Last weekend, just two weeks before the April 1 aldermanic runoff, Mayor Daley’s troops returned to the First Ward to plead with voters to reelect the incumbent, Alderman Jesse Granato. Beefy guys have brought out votes for Granato in three closely contested elections in the last eight years, but this time, says Granato’s latest opponent, Manny Flores, the strategy will backfire.
Gabinski and Rostenkowski selected Granato, an obvious choice. For one thing, he’s from the area. “I was raised in a three-flat on Hoyne and Armitage,” he says. “I graduated from Saint Ben’s High School.” Granato’s also a machine loyalist and openly admits he owes everything he’s achieved to the 32nd Ward regular organization. “I wasn’t really into politics as a kid or a teenager–I was into sports,” he says. “But as a young man I saw what the regular organization can do for a community–all the good things. I wanted to join.”
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Four years later he won an even closer election, this time against Cynthia Soto (who has since been elected state representative). That election is the subject of a recent book self-published by Peter Zelchenko, It Happened Four Years Ago: Mayor Daley’s Brutal Conquest of Chicago’s First Ward. According to him, the mayor wanted a lackey running the First Ward, someone who wouldn’t offer strong opposition to development plans for the area. Zelchenko accuses Daley’s machine workers of using time-tested tactics to make sure Granato beat Soto–turning out absentee voters, harassing residents who supported Soto, working on the sidewalks in front of polling places in two precincts where Soto was running strong to make it difficult for voters to get inside.
According to Flores, the hot issue in the ward is development. Over the last ten years block after block has been jammed with big condo buildings. Most of this new construction required zoning changes that were passed over the objections of community groups. Residents have been howling about the consequences of the overdevelopment: traffic jams, soaring property taxes, and even more gentrification.
On February 25 Flores won more votes than Granato–3,386 to 3,330–though he fell short of the 50-percent-plus-one-vote tally needed to win outright (a third candidate received 214 votes). The result is the April 1 runoff.
But Zelchenko says, “The ward’s changed even from four years ago–in some ways Mayor Daley’s being hoisted on his own petard. One of the results of the mayor’s strategy of jamming so much new development in this community is that the neighborhood’s changed. When you concentrate so many college-educated, privileged people in one place you can’t treat them the way you would working-class folks. You can’t use the same old tactics. Since Frias dropped, HDO brought in their guys. You should see them, going after every yuppie in an SUV. But I don’t think those school-yard-bully tactics will work. It’s a new ward.”
