of my hometown, I have no idea what’s going on in
the mind of Jerry Joyce because I wouldn’t recognize him if I were sitting next
to him in the Original Pancake House
or Lume’s.
All that having been stipulated, I do have some ideas of
what young Jerry Joyce might be up to…
First, Mr. Joyce might be running interference for Bill Daley. People in the 19th Ward who one
would expect to vote for Garry McCarthy
tell me they are voting for Mr. Joyce in the preliminary election. In this very crowded field, if Mr. Joyce can
peel away even the cop and firefighter vote in the 19th, that might
be enough to destroy any chance that Mr. McCarthy might have of reaching the
run-off. Then Mr. Daley might get into
the run-off, catch lightning in a bottle, and the Daley and Joyce families can
get back to their historical roles of controlling the 5th Floor with
the help of some friends in the 11th and 19th wards.
While this theory has some surface plausibility given the
historic closeness of the Joyce and Daley families and the similar, but not identical,
constituencies of Messrs. Daley, Joyce, and McCarthy, it has at least a couple
of holes. The first is that Mr. Daley
assumes Mr. McCarthy has a chance at spoiling Mr. Daley’s chances at achieving
the run-off. At this stage, at least,
Mr. McCarthy doesn’t look like much of a threat to anybody, though some very
smart people seem to think he is. Why
would Mr. Daley go to the considerable trouble of running a straw candidate to
draw votes from a guy who doesn’t look like he has much of a chance of causing
trouble? That Mr. Daley also doesn’t
have much of a chance of reaching the run-off is not an issue here because we
are discussing what Mr. Daley thinks of his chances rather than his actual
chances.
The second hole in the “Jerry Joyce as a stalking horse
for Bill Daley” theory is even simpler yet more profound, i.e., Jerry Joyce was in this race before Bill
Daley entered. How could Bill
Daley set up a straw candidate before he was a candidate himself? Nothing is impossible in the dark crevices
of Chicago politics, but such an arrangement would sound entirely too
conspiratorial even for that rather Casablancian forum.
A second theory of Mr. Joyce’s motivation is that he would
like to be a power broker of sorts, amassing
enough chips in the form of votes in the first round to get something of value in
exchange for his support from one of the candidates who reaches the
run-off. This is a far more appealing theory than the
stalking horse theory, especially given that Jerry Joyce learned what he knows
of politics from his father, one of the greatest dealmakers in Chicago
political history, and that’s saying a lot.
What young Mr. Joyce might be seeking is a source of speculation. A big job in the new administration is one
possibility, but a more likely possibility is strong consideration when city
business is doled out. Again, think
about young Mr. Joyce’s mentor’s history with doing business with the city.
A third theory behind Mr. Joyce’s unlikely candidacy is
that he actually thinks he can win this election
and succeed Rahm Emanuel as mayor of
Chicago. This is perhaps the least
likely theory; the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree, so I assume that
young Mr. Joyce is a bright young man.
He can’t possibly think he can win this election…can he?
Onto broader matters…
Yours truly is not afraid of making predictions; who
cares if I’m wrong? And if one is
afraid of making predictions, one should neither trade stocks nor write about
politics, both of which are favorite avocations of mine. So here goes…
I still think Toni
Preckwinkle is your next mayor of Chicago (See TONI PRECKWINKLE IS THE NEXTMAYOR OF CHICAGO, UNLESS…, 9/22/18), but now that Susana Mendoza is officially in the race, will not split the Hispanic
vote with the likes of Chuy Garcia, has survived what passed for a petition
challenge, is showing strength, and is going for the same chi-chi near north liberal vote as is Ms. Preckwinkle (and
just about every other candidate), I am not quite as confident about Ms.
Preckwinkle’s chances as I once was. So,
not going out on a limb in the least, I think it will be a Mendoza-Preckwinkle run-off.
Going out on the same limb more than a touch, I still think Ms.
Preckwinkle will prevail.
In any case, this is more fun than just about anything not
involving a trip to White Castle…or Wonderburger, if we ever get the chance to
do the latter again.
See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of
Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge,
A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on
how things work, or used to work, in Chicago and Illinois politics.
