The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Mayor Daley today denounced as “laughable” former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s claim that Barack Obama “immersed himself in Chicago machine politics.”
Giuliani’s one-liner about Obama’s political origins was one of the highlights of his keynote address at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. It was the red meat that delegates love to hear. The line played to thunderous applause from the GOP faithful.
Daley was not amused. He’s never been all that enamored of Giuliani. He’s even less of a fan now.
“I couldn’t understand it. In 1979, I think I ran for state’s attorney as an independent. I don’t know where we get this — this idea that there’s a big Democratic machine going on,” Daley said.
“Chicago and the metropolitan area is very Democratic and the state is. [But] there’s no machine. I thought it was laughable. That’s what Democrats and Republicans have to do at conventions: yell at each other. But, in the long run, people are much smarter and can understand that there’s just a lot of political rhetoric going on.”
No machine in Chicago? That's not what the federal courts say.
The New York Times on July 7, 2006 reports:
A jury convicted four former city officials here on corruption charges Thursday, sending a resounding message, prosecutors said, that City Hall's legendary patronage machine should come to a halt.
After a six-week trial and three and a half days of deliberations, the jury of 10 men and 2 women agreed with the federal government's argument that the city's longtime practice of awarding jobs and promotions to politically connected candidates and campaign workers was a crime.
Led by the office of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney here and also the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case in Washington, prosecutors attacked what they called a "corrupt clout machine" that orchestrated a fraud in city hiring and promotions.
"I think what we saw in this case was the revealing of the Chicago machine, the inner workings of the Chicago machine," said S. Jay Olshansky, the jury foreman. "There clearly is one. It has been in existence for quite some time."
For more on
The Chicago Mafia and Chicago Democrats.For how Mayor Daley
associates with important mobsters that terrorize people in the Chicago area.
