The federal charges announced today are bad for Ed Burke on so many fronts it's hard to keep up. First, this a federal charge that the feds deemed so urgent, at least politically, that they had to break the unofficial rule against indicting a politician within two months of an election. Second, politicians who for years had professed friendship or at least an ability to work with Alderman Burke now are treating him like something they'd like to scrape off the bottom of their shoes. Third, even the symbolism is awful; the restaurant the owners of which the Alderman was allegedly trying to shake down was the Burger King featured prominently in the Laquan McDonald story.
This whole affair is also bad news for Toni Preckwinkle; if the reporting is correct, she was the politician for whom Mr. Burke was allegedly demanding a political contribution from the owners of the Burger King. This doesn't look good for a politician in hot competition for the "progressive" vote that supposedly eschews "old style politics." The charges against Mr. Burke also are not good for Gery Chico, who has been close to Mr. Burke for years and whom Mr. Burke supported in Mr. Chico's 2011 run for mayor against Rahm Emanuel. But don't assume this is good news for Susana Mendoza; she, too, has been close to Ed Burke for years, to the point at which she has been described, and not without justification, as a Burke protege.
Speaking of Ms. Mendoza, the conspiracy theories started flying minutes, if not seconds, after the charges against Mr. Burke were reported. One of those theories is that Ms. Mendoza was somehow behind this. This is ludicrous; while one suspects that Ms. Mendoza, like every other politician around this town, would have no compunction whatsoever about biting the hand that has fed her for years if there were something in it for her, she is neither sufficiently clever nor connected to the feds to have pulled off something like this. Perhaps as importantly, as yours truly noted in the last paragraph, Mr. Burke's problems aren't necessarily good news for Ms. Mendoza.
Seemingly lost in all this hubbub is the admonition of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley that an indictment is not a conviction. Mr. Burke remains an innocent man unless and until he is proven guilty. Note that buried in the articles on l'affaire Burke is the news that the "victims" of this alleged extortion plot wound up not giving Mr. Burke's firm any legal business. This, of course, does not exonerate Mr. Burke; Rod Blagojevich was also unsuccessful in achieving his nefarious ends, but that didn't keep him out of jail.
One of the seemingly inconsequential items to emerge from this story that caught your's truly's eye is that Mr. Burke, a long time champion of gun control, owns 23 firearms. I suppose gun ownership isn't good for YOU, but it's fine for the likes of Alderman Burke. But hypocrisy and politics are so intertwined that they have become virtually indistinguishable.
As always, I like to add a historical perspective to any commentary I produce on Chicago politics. I can't help but draw an analogy between the relationship of Alderman Tom Keane to Mayor Richard J. Daley and the relationship of Alderman Burke to the mayors he served as a senior member of the council...Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel. Both Messrs. Burke and Keane were old time pols, aldermen and committeemen with power bases in wards changing in ethnic composition in directions not favorable to their maintaining their power. Both headed the City Council Finance Committee and both, if yours truly is not mistaken, were at one time floor leaders for their respective mayors. Both got into legal trouble. Both managed to outrun the feds for years. But the feds finally caught up with Alderman Keane and he went away for several years. Has Mr. Burke finally lost the fight against the feds as did Mr. Keane? Time will tell. But I am also reminded of a quote of Mr. Keane, which I can only paraphrase here but I am sufficiently certain of its accuracy that I will still use quotation marks:
"Dick (Mayor Richard J. Daley) wanted power; I wanted money. We both got what we wanted."
The quote doesn't fit Mr. Burke and the mayors he served perfectly. For example, neither Richard II nor Rahm Emanuel shied away from cashing in on the political offices they held. Though both waited until they were out of office or, in the case of Mr. Emanuel, was between offices, to ring the cash register, both managed to turn their political clout into big time spondulicks. Power was their main objective, but it wasn't their sole objective, as it seemed to be with Richard I. But even though the above quote, and what it says about the motivations behind big time political players in Chicago, or any town, doesn't fit the Burke situation perfectly, one can easily see Mr. Burke summing up his life in a way similar to the above summation Mr. Keane gave to his political career.
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.
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