“Brunch With the Mayor” said the leaflet slipped under my door. “You are cordially invited to have lunch with Mayor Richard M. Daley and Mike Quigley, Aldermanic Candidate, 3600 N. Lake Shore Drive, Sunday, March 24, Noon in the lobby.” Right down the street.
The area, he says, is at a crossroads. “It could go one of two directions. It could go in a direction where people will be proud of it, where we’ll have more policemen dealing with crime, we’ll have better health care, safer streets, increased property values, that I think is of a concern to all of us. . . . Or we can go the way of Wilson Avenue. And I don’t know if any of you have been to Wilson Avenue and taken your life in your hands, but it’s a very dangerous area. We’ve got some very bad bars in that area.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“And people have asked me what’s my complaint, what’s my disagreement with the current alderman.” (The name of Helen Shiller will never escape Marovitz’s lips today.) “Well, let me tell you what is my complaint and my disagreement with the current alderman. Those bars on Wilson Avenue–this is just one example–those bars on Wilson Avenue are a scourge on the entire community, a scourge on the entire neighborhood. What’s happened in those bars? There’s been beatings, knifings, prostitution, dope deals.”
“We’ve had too many fights in the city of Chicago for too long. . . . We’ve finally got ourselves a mayor who doesn’t want to fight. . . . No more fights! No more Council Wars! The problem is we–and I’m a home owner here just like you are–we in the 46th Ward have an alderman who still wants to fight the mayor. . . . I don’t want an alderman who’s gonna fight with the mayor. I want an alderman who’s gonna work with the mayor to make my neighborhood better. And Mike Quigley is that kind of a guy.” There’s a round of applause.
A woman stands up. “I have a statement,” she says. There is some visible tension around the podium. “It’s a thank-you,” she says, and they relax. “I don’t know whom to thank, but I have been walking in the park for years and sloshing through the water in the underpass, and the other day it was cleared up. I don’t know who’s responsible, but thank you.”
Marovitz knows just how to respond: “When it comes to the homeless people, that’s a very good question. Everybody’s got a right to have a home and everybody’s got a right to vote. But it seems very funny to me that just before the election the alderman calls all the homeless voters right here on Lake Shore Drive, so that 50 percent of all the homeless voters in the city of Chicago were in one precinct on Lake Shore Drive, just before the election, so that she could get them all to vote for her! And what did she do since then? She doubled the number since the primary, putting them all on Lake Shore Drive. Didn’t ask anybody if she could use their facilities, didn’t have a community meeting–she just moved them in!”
The mayor comes on strong, his forefinger extended toward the audience, arm jerking back and forth as the sentences burst explosively from his mouth. This style is exchanged momentarily for the expansive, inclusive gesture: arms spread wide and slowly raised. “Now I don’t care what people’s personal opinions are–liberals, conservatives–I really don’t care. When it comes to moving the city forward, when it comes to getting legislation done [now returning to that jabbing forefinger], when it’s becoming proactive–and I’m a proactive mayor–I put that legislation down there and I get it done. I’m only here for a limited period of time, and I want to get things done. I’m a manager. You know why I’m a manager? Because it’s your money.
