Ray
Hanania's
Award
Winning
Columns
Feb.
27,
1999
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"Forgive
but Never Forget"
A Former City Hall Reporter Remembers Jane Byrne's Turbulent
Administration, 20 Years Later
Part II of 3 Parts
By Ray Hanania
The Byrne Era Begins
"Following Jane Byrne
around is like following a B-52. She just drops bombs all over
the place."
Byrne adviser Bill Griffin
after his first week on the job.
Byrne didn't make news as mayor. She
"committed" it, in much the same way that people committed
a crime.
Not surprisingly, the process of gathering news from Byrne by
the growing army of reporters and press that camped out in front
of her City Hall office became known as the "gang bang,"
another criminal act of our own.
The process was unceremonious and wild. It was unpredictable and it continued for much of her first six months in office, until her press secretary put a stop to it and police officers were ordered to evict reporters off of the 5th Floor lobby. Although our editors loved the sensational headlines, the New York Bond companies didn't. The headlines presented Chicago in an erratic manner, causing the bond ratings to drop. And that meant higher interest rates the city had to repay on outstanding loans.
Byrne found the rest of her news making
skills to be entertaining and rarely protested in the early days.
She intentionally played into our hungry little hands.
News was usually "committed" at the same crime scene,
directly in front of the elevator that was reserved for the mayor's
comings and goings.
There was an informal agreement among the reporters that rather than pursue Byrne at every moment of her life, we would gather together and squeeze the news out of her as a pack and at the elevator. God forbid a reporter would follow Byrne downstairs and ask her a question out of earshot of the other reporters.
It was both comical and sad. The City Hall Press Corp. had grown from seven fulltime reporters to 18. During the first six months, as many of 65 news people crowded the crime scene.
When the elevator doors swung open in the morning, Byrne would greet a semi-circle of reporters, six bodies deep. The TV cameramen had to push themselves into the frontlines just to get the shot. Radio reporters would be next, reaching their arms over and under the shoulders of the TV cameramen to position their microphones right in front of Byrne's mouth.
Newspaper reporters would literally hang on the backs of radio reporters, our ears straining to hear what was being said, returning to the Press Room to force a radio reporter to replay their entire news tape so we could hear it again. All around us, TV field producers screamed over their walkie-talkies and bulky cellular phones.
"Oh my God. You should have heard what she just said," they screamed with smiles wider than Lake Michigan.
Camera and microphone cords where everywhere and it was common for reporters to trip and fall as the large body of interwoven reporters slowly moved with Byrne as she walked, talked and changed the face of the city. As long as Byrne was talking, reporters would walk right over you as you lay helplessly on the tiled floor.
Eventually, the newspaper reporters got tape recorders, too, and instead of trying to hand write Byrne's every utterance, we took our recorders back to the Press Room where "they" were de-briefed.
At first, the crush of bodies got so
large, Byrne's guards installed velure ropes and standards to
create an escape path for the mayor when she was done "feeding
the animals," as her body guards called it.
Sometimes, Byrne would enter and leave a dozen times, and that
usually meant a dozen stories that were created in one day that
had to be written, re-written and delivered to the editorial
offices for broadcast or publication.
Television reporters who declared Byrne's intent to fire 2,000 employees during their lunchtime broadcasts, found themselves rushing back to the Hall to recoup on subsequent elevator declarations by Byrne that she planned to fire 5,000 more.
Both WLS and WMAQ TV put me on monthly retainers to "brief" their reporters on any developments that were not exclusive to my newspaper and had been obtained by everyone. They were so worried about missing a story.
We stopped trying to guess what Byrne planned to do next. Instead of asking leading questions, we took the "shot gun" approach: "Hey Janie!," reporters would burst out. "What's new?"
"What's new?" Byrne would parrot with a sly grin. She'd turn to her four bodyguards, her press secretary, her chief of staff and her aides, the contingent that followed her everywhere she went.
"I'll tell you what's new," she'd declare. And then it would start.
"Well, today, I plan to review the City's personnel." She would say somewhat unenthusiastically.
"You mean a shake-up?" a reporter
would scream back.
"I plan to weed out those people who are not working. Get
this place in tip top shape," she continued.
Although she never used the term "shake up," it was the key phrase in everyone's story.
There were inconsistencies. Promotions became demotions. The most notorious was her "exclusive whisper" to a lone TV reporter who had bumped into her on the road that Joe DiLeonardi was going to be Chicago's new Top Cop. He quickly reported that on TV. When the reporters confronted Byrne, she replied innocently, "I didn't say DiLeonardi. It might be someone else."
The problem became worse because of the
nature of how news is reported. Radio reporters went live on
the air with their stories minutes after Byrne's comments. That
was followed by heavily promoted TV reports.
Print reporters lagged far behind, turning in their stories in
one of two ways. The problem was that once a story was reported,
it was difficult for Jane Byrne to retract or to correct.
We typed the stories as quickly as we could on our typewriters, and then "dictated" them to "re-write" at our offices. Or, we could deliver the copy by messenger to the office. City Hall news was suddenly being given a top priority.
For me, the Southtown Offices were some 10 miles Southwest of the Loop, so I would drive the copy out to the office on my way home. I typed my copy on "OCR" (Optical Character Recognition) paper that was later scanned into the Southtown's computers, printed and then laid out on dummy sheets.
Back at the office, reporters used old Rockwell word processors. Eventually, I persuaded an editor to install one at my City Hall office. They added a telephone line and a 300 Baud Modem so I could send stories as soon as they were done.
That technology prompted the Southtown to follow the lead of the Tribune and Sun-Times. We published an "extra" called "The Commuter Edition" which made it to the street hours before our main newspaper was delivered to news stands or homes. It allowed readers to follow, at least in two stages, the changing evolution of Jane Byrne's news.
The Tribune and Sun-Times submitted stories three times each day. They had a midday deadline to feed stories into the Tribune Green Steak and the Sun-Times Red Streak published the same afternoons. Their next deadline was around 8:30 p.m., and the final deadline was as late as Midnight.
McMullen, who coached Byrne on this news making frenzy, understood the system. And Byrne's media contacts would soon break minutes before edition deadlines. That was McMullen's way of "busting our nuts," forcing reporters to complete stories under maximum pressure.
The Tribune installed computer word processors next and doubled up their City Hall staff. The City News Bureau followed and doubled their staff, too. Tandy TRS 80s, affectionately called "Trash 80s," started to pop up on other reporter's desks.
Golden was the lone hold-out.
He said he hated computers and preferred the gentle tapping of the typewriter keys.
"Tooo … daaaaay. Maaa …
yoooor Jaaaane … Byrnnnnnnneeeee …." Golden would
look around the room and spit out a guttural cackle, "Aaaaargh!
Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh!" He'd then added for the entertainment
of those listening, "The despicable whoooo….eerrrrr!
… Aaaarrgh! Aaaarrgh! Aaaarrgh!"
Everyone in the room stopped and laughed, too.
News swung wildly from budgets to personnel, but eventually settled
on personality politics.
The City Council
When battle lines were drawn between Byrne and the media, many
aldermen shuddered to enter the Press Room. Those few that did
either were Byrne haters, or had been sent in by Byrne to spy.
Roti was there everyday complaining about Byrne when he was an outsider, and lobbying for her when he was back in control. You would never know his Mob ties by his kindly manner. His campaign buttons touted, "I'm a Roti Rooter." And his relatives held jobs at almost every level. Besides monitoring the mob's political concerns, Roti had a much more important City Council role. He was the first to vote on major issues, and his vote was the weather vane of the Machine system.
You only needed three qualities to serve as a Chicago Alderman. First, you had to know enough English to recognize your name when called by the City Clerk during roll calls. Second, you had to at least be able to count up to your Ward number during votes. And, thirdly, you only had to know how Roti voted. It was a simple system that produced massive, lopsided votes in the Machine's favor.
Ald. Eloise Barden (16th) was a perfectly credentialed Chicago Machine alderman. During one particularly confusing financial vote, as Byrne was secretly slipping through a tax increase, Barden mistakenly voted "No." Now in control of the Machine, Byrne slammed her gavel on the podium and brought the vote to a halt. The noisy council came to a dead silence. Byrne smiled and said politely, "Alderman Barden, I think you meant to vote Yes."
Well, hearing it from Byrne wasn't good
enough, and Barden got confused even more as anti-Byrne and pro-Byrne
forces started yelling to her how to vote.
"Wait a minute. I didn't axe you how to vote. I axed you
how Roti voted," Barden protested, finally changing her
vote to "Aye."
Roti always came into the Press Room and put his arms around reporters, peering at their stories. Sometimes we nudged him away. Sometimes we let him read.
And as we expected, we would soon receive a telephone call from Byrne's press office, which had 18 employees, compared to the two-member staff that worked under Jurkovich.
Sometimes, though, Byrne made the call
herself.
"Press Room," I answered.
"Press Room! It's me," the soft, female voice said on the other end.
"Me? Who's me?" I asked.
"Me!" she protested. "Me!"
I paused. "Mayor?"
"Who'd you think it was?"
"I don't know, mayor. You know we get a lot of strange calls here all the time."
"I'm sure you do. Who's down there
with you?"
"Davis, Golden, Spiel . . ."
"Tell everyone to come up to my office. I have a story for them."
With a record 18 people working on her press staff, Byrne sometimes had to make the call herself. That was Byrne's style.
That changed, especially after Byrne had been in office a few years and she wised up. When she stopped giving us news, we had to create it. We turned our efforts to manipulating the aldermen.
"Hey, Madrzyk. What's happening today? It's deader than so-and-so's nuts. We need some news," a reporter would yell.
John Madrzyk, the alderman of the 13th Ward in the city's Southwest Side, just shrugged. "Everything's quiet." Madrzyk did nothing unless he first consulted with his boss, the powerful state Democratic House leader Michael J. Madigan, better known as the "Velvet Hammer."
The reporter winked at me to play along and he told Madrzyk to come by his desk. "Listen, you can be a hero. You can put together an ordinance that raises the drinking age from 18 to 21 in Chicago for beer and wine. People will love you."
Madrzyk was a little unsure, at first. But he listened as the reporter explained how much news the story would get. "How can I do that?"
"Well, the legislature broadened Chicago's home rule powers. You can do it."
Madrzyk nodded. "Home rule powers? Let me think about it."
When he later returned showing interest, we handed him a draft copy of the ordinance that we had written ourselves. "Take this and put in 'whereases' and 'what'sfors' and 'whocares,' and just introduce it."
He did. And, at the next meeting, using the city's new home rule powers, the council approved the ordinance raising Chicago's drinking age.
After the meeting, Roti walked in with
Madrzyk shaking his head. "I can't believe you guys did
this to John."
"Hey, look at the headlines he got," the reporter protested.
"Madrzyk's a hero."
We all just looked away. Years later both Roti and Madrzyk would trip into the wide ranging net of the US Attorney's corruption probes, both ending up in jail. The reporters went on to win newspaper awards.
Other ordinances influenced or written by reporters included one banning tinted front windows on cars, creating new holidays, and even the creation of new city departments.
Personality Politics
"I am not a vengeful
woman. I am not a vindictive woman. That's something they always
say about women, but never men."
Byrne during one of her press conferences.
Jane Byrne said she could never forgive Vrdolyak, Burke or Roti, the three members she fingered during her campaign as the "cabal of evil men" who worked hard to block her election.
She turned to a troika of quickly anointed reformers to guide her City Council legislation. They included longtime liberal 44th Ward Alderman Martin J. Oberman, 36th Ward Alderman John Aiello, who had treated Byrne kindly during the mayoral primary, and 23rd Ward Alderman William O. Lipinski. Just my luck, Lipinski happened to be my first political contact when I was hired by the Southtown in 1977 and went to City Hall in the fall of 1978.
As a cub reporter, and with Lipinski driving my tips, I transformed an effort by the US Postal Service to open a mail processing facility in Archer Heights into a community crusade.
In Southwest Side lexicon, the phrase "Post Office" equaled "Blacks." But my editors would only permit me to write about the dangers that large trucks posed to the streets and to the children of the Southwest Side hamlet that hugged Archer Avenue. Racial politics dictated newspaper policies for years, and it wasn't until many years later that the Southtown actually published a picture of a black man on its front page - he happened to be the newly appointed principal of a local school and it was hardly avoidable.
Lipinski used the Archer Heights crusade to strengthen his political organization. When Byrne made him one of her floor leaders, he remembered me. Although in his bright orange corduroy suit that he wore to City Council meetings, he was hard to forget.
Byrne gave them the reins, with only one mandate: Screw Vrdolyak and screw Burke. Roti was the Mob, so she essentially left him alone. But had the Lipinski Trio stayed focused on that directive, everything might have continued for years to come.
Byrne sensed that her new floor leaders were a little too cozy with Daley, and feared correctly that they had another agenda in mind. Year's of 11th Ward training and instinct wouldn't allow them to turn away from the "Democratic Machine's Messiah", little Richie.
In the summer of her first year, these events forced Byrne to a decision that forever changed the face of her administration. It also changed how she viewed me during the next three years. She was prompted by an embarrassing fiasco at a City Council meeting where the Lipinski Trio fumbled through a simple effort to strip Vrdolyak's brother, Victor, of his job as a deputy police superintendent.
Byrne could have done it the way the Machine always did it. Quietly. But she couldn't resist the site of a public flogging.
Lipinski was no match for the quick-witted Vrdolyak who jousted verbally with him and even Byrne. And when Aiello objected saying Vrdolyak had missed the "gender of the debate," Vrdolyak stood up, and to the laughter of the council's members and the gallery, he informed Aiello, "Gender? Gender? I taught you politics, now I'll teach you a little English. It's germane!"
Byrne stormed out of the meeting. The cost of stripping Vrdolyak's kin was a humiliating public flogging of her own.
Back in the Saddle Again
The new mayor scheduled at least one City Council meeting each
week. It was the only way she could control and change the structure
of who had jobs and who was receiving contracts.
The Lipinski Trio would always walk up to the Mayor's 5th Floor office one hour before the council meetings were to begin. At any time, they would walk through the pack of reporters in the hallway, past the guard desk, through the security system, past a second guard, and into the Sanctum Sanctorum of the mayor's private waiting room. That was where the real power huddled and made the city's laws.
But one day in August, I got a frantic call from Lipinski. We'd seen the Lipinski Trio enter the Mayor's main office area as we headed downstairs to prepare for the council meeting.
"Can you come up here?" he whispered.
"Sure." He sounded shaken. I ran upstairs hoping for an insider's exclusive from Byrne's council floor leaders.
When I got there, I saw something I couldn't believe. Lipinski, Oberman and Aiello were sitting in the same chairs were we often huddled, shoulders slumped, under the wall of pictures of each of the city's past mayors. (Bilandic's picture was not placed on the wall until halfway through her term. She made sure to pick the worst possible photo, cut in such a way that Bilandic appeared shorter than the rest. And, it was blurry.)
Lipinski rolled his eyes and nodded toward the security entrance. The bodyguards, who had so often stepped aside for the Lipinski Trio, had now been ordered to keep them out.
Moments later, Byrne stepped out of the
office and she was followed by the "cabal of evil men"
themselves, walking like ducks behind their mother.
"From now on, alderman," Byrne said to Lipinski in
an outer office confrontation, "Vrdolyak is my floor leader
and you'll take orders from him."
Vrdolyak smiled and walked with that fake John Wayne strut that later characterized his iron-fisted policies in racially motivated battles with Harold Washington. He pointed at Lipinski.
"Remember what she said. You'll take orders from me now, not the Grape." The late Mayor Daley had built an empire that fed his friends, pals, cronies and his family. But behind his back, many, including his own friends and later his employees, still referred to Rich Daley as "the Old Man's little Grape."
Following Vrdolyak out the door and to the mantle of City Council power were Burke, Roti, and Roti's boss, First Ward Committeeman John D'Arco, Sr. A smoldering stogy danced on D'Arco's lower lip. A former tomato peddler, D'Arco was credited with convincing Byrne during that meeting in August, 1979, that while Vrdolyak wanted his power back, Daley wanted her job.
That began the Vrdolyak 44. Lipinski, Oberman and Aiello were left with only three other reliable votes in the council. They were: Alderman Patrick Huels of Daley's 11th Ward home base; Mike Sheahan, the alderman of the 19th Ward which was sometimes called "little Bridgeport" because it, too, shared in the majority of city jobs; and, Madryzk. There were other sympathizers, like Daley's 18th Ward cousin, John, but few additional council votes.
Suddenly, the beat started to get ugly and the next thing I knew, Jay McMullen was telling everyone he was going to "put me away."
Certainly the stories Byrne gave us made great headlines. But the stories she tried to hide were the ones people seemed interested most to read. And while the Lipinski Trio didn't share the scoops going in, like babies, they complained everyday about the pain.
Go to Part
III
Return to Part I
(Ray Hanania covered City Hall from 1977 until 1992 and is currently a political columnist with the Southwest News-herald Newspaper. The winner of three Society of Professional journalism Lisagor Awards, Hanania was named Best Ethnic American Columnist in America by the New America Media. freelance writer and Chicago author.)
(C) 1999, Hanania
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