On December 20, 1976, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley died. Daley served 21 years as mayor, building the most powerful political organization in America. His death marked the end of an era not just in Chicago, but in America's big cities as well.
Michael Bilandic, 11th Ward alderman and close Daley associate, was named acting mayor. The only problem was that the law made the president pro tempore of the council, a Black alderman named Wilson Frost, the one who was supposed to succeed Daley as acting mayor.
Daley aides simply locked Frost out of the mayor's office while the council appointed Bilandic. That's democracy, Chicago style.
Bilandic was Daley's handpicked successor and represented the mayor's Bridgeport neighborhood. The South Side neighborhood was also the city's power center. Bilandic won a special election in March 1977 to serve out Daley's unfinished term, and it was assumed he would continue to win elections as long as he was breathing.
Bilandic was no Richard Daley. And that's where he got into trouble. Chicago reporter Stephan Garnett told WTTW's Chicago Stories that Daley was a “hard act to follow.”
"In order to be the mayor of the city of Chicago, you had to have one strong personality,” Garnett said. “This is not an easy city to govern. It never has been. It never will be.”
The winter of 1978-79 was the most brutal on record. Big storm after big storm slammed the city from November through February, along with blasts of brutal Arctic air. “I can take one — either snow or cold — but not both,” National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Dickey said at the time.
That winter saw 21 days with temperatures below zero. Almost 90 inches of snow fell. The peak of frustration for Chicago residents came around the New Year, with 9 inches of snow falling on December 31, followed by a brutal cold spell. The city literally froze. Trains, buses, snowplows all fell victim to the numbing cold.
"On Friday, January 12, 1979, the first snowflakes of the blizzard began to fall on the city of Chicago," reported the Chicago Tribune. "It would not let up for 38 hours."
The 20.3 inches of snow that fell during those 38 hours remains Chicago’s fourth-largest snowstorm.
Chicago Sun-Times reporter Fran Spielman told WTTW that Bilandic was a bit “awkward” and “not really a natural politician at all.”
“Richard J. Dailey was the most powerful big-city mayor who ever lived. This was a kingmaker. This was a guy who people – politicians, presidential candidates – came to kiss the ring,” Spielman said. “Bilandic was the antithesis of that. He was not a leader. He was not a politician.”
Bilandic was an alderman, not a politician. His job was to keep the gravy flowing in the right direction to the right people, not kiss babies or handle a major crisis.
Snow removal was not moving fast enough for increasingly irritated Chicagoans. Bilandic announced that people who did not move their cars for snowplowing would have their cars ticketed – with no exceptions. Spielman recalled a Chicago Tribune story with Bilandic’s request that people move their cars into school parking lots. The story ran a photo of school lots still completely covered with snow.
“Here’s a situation where a leader of a city could have said, ‘We’re all in this together. Let’s roll up our sleeves, and all of us [will] get through this. We’re Chicagoans. We’re tough.’ But he went into a state of denial almost, and he was pretending that things were gonna get better or that they were already better,” Spielman said. “People started turning their anger on him.”
To make matters worse, public transit was not operating at its usual speed or capacity. CTA trains began to bypass the least populated ‘L’ lines in order to make up for the delays. But most of the least populated lines fell in the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods – leaving entire communities stranded.
The beneficiary of this natural disaster and very human incompetence was former head of the consumer affairs department, Jane Byrne. She was running a long-shot campaign against Bilandic and was given a snowball's chance in hell of winning the Democratic primary.
With that much snow on the ground, the snowball's chances improved tremendously. Byrne took down Bilandic and thus began the slow deterioration of the infamous Chicago machine.
The city of Los Angeles doesn’t have much of a political machine. But it has an incompetent mayor who is not only a poor administrator but also a bad politician.
Rebuilding after wildfires destroyed several neighborhoods in the city has been a seminar in incompetent governance. It has angered voters to the point that a reality TV star with no experience in government has climbed into second place in the polls after a strong debate performance and a viral AI ad that depicted incumbent Mayor Karen Bass as the "Joker," Governor Gavin Newsom as a French fop eating cake, and Kamala Harris as a cackling idiot.
Pratt is riding a wave of anger and disgust over the city's response to rebuilding after the wildfire. He's at 22%, trailing Bass, who's at 30%. The top two vote getters will face off in the November election if no one gets 50% in the June 21 primary.
Pratt is still a long shot. He polls last among voters under 40, and the media is against him. But if he can find a way to ride the wave and continue to put the pressure on Bass and expose the establishment's failures, he has a chance to upset expectations and win in November.
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