By Ted Kleine
As he continued down the line, Valadez praised Richard Martinez, a former aide to retiring alderman John Buchanan; Kenneth Ladien, a Chicago public-school teacher; Neil Bosanko, the executive director of the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce; Yolanda DeAnda, a guidance counselor; and Bob Wisz, a restaurateur and landlord, for all they’d done for the southeast side “without the assistance of Mayor Daley’s machine.”
“I heard you were at one of Pope’s meetings,” Martinez said, leaning into the window of the man’s rusty car.
To many on the southeast side, Daley’s campaign to anoint Pope alderman is an attempt to tame one of the city’s last independent wards, a ward whose aldermen have been defying mayors at least since the reign of Richard the Elder. The mayor, who’s been heard to boast “What’s an independent alderman?” after another 49-1 or 47-3 victory, is trying to extend his empire into one of the few corners of the city he can’t boss. The ward is also considered a plum because whoever controls it will control the redevelopment of thousands of acres of vacant land, and the contracts that go with it.
“We like being in the city,” says a bartender at the South Shore Inn, on Brainard. “It keeps the neighborhood racially stable”–i.e., white.
The Tenth Ward is 15 miles from the Loop, far past the point where South Lake Shore Drive peters out. The ward’s aldermen have rarely been in sync with City Hall. The Tenth sends an alderman downtown in the same way Alaska sends a representative to Washington–as an emissary from a distant, misunderstood territory. John Buchanan, the current alderman, got elected to the City Council in 1963 by beating a machine incumbent, Emil Pacini. In 1971 Buchanan lost his seat to Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, who in true Tenth Ward fashion immediately began a long career of making trouble downtown. Vrdolyak was the leader of the “coffee club rebels,” a group of young aldermen who met at the old Sherman House to plot against Mayor Richard J. Daley’s autocratic floor leader, Thomas Keane, who refused even to caucus with the rest of the council before handing out orders. The rebels failed to overthrow Keane, but Vrdolyak did win himself a seat on the powerful Finance Committee.
