It was primary-election night in Chicago, but what was the matter with everybody? Why no festivities, why not the usual arm pumping and back thumping? The hordes of loyal Democratic Party workers who gathered in the Sherman House hotel to await the returns were uncommonly solemn and silent. Ward bosses did not barge exuberantly into Mayor Richard Daley's tightly guarded inner office. They slunk in sheepishly or stayed away altogether.
The gloom was justified. The vote tallies had spoiled their plans and struck the machine a staggering blow. For the first time since 1938, the Cook County organization had lost a primary. Not only had Edward Hanrahan beaten the machine's candidate, Raymond Berg, for state's attorney, but Insurgent Daniel Walker had won the party nomination for Governor against Paul Simon, now the Lieutenant Governor. Five machine-backed state legislators from Chicago had also gone down to defeat before independent candidates. As he moodily paced a corridor in the hotel, a ward boss remarked: "This is like waiting outside the maternity room when someone is having a miscarriage."
The Daley ticket was trounced by a combination of the Old and the New Politics. The old was represented by "Fast Eddie" Hanrahan, who returned from the political dead—and as everyone knows, the dead do not vote in Chicago unless Daley tells them to. Daley had originally endorsed Hanrahan for reelection, but party pressure forced the mayor to dump him from the ticket. A grand jury had indicted Hanrahan for obstructing justice in the investigation of the killing of two Black Panthers by the police in 1969.
Surprise Dessert. Hanrahan, however, decided to fight back, and he had the resources to do so. As U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois and as state's attorney, he had built up a reputation as a zealous law enforcer. He asked voters during the campaign: "Would you want your law enforcement carried out by me or by a nice fellow?" A volatile man, he buttonholed precinct captains to remind them who he was and what they owed him. When he found that doors were locked at ward meetings, he sometimes tried to bash them down. He claimed that he had done more than anyone else to protect blacks from street crime, but he also played to the gut fears of whites. His appeal was likened to that of George Wallace.
Normally surly and dour, Hanrahan was at pains to demonstrate another side of his personality—one that people had not seen before. He developed a sense of humor. Marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade, he doffed his hat and released a white dove as he passed Mayor Daley. He engineered a surprise dessert for Daley's precinct captains when they gathered in support of Berg at a dinner. When they cracked open their fortune cookies, they found the message "Hanrahan is the man."
Less amusing, Hanrahan made use of the powers of his office to help him get elected. It was implied that anyone who opposed him too vigorously might become the target of an investigation —and investigations are not popular in Cook County; they have a way of turning up things.