I’m not sure how long it will last, but
black voters in Cook County are united and fired up right now in a
way they haven’t been for a long time. It goes back to Barack Obama’s 2004
Democratic primary victory, but the flames were stoked again in
January, when Chicago’s historic Pilgrim Baptist Church
burned down. Black people from all over the city and county
gathered in huge numbers to grieve with the parishioners and pledge
their support. Gov. Rod Blagojevich stepped up with a million
dollars in rebuilding money and was roundly cheered. The recent conflagration over the
governor’s hate-crimes commission sparked a hue and cry among
the black community, many of whose members perceived the attacks on
a Louis Farrakhan adviser appointed to the committee as an attack
on black people in general. Black talk radio was flooded for days
with defiant, angry calls, and Blagojevich’s stock went up
again when he refused to remove the controversial commissioner,
even at the expense of disgruntlement within the Jewish community.
And then Cook County Board President John
Stroger, an African-American, had a stroke and everything seemed to
fall into place. Shock was followed by grief, followed by red-hot
anger when Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg implied that Stroger was
faking his stroke to score sympathy votes. Once again, the control
boards of black radio stations were flooded with angry phone calls.
The result was that John Stroger won last
Tuesday’s primary against reformer Forrest Claypool. Stroger
was carried across the finish line by big numbers in predominantly
black wards. The win was also a victory for Blagojevich, who wanted
Stroger on the ballot for the fall campaign to help increase black
turnout, which, for obvious reasons, he deems crucial to his
reelection. But state Sen. James Meeks may have other
ideas. Meeks, D-Chicago, reminded reporters last week that he may
still be a factor in the fall festivities. “On March 28, I
can start putting petitions on the street” for a third-party
gubernatorial bid, Meeks told the Sun-Times. “And, so far, I’ve had nothing to
deter me from putting petitions on the street on March 28.”
Meeks said the governor has never called black leaders together and
asked them what they want. If Blagojevich doesn’t do that
soon, Meeks said, he’ll run. History never exactly repeats itself, but
events are starting to remind me of 1982, when the Democratic Party
machine registered huge numbers of African-Americans to vote and
then cranked up the returns for Adlai Stevenson’s
gubernatorial bid with a massive “Punch 10” straight-voting
campaign. That effort led directly to Harold Washington’s
stunning Chicago mayoral victory the following spring. I’m not saying that James Meeks will
turn out to be another Harold Washington or even that he’ll
run. A statewide campaign is a lot different than a Chicago race. But what I have been saying for at least two
years now is something that’s become so obvious perhaps the
media at large will finally catch on: Black political influence is
on the rise in Cook County and in Illinois. Blagojevich has been smart to try to
encourage and tap into this phenomenon, but if Meeks defies
conventional wisdom and runs, the governor, like Eddie
Vrdolyak’s machine before him, will have helped manufacture
his own political demise. Even if Meeks doesn’t run, Chicago
Mayor Richard Daley and the white-dominated party machine need to
watch their backs in a major way. If Daley, like Blagojevich,
thinks that by supporting Stroger he can inoculate himself against
an assault from a credible African-American opponent such as U.S.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., he’s wrong. Claypool has probably endorsed more black
candidates for higher office than Stroger has, but look where that
got him. Even though Jackson favored Claypool, that probably
won’t hurt him in a mayoral bid. After all, Stroger endorsed
state Comptroller Dan Hynes against Obama and backed Daley against
Washington. Frankly, I’m not exactly sure where all
of this is heading. It may end up being a movement without specific
direction. Last week’s election split the black vote and the
white-liberal vote, which was so important to Harold
Washington’s two campaigns. But alliances can change on a
dime in Chicago politics. What this election showed is that a
strong black politician who teams up with a formidable voting bloc
(in this case, the regular machine) can win almost no matter what.
Make no mistake: This is a real movement.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2006.
