The Changing Racial Regime by Matthew Holden Jr

Author:Matthew Holden Jr. [Holden, Matthew Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, General, Discrimination
ISBN: 9781351305105
Google: kfhADwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36984706
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Map 3

Distribution of Washington’s Support: General Election, 1987

Unlike 1983, then, there was something of an aura of inevitability surrounding the Washington candidacy. The tone of the election campaigns was generally civil, lacking the frenzy, intensity, and open displays of racial antagonism evident four years earlier.

This is not to say that racial conflict was absent; only that it was not expressed as openly as it had been in 1983. In the intervening years, “good government” groups, appalled by the racial hostility expressed in the 1983 contest, set up a committee to monitor campaign practices—the Committee on Decent and Unbiased Campaign Tactics (CONDUCT). The committee formally reprimanded candidates and/or their supporters when they engaged in what it judged to be racial attacks or displays of racial insensitivity. But the 1987 elections did not differ from the 1983 general election in the social character and shape of the voting coalitions. Geographically, Washington’s support in the 1987 elections was concentrated pretty much where it had been four years earlier—in the African-American wards on the city’s South and West Sides (see maps 2 and 3). In the 1987 primary, Washington added four wards to the twenty-two that he had carried in April 1983: ward 26, one of the wards that had picked up more Latino voters as a result of the remap decision, and wards 46, 48, and 49, all on the Lakefront and in all of which he had run reasonably competitive races in 1983, getting between 40 and 49 percent of the vote. In the 1987 general election, he carried these twenty-six wards and added one more, ward 25, another ward whose Latino population had been increased as a result of the remap decision. Washington barely polled a majority in ward 25 (50.8 percent), and he fell below 50 percent in wards 48 and 49, carrying them with 48.5 and 47.1 percent, respectively, due to the three-way split in the vote.

Washington’s improved showing in the Lakefront wards is sometimes cited to support the impression popularized by the Chicago media that he did much better among white voters in 1987 than he had in 1983. That impression assumes that Washington’s strongest support in the Lakefront wards was among white voters, an assumption that was incorrect in both 1983 and 1987. Against Epton, Washington polled about 26 percent of the white vote in the six Lakefront wards; against Byrne that figure rose to 31 percent, but then it fell back to only 23 percent in the general election. Vrdolyak, Washington’s prime antagonist on the council, captured 59 percent of the white vote in these allegedly “liberal” bastions. In both 1983 and 1987, Washington’s strongest support in this six-ward area came from its nonwhite voters—African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, all of whom gave him strong majorities of their vote.

Table 2

Turnout of Voting Support for Washington by Racial/Ethnic Group, 1983 and 1987

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