Mayor Who?

To the ambitious politician, name recognition is half the battle. By this standard, Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, up for re-election in April 1983, appears to have declared all-out war. She has plastered her name on everything in sight: garbage cans and lampposts, billboards, transit passes, police stations and concert posters. This weekend, for instance, Chicagoans will celebrate "Mayor Byrne's Labor Day Concert and Fireworks," the latest in a long line of personalized events. In this advertising campaign, even the city's name is sometimes omitted, as in "Precinct Headquarters, Jane M. Byrne, Mayor." Said an almost admiring official of the Better Government...