By Ben Joravsky
The main problem was how to draw the new district’s boundaries without infringing on an incumbent’s territory–a mapmaking nightmare compounded by the fact that Illinois was already losing two congressional seats because its population had dropped in relation to the rest of the country. To make matters worse, the city’s two major Latino enclaves–Humboldt Park and Pilsen–were separated by the Loop and the west side. To link them, cartographers would need what mapmakers like to call a “connector.”
The new congressional map, approved in October 1991, set the stage for an eagerly awaited contest in the 1992 Democratic primary–between 33rd Ward alderman Richard Mell and Gutierrez, then alderman of the 26th Ward, a couple of ambitious Daley allies who were ready to wage expensive, vicious campaigns. But then Mell dropped out of the race, urged out, rumor has it, by Daley, who was horrified by the prospect of a white man being elected in a Latino district. Without any serious competition, Gutierrez swept to victory and marched off to Washington, where he quickly gained attention for his outspokenness (within a few weeks, for instance, he was publicly chastising House speaker Tom Foley).
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Gutierrez handily won reelection in 1994 and might have remained in Congress for years without serious challenge had it not been for James Ten Broeck Jr., a 30-year-old lawyer with a fledgling personal-injury practice. Raised in Rogers Park and schooled at Saint Ignatius, Ten Broeck seemed on track to become the sort of earnest young liberal who winds up volunteering in campaigns for David Orr, Helen Shiller, and other north-side progressives. But he rebelled against any such expectation. “At Saint Ignatius they were always telling us that Reagan was evil, the devil incarnate,” he says. “Obviously they were trying to get us to be liberal. I decided I wanted to go to the University of Dallas, a small liberal arts Catholic school, and one of my teachers said, ‘Oh my God, it’s so conservative–why would you want to go there?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to have a closed mind, would I?’ That was the end of that conversation.”
Ten Broeck allied himself with Jim King, a Bucktown resident who lived in the Fourth Congressional District and wanted to act as plaintiff. On February 8, 1995, the case–commonly known as King v. State Board of Elections of Illinois–was filed.
“This is an old game for Republicans,” says Victor Crown. “They’ll form a silent coalition with the most radical black and Hispanic activists, and together they’ll create all-black or Hispanic districts that really screw the Democratic machine hacks. Sure it’s hypocritical, especially coming from conservatives who say they hate racial set-asides. But what do you expect? They’re politicians, not saints. They don’t care about upholding pristine conservative principles. They want to get elected so they can dish the pork to their friends. They hate true believers like Ten Broeck. Guys like him upset their inside deals.”
But he was learning fast, as he was introduced to other Latino politicos who opposed Gutierrez, including Dennis Perez, a Humboldt Park real estate agent who says Gutierrez betrayed the cause of local independents by selling out to Daley, and Rafael Marrero, a renegade member of the Puerto Rican independence movement. A couple of years ago these politicos started El Pito (“The Whistle”), the hell-raising zine that mocks and taunts Gutierrez, and they’ve been urging someone, anyone, to run against him since he was elected in 1992.
