Republicans recently telegraphed their strategy to stay on offense during the Democratic National Convention. The GOP plans to spotlight Chicago’s violent crime, graffiti, homeless camps, pension debt and high taxes and tie it all to the city’s adoption, in recent years, of progressive policies more associated with San Francisco and Seattle.
The last time Democrats came to town, the national image of Chicago was quite different. As the party prepared to renominate Bill Clinton in 1996, The Wall Street Journal wrote:
“This is America’s urban paradise. Don’t laugh. As Democrats return next week to the scene of their violent 1968 convention, many will be surprised to find that, despite a 1980s manufacturing collapse, the flight of nearly one million residents and a humbling loss of political power, Chicago not only survived but blossomed into an economic, cultural and lifestyle marvel.”
So, what happened?
Chicago’s history, like that of many American cities, demonstrates the importance of strong leadership and policies encouraging business growth and quality of life. In 22 years in office, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley relentlessly pursued both.
When Daley took office in 1989, violent crime was endemic. The public schools were roiled by several teacher strikes over 18 years, historic dropout rates and bankruptcy. Chicago’s industry was in a long decline.
But Daley resuscitated Chicago. He rebuilt downtown, eradicated graffiti, moved unhoused people off streets to shelters, beautified boulevards, drove violent crime to 40-year lows and invested prodigiously in the city’s diverse neighborhoods. Chicago rose from a “city on the brink, an economic invalid,” in the 1981 words of the Tribune, to a glistening metropolis cited by Foreign Policy magazine as the sixth most important global city in 2010, Daley’s last full year in office.
Daley won barely half the vote in his first election but received 3 out of every 4 votes in his final three terms, in a city divided by roughly equal populations of white, Black and Latino Chicagoans. Daley effectively represented a pragmatic and centrist Democratic Party.
In the nearly 15 years since Daley left office, his legacy has been eroded by weak leadership and a leftward lurch in local politics. His successor, Rahm Emanuel, carried forward Daley’s pro-business and education reform policies. But under pressure from activists following the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, Emanuel agreed to a federal consent decree restricting police discretion in stopping and questioning suspects. His successor, Lori Lightfoot, imposed more constraints, sinking officer morale and accelerating a shocking rise in violence that began in 2013.
Over the recent July Fourth weekend, more than 100 people were shot, including an 8-year-old boy. Chicago leads the nation in multivictim shootings. “The next three cities combined didn’t have as many in the same period. In fact, if Chicago were a state, it would rank only behind California in total mass events across the decade,” the Tribune reported.
Editorial: Mayor Brandon Johnson finally strikes an outraged tone on gun violence. Follow it up with action.
Daley’s turnaround of Chicago’s failed public schools, along with the laser focus of Emanuel, led to a return of middle-class families. Their policies created a choice-based system within the public schools, lifting the fortunes of hundreds of thousands of poor and minority children.
Remarkably, Chicago’s high school graduation rates improved by 30 points in a decade. The University of Illinois’ Paul Zavitkovsky said Chicago was outperforming school districts across the state.
Academic gains over more than a decade, however, were erased when the Chicago Teachers Union shut down in-classroom learning for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lightfoot’s school board rolled back “stigmatizing” accountability standards. With enrollment at historic lows, her successor, progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson, wants to phase out choice-based policies that “further stratification and inequity.”
Daley was hardly perfect. His tenure was marred by scandals. His vast ambitions produced chronic deficits, expensive labor contracts and debt. But his focus on growth kept property taxes reasonable. He vetoed onerous wage and benefit mandates on businesses and leveraged city dollars to tip the balance for private investments. From 1993 to 2010, Chicago created more jobs than Boston and Los Angeles combined. Emanuel, however, dampened the business environment with record tax increases in a desperate attempt to absorb enormous pension liabilities imposed by the state. Heeding powerful public employee unions, progressive Gov. J.B. Pritzker has foisted new pension debt on Chicago taxpayers. Today, only Detroit has a higher commercial property tax burden.
Many small businesses closed, and large corporations moved, including Boeing, Citadel, Tyson Foods and Caterpillar.
A former CTU organizer, Johnson blames the city’s woes on decades of “deliberate disinvestment in Black neighborhoods,” a lie to obscure poor management and misguided policies.
Chicago is a cautionary tale. Its past two mayors had no management experience and thin political resumes. Voters chose amateurism at a high cost. Similarly, the triumph of progressive ideology over responsible governance has imperiled the city’s future. The “economic, cultural and lifestyle marvel” lauded by the national press at the last Chicago convention is in danger of returning to the “city on the brink” that Daley inherited decades ago.
Forrest Claypool is the author of “The Daley Show: Inside the Transformative Reign of Chicago’s Richard M. Daley.” He served twice as Daley’s chief of staff.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
