November 25, 2015
DUNKIN, RUSH ON DIFFERENT SOUTH SIDE TRAJECTORIES

ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART

by RUSS STEWART

"The black man is his own man," trumpeted the Chicago Defender after state Representative Ken Dunkin (D-5) defied Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and sided with Republican Governor Bruce Rauner on two key Nov. 10 day care restoration funding and service bills and failed to return from vacation on a Sept. 9 vote to override a veto of a bill limiting the governor's power in public sector union strikes.

Dunkin, who harbors grandiose ambitions of being a congressman or the mayor, is now much reviled by the black establishment as a turncoat, with retribution for his apostasy due in 2016. However, the undeniable point is that every black state representative (20 of 71) votes as Madigan dictates. They are bought and paid for with Madigan's special interest money. How dare they think for themselves?

Dunkin, who was first elected in 2002, had the astuteness to understand that he is the "balance of power" in the Illinois House and the temerity to actually negotiate with Rauner. That's because, after the General Assembly's regular session adjourns in June, a three-fifths super majority is needed to pass a bill or override a veto. Madigan has a 71-47 Democratic majority, but without Dunkin's vote, that becomes just a majority, and nothing passes.

One union operative was especially contemptuous of Madigan. "We (the unions) have spent millions of dollars to give Madigan his super majority," and Madigan "has spent millions to give himself a super majority, but when it was time to deliver, he failed. What was it all for?"

According to Dunkin, his "defection" is defensible. Rauner cut a family of two's day care funding and eligibility to 162 percent of the poverty level, which meant that recipients could not earn more than $650 monthly. The "compromise" Dunkin negotiated with Rauner raised the income cap to $2,400 monthly. Madigan's Democrats wanted it higher. "We have a strong partnership," Dunkin said of himself and the governor. "He's willing to work with us." That's unacceptable in the legislature, where the attitude is that Rauner must be "willing to capitulate to us."

Among the black electorate, in Chicago and nationally, black politicians get cut a lot of slack. To err is human. If a black office holder is being investigated by the feds for alleged wrongdoing, his or her stature is enhanced, not diminished. If "The Man" is trying to prosecute you, it's persecution.

Forgiveness and forgetfulness are the norm, at least until the cell door slams shut, but what is unforgivable and unforgettable is conniving with the Republicans. Then the sword of vengeance is swift.

Dunkin and U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-1) were once thought to be on the same trajectory. Both are South Siders, and Dunkin was once deemed Rush's probable successor. No longer.

In fact, Rush's "succession" has been delayed for another 2 years. If Dunkin can survive his 2016 Democratic primary -- about which the labor operative said "we are going to spend what it takes to beat him" -- he could be the 1st District frontrunner for 2018.

After reports that Alderman Howard Brookins (21st) was circulating petitions to challenge Rush in 2016, the incumbent announced for re-election on Nov. 21. First elected in 1992, after 9 years as the 2nd Ward alderman, Rush is unbeatable, despite his legal scrapes, questions about his church, personal health issues and absenteeism from Congress. Rush, age 68, is not a picture of robust health, having been diagnosed with salivary gland cancer in 2008, with a jaw tumor removal, but he has recovered. His wife was ill during much of 2011-12, occasioning much of his absenteeism.

Rush, like most minority Democratic congressmen nationwide, is a venerated institution, suffused with an almost religious aura. Rush was a Black Panther, that long-ago black street gang which ran the South Side and which advocated "black power." That was no political impediment. In 1983 he was part of the Harold Washington surge, and he was elected 2nd Ward alderman, becoming part of the "Washington 21." In 1992 Rush challenged Washington's nondescript congressional successor, Democrat Charles Hayes, and won 54,231-50,191. At that time the district was concentrated on the South Side, stretching from Bronzeville to Hyde Park.

Interestingly, the 1st District was once a bastion of black Republicanism, as blacks were loyal to the "Party of Lincoln." In 1920 Chicago's black population was 109,525, nearly all in the 1st District, but by 1940 it was 277,731 and by 1950 it was 619,437. In the South, blacks since the Civil War eked out a living as farm workers, and they made up as much as 70 percent of the population in states such as Mississippi and South Carolina and 60 percent in Georgia and Alabama. The 1930s mechanization of farming displaced manual labor and, coupled with the job demands of World War II, sent five million African Americans northward from 1930 to 1945.

Many blacks from the Mississippi River delta traveled through Memphis and settled in Chicago, Gary or Milwaukee, while many from rural Alabama traveled though Nashville and settled in Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh and many from Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia traveled through Richmond to Baltimore and New York City. In fact, of the 1.5 million black residents of Chicago and Cook County, at least a third can trace their genealogical roots to Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Up through about 1930, a Republican machine ruled Chicago, led by Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, and blacks were a key part of Thompson's coalition. Ethnicity and religion ruled. The Irish-American Catholics dominated the Democratic Party, and the northern European Protestants dominated the Republican party. The blacks were the so-called "balance of power."

The South Side contained the black ghetto, an area of dilapidated housing; its "boss" and Republican congressman was Martin Madden (who served from 1904 to 1928), an Irishman and a Thompson ally who was chairman of the House Appropriations committee when he died. Thompson chose Oscar DePriest, a Republican alderman who was indicted for graft in 1917 but acquitted, as Madden's replacement. DePriest was the first black congressman in the 20th Century, and the first from north of the Mason-Dixon line.

However, the Republicans' urban base was collapsing. In America's 12 largest cities, the Republican presidential candidate won by 1,638,000 votes in 1920, while in 1928 Democrat Al Smith won by 38,000 votes and in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt won by 1,910,000 votes. The "New Deal" transformed urban politics. In 1936 Roosevelt won the cities by 3,608,000 votes. While northern blacks stuck with Hoover in 1932, they were New Dealers by 1936. Government provided jobs and benefits.

Alabama-born Arthur Mitchell, a state legislator who switched to the Democrats in 1932, beat DePriest in 1934. When he retired in 1942, Georgia-born Bill Dawson, a Republican 2nd Ward alderman from 1933 to 1939, switched parties and won the congressional seat. He soon became the South Side boss and the Democratic kingmaker, delivering huge margins for Richard J. Daley for mayor in 1955 and 1963. Dawson shamelessly practiced patronage politics, and everybody he got on any payroll worked a precinct. In Washington, he was a power as chairman of the Government Operations Committee from 1955 to 1970.

Rush, like Dawson, typifies the "in for life" mentality among black voters for their congressmen and the "stay for life" pressure upon elected congressmen. Dawson was in for 28 years. Charlie Rangel of New York has been around since 1970, and John Conyers of Detroit has been around since 1964. A black congressman is the ranking Democrat on seven of the 21 U.S. House committees and the second ranking on four others (including Rush on Energy and Commerce). They're there because of seniority, because they get re-elected repeatedly and because the Congressional Black Caucus's "clout" emanates from the committee hierarchy. The caucus wants nobody to retire.

In his announcement, Rush promised that he wouldn't "pull a Lipinski" -- in other words, get renominated, then resign the nomination before the election and pressure the committeemen to pick his choice as replacement. That's how Bill Lipinski got his son Dan into Congress. Rush also said that he is running because he hopes to be a subcommittee chairman when the Democrats retake the majority in Congress. The Republicans have a 247-188 edge, which means that the Democrats must gain a net of 30 seats in 2016. Fat chance.

The 1st District stretches from the South Loop to Manhattan and Elwood at the south edge of Will County, about 40 miles. It is 51 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. Under the Voting Rights Act, no black-majority district can be made more white, so the 2011 remap had to protect two black congressmen. Voters in Mokena, Frankfort and New Lenox are not pleased; in 2014, 72 percent of the Will County vote went for the Republican, but 85 percent of the vote is in the black wards and south townships of Cook County.

Rush won his contested 2012 primary with 88.9 percent of the vote. He won't do much worse in 2016.

Send e-mail to russ@russstewart. com or visit his Web site at www. russstewart.com.