Chicago Illinois Real Estate Blog

The arrest last week of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich revived the old image of Chicago as a city sullied by graft at a time when the city’s mayor has been traveling the world to project a clean new one.

As U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald closed in last month on the governor’s alleged plan to sell off President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat, Mayor Richard M. Daley was introducing the city to a gathering of European Olympic officials in Istanbul. Promoting the city’s bid for the 2016 games, Mr. Daley showed a video with shots of the city’s lakefront beaches, shiny skyscrapers and neighborhood festivals. It was called Chicago Surprises.

A few weeks later, Chicago itself was surprised when the governor was arrested at his North Side home. There was shock at the audacity of the governor’s alleged actions, but little surprise that it would happen in Chicago, where a strong political machine and a legacy of corruption goes back decades.

The city’s Democratic machine dates back to 1931, when Anton Cermak became mayor. But it was Mr. Daley’s father, Richard J. Daley, who cranked it into high gear, according to city historians. Ward bosses under the elder Daley were given reign over their territories but were expected to deliver votes for the mayor. Cynical election-day slogans, such as "Vote early, vote often," became part of the city’s lore.

Richard M. Daley, 66 years old, had been State’s Attorney for Cook County when he ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor in 1983 and again, successfully in 1989. He ran as a law-and-order candidate and vowed to reform city hall.

But there have been numerous scandals during his tenure, and Mr. Daley has always managed to distance himself from them. One of the mayor’s top aides was convicted two years ago in a widespread patronage scandal investigated by Mr. Fitzgerald’s office. In 2004, the mayor’s administration came under fire after politically linked companies got lucrative contracts from the city’s Hired Truck Program.

In each case, Mr. Daley denounced the corruption and escaped unscathed. The mayor’s press office said he was unavailable to comment for this story.

"Some have called him the Teflon mayor. Somehow all the scandals slide off," says Dick Simpson, head of the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former Chicago alderman.

In February 2007, Mr. Daley was re-elected for his sixth term with more than 70% of the vote.

Described by those who know him as a hands-on mayor who personally calls the Department of Streets and Sanitation when he sees a pothole, Mr. Daley has kept the citizens of Chicago happy by running a clean, orderly city. Under his watch, the city has gotten greener, with hundreds of thousands of new trees planted and new roof-top gardens and parks created, including Millennium Park, which features a Frank Gehry-designed bandshell. To raise cash, he has also aggressively privatized city assets, such as a local toll road and city parking meters.

"He generally is hands-on, though I will note that when things do go wrong, whether it’s a scandal or something else, all the sudden the hands-on mayor becomes the mayor who’s delegated authority to others," says Alderman Joe Moore, who has clashed with the mayor many times during his 17 years on the city council. But, he adds, "I also think the mayor, to his credit, never viewed his office as a place to enrich himself financially."

There are other differences between the mayor and the governor. Mr. Daley lives on the city’s South Side, and is a White Sox fan. Mr. Blagojevich lives on the North Side of town — not in the governor’s mansion in Springfield — and roots for the Cubs. The governor is known for his well-coifed hair, the mayor for a more disheveled look. The mayor doesn’t travel with a large entourage and is accessible to aldermen, often standing in the back of the room to chat with them during city council meetings, and mixing with the crowd after ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The governor usually travels through the city in a motorcade of black SUVs.

"Mayor Daley has been able to engender tremendous loyalty in his administration. No one has written a tell-all or tell-anything book on Daley. I don’t think that will be the case with Blagojevich," says Paul Green, a political science professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Corruption hasn’t done in any past mayor, but snow-packed streets have. In 1979, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic lost his seat after the city couldn’t plow roads fast enough following a huge snowstorm.

Mr. Moore cautions that Chicagoans’ patience with local government "will be sorely tested over the next year" as budget cuts reduce services residents have come to expect. "I’ve been getting a lot of complaints in my office that streets are not being cleared as quickly as they used to," he says.