Follow The Genes

I have written before about the nature of Chicago politics and the power of the machine. For those of you who have not lived there it may be a little difficult to unravel the layers of this onion, but Michael Baron made a valiant attempt at it today. It is not about what you know or even necessarily who you know (although that helps) as much as who you are related to.

That's how William Ayers got where he was. When he came out of hiding because the federal government was unable to prosecute him (because of government misconduct), he got a degree in education from Columbia and then moved to Chicago and got a job on the education faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. How did he get that job? Well, it can't have hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was chairman of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) and a charter member of the Chicago establishment. As Mayor Richard M. Daley said recently, in arguing that the Ayers association should not be held against Obama, "His father was a great friend of my father."

In none of our other major cities is genealogy so important. I remember a story that Bill Plante of CBS News has often told. Plante was working for WBBM, the Chicago CBS-owned and -operated affiliate, during the violence-plagued Democratic National Convention. At a press conference, he asked the late Mayor Richard J. Daley a question "da mare" thought was impertinent. Daley's answer was, "Sometimes even in the best of families there's a bad apple." It baffled the members of the national press, ut not those from Chicago. Plante's father and brother were Democratic precinct committeemen in the 49th Ward. The late Mayor Daley had the whole city of Chicago in his head. It is only natural that his son should vouch for someone by saying that their fathers were great friends.

The voters of Chicago and Illinois respect family ties in a way that voters in no other state or city do. The current Mayor Daley is, of course, the son of the late Mayor Daley; the two Daleys have been mayors, and effective and competent mayors, of Chicago for 40 of the last 53 years. The attorney general of Illinois is the daughter of the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. The governor of Illinois is the son-in-law of the Democratic ward committeeman in the 33rd Ward. The congressman from the 2nd Congressional District is Jesse Jackson Jr. Jackson's predecessor-but-one in the district was Morgan Murphy Jr., whose father was chairman of (get this) Commonwealth Edison.

But my favorite example of the importance of family ties is 3rd District Rep. Dan Lipinski, who was first elected in 2004 to replace his father, Bill Lipinski, who was first elected in 1982. Bill Lipinski won the Democratic nomination in the March 2004 primary. But on August 13, he announced he would not seek re-election and would resign the Democratic nomination. The deadline for replacing him was August 26, and a meeting was set on August 17 for the 19th Ward and township Democratic committeemen to choose a new candidate. Lipinski announced his support for his son, who was then a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and had not lived in Chicago for many years. Among the committeemen making the decision were: 11th Ward committeeman and County Commissioner John Daley, son of the late mayor and brother of the current mayor; 13th Ward committeeman Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House and father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan; 14th Ward committeeman Edward Burke, who succeeded his father as a council member in his 20s and and was longtime chairman of the Finance Committee, and whose wife is a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court; 19th Ward committeeman Tom Hynes, former Cook County Assessor and father of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes; and 23rd Ward committeeman Bill Lipinski. An electorate more averse to an argument against nepotism cannot be imagined. Lipinski advanced his son's name and said, "I'm optimistic, but one never knows in politics until the votes are counted." It did not take long to count them: Dan Lipinski was nominated without opposition. To the charge that the nomination was rigged, one participant dryly noted that anyone could have run.

Emphasis mine - go back and read again the family ties in the bolded section.

One more family needs to be added to the geneology....Emil Jones' family. Remember, this is the same Emil Jones who, when announcing his recent retirement, endorsed his son as his replacement. This is (partly) how Senator Barack Obama fits in to this story.

What stood out about the skinny, 25-year-old community organizer the first time Emil Jones met him?

"He was a little pushy," the president of the Illinois Senate recalls of Barack Obama.

Jones was just a state senator back in 1985 when he noticed a handful of people gathering down the block from his South Side district office. Jones walked over to see what they were up to.

It wasn't till he read about it in Obama's book, years later, that he realized the group had been gathering to organize a protest.

"I sort of startled them by warmly greeting them," Jones said, sitting in his state office in Chicago's Thompson Center. "They were organizing to get some attention for the dropout rate at Fenger High School. I had the same concerns, so I invited them in to my office. We sat down and had a dialogue. They weren't just there to complain. They actually had solutions to the problem. "

Years later, Jones would welcome Obama into the state Senate and help shepherd him into the U.S. Senate.

Now comes the rest of the Obama tie in...

How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become somebody somebody sent? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was (I believe) a Democratic precinct committeeman, she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children, and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley.

Emphasis again mine. Note more family ties and ties to the Daley family. Now what so you suppose happens when you cross "la famalia"?? Journalist Stanley Kurtz found out the hard way.

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake.

The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost.

Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform.

Care to take a wild guess as to whose name is on the UIC Library? The one that houses the Annenberg Challenge documents? You would be wrong if you said any other name but Daley...

You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:

The Richard J. Daley Library.

Eureka!

The Richard J. Daley Library doesn't want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.'s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.

And in the City of Chicago - what the Daley family wants, the Daley family GETS!

This is the "power" behind Senator Barack Obama. He did not get to where he is today without a lot of help from "family" and that "family" is going to expect favors in return once Barack gets into the White House.

Think about that for a moment. Take from now until October 31 if you need to but realize what is behind the so-called "Candidate of Change".....the same old politics of 1968. Talk about Recreating '68!