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Authors: David Axelrod
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seventy feet, and amputated the fireman’s pinned leg, in a vain effort to free him and save his life.
One night, early in my tenure, we heard a crackling bulletin on the newsroom police radio—“shots fired . . . officer down.” It was a drug raid gone wrong. I raced to a South Side police district and waited with other reporters until two detectives dragged a suspect in, bloodied and bruised.
“What happened to him?” I shouted as the trio passed by.
One of the detectives turned around to see who had asked such a naïve question, and shot me a scowl. “He had a fall,” he sneered, as they disappeared into the lockup. An older, streetwise reporter from City News grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me close. “The kind of fall you take when you kill a cop,” she whispered.
• • •
During my nearly three years on nights, I learned more about reporting, about Chicago, about people and life, than I ever could have imagined. Bernie’s admonition had been right.
Yet Bernie also honored my long-term interest in politics by assigning me, in election season, to cover candidates—albeit almost always the sure losers. In that spirit, he gave me a reprieve from nights in early 1979 to cover the seemingly quixotic mayoral campaign of Jane Byrne. I didn’t know it then, but a campaign that seemed like a welcome respite would become another watershed in my career—and in Chicago political history.
A slight, pugnacious Irishwoman from Chicago’s Northwest Side, Byrne was one of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s favorites. He appointed her as his consumer commissioner—a rare spot for a woman in Daley’s all-male domain. When the mayor died in 1976, Byrne continued in her city post. The man who replaced Daley as mayor, a charismatically challenged former alderman named Michael Bilandic, failed to share the Old Man’s appreciation for Byrne’s feisty Celtic charms. Their relationship eroded, and by 1977, Byrne was accusing Bilandic of having struck a corrupt bargain with the politically connected taxicab industry for another rate hike.
Byrne declared her candidacy for mayor with a full-throated call for reform. “A cabal of evil men has fastened itself onto the government of the city of Chicago,” Byrne charged, inveighing against the “fast-buck artists” on the City Council—scheming lawyer-politicians who she claimed were running Bilandic and the city for their own gain. Suddenly, the woman who had been a stalwart defender of Daley and his organization had been transformed into the darling of the city’s anti-machine liberals.
Her punchiest lines were provided by Jay McMullen, a longtime City Hall reporter for the
Chicago
Daily News
, who first had covered Byrne, then married her. In between, the two had a racy affair that was the talk of the City Hall pressroom—with the loutish McMullen doing most of the talking.
Byrne soon joined forces with my clever, rabble-rousing friend and mentor Don Rose, who signed on as the campaign manager and chief strategist. Together, they took dead aim at Bilandic and the machine.
As the old saying goes, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Byrne, McMullen, and Rose ran a smart campaign, but fate—or at least the weather gods—dealt them one hell of an opportunity when Chicago was hit with an epic snowstorm.
Day after day, for weeks before the primary election, the white stuff came down; and not just light dustings, but wet, heavy snow that clogged the streets and snarled traffic. Rose cut an ad with Byrne, speaking over images of an immobilized transit stop, vowing competent new government. As the public fumed, Bilandic, the hapless understudy thrust into the mayoralty after Daley’s death, was a portrait of indifference, futility, and denial. Bilandic’s tone-deafness was reflected in his emergency order to turn the city’s rapid transit lines into express service from downtown to the suburbs, bypassing stops in the city’s mostly black South
One night, early in my tenure, we heard a crackling bulletin on the newsroom police radio—“shots fired . . . officer down.” It was a drug raid gone wrong. I raced to a South Side police district and waited with other reporters until two detectives dragged a suspect in, bloodied and bruised.
“What happened to him?” I shouted as the trio passed by.
One of the detectives turned around to see who had asked such a naïve question, and shot me a scowl. “He had a fall,” he sneered, as they disappeared into the lockup. An older, streetwise reporter from City News grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me close. “The kind of fall you take when you kill a cop,” she whispered.
• • •
During my nearly three years on nights, I learned more about reporting, about Chicago, about people and life, than I ever could have imagined. Bernie’s admonition had been right.
Yet Bernie also honored my long-term interest in politics by assigning me, in election season, to cover candidates—albeit almost always the sure losers. In that spirit, he gave me a reprieve from nights in early 1979 to cover the seemingly quixotic mayoral campaign of Jane Byrne. I didn’t know it then, but a campaign that seemed like a welcome respite would become another watershed in my career—and in Chicago political history.
A slight, pugnacious Irishwoman from Chicago’s Northwest Side, Byrne was one of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s favorites. He appointed her as his consumer commissioner—a rare spot for a woman in Daley’s all-male domain. When the mayor died in 1976, Byrne continued in her city post. The man who replaced Daley as mayor, a charismatically challenged former alderman named Michael Bilandic, failed to share the Old Man’s appreciation for Byrne’s feisty Celtic charms. Their relationship eroded, and by 1977, Byrne was accusing Bilandic of having struck a corrupt bargain with the politically connected taxicab industry for another rate hike.
Byrne declared her candidacy for mayor with a full-throated call for reform. “A cabal of evil men has fastened itself onto the government of the city of Chicago,” Byrne charged, inveighing against the “fast-buck artists” on the City Council—scheming lawyer-politicians who she claimed were running Bilandic and the city for their own gain. Suddenly, the woman who had been a stalwart defender of Daley and his organization had been transformed into the darling of the city’s anti-machine liberals.
Her punchiest lines were provided by Jay McMullen, a longtime City Hall reporter for the
Chicago
Daily News
, who first had covered Byrne, then married her. In between, the two had a racy affair that was the talk of the City Hall pressroom—with the loutish McMullen doing most of the talking.
Byrne soon joined forces with my clever, rabble-rousing friend and mentor Don Rose, who signed on as the campaign manager and chief strategist. Together, they took dead aim at Bilandic and the machine.
As the old saying goes, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Byrne, McMullen, and Rose ran a smart campaign, but fate—or at least the weather gods—dealt them one hell of an opportunity when Chicago was hit with an epic snowstorm.
Day after day, for weeks before the primary election, the white stuff came down; and not just light dustings, but wet, heavy snow that clogged the streets and snarled traffic. Rose cut an ad with Byrne, speaking over images of an immobilized transit stop, vowing competent new government. As the public fumed, Bilandic, the hapless understudy thrust into the mayoralty after Daley’s death, was a portrait of indifference, futility, and denial. Bilandic’s tone-deafness was reflected in his emergency order to turn the city’s rapid transit lines into express service from downtown to the suburbs, bypassing stops in the city’s mostly black South
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