If the Reagan Administration and the Republican Party will study the recent Chicago Mayoralty primary election, they will find that it contains the keys to a Republican victory in 1984. They can ignore the daily slamming that the Administration gets on the evening network news and in the polls because, in the real world of the ballot box, Dan Rather and Lou Harris et al are irrelevancies.
The first cluster of lessons is that the number-one factor which determines election results is the size of the turnout of different types of voters; that black voters vote largely as a bloc; and that the turnout factor is totally unpredictable by any polling technique yet invented.
Mayor Byrne’s Cook County Chairman, “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, engineered the scheme in September 1982 to register 200,000 Chicago blacks who had never been registered before. This plan was born of Byrne’s paranoia in facing a race for Mayor against Richie Daley, son of the late, powerful Mayor Richard Daley.
The trial run for this maneuver was in November 1982, when Vrdolyak “voted” the blacks for gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson. That’s the sole reason why Incumbent Governor Thompson’s runaway lead in the polls diminished to a razor-thin 5,000 votes.
But then Congressman Harold Washington got into the race, and Vrdolyak couldn’t hold the blacks for Byrne. The blacks “voted black” and, in a 3-way contest, nominated Chicago’s first black Mayor. Nobody could stuff the ballot boxes because of the presence of 400 Federal marshals and the spotlight of national publicity.
Byrnes spent $10 million, Daley spent $4 million, and Harold Washington said he had no money and used almost no media advertising. Both Chicago newspapers endorsed Daley; the business community backed Byrne. Ted Kennedy endorsed Byrne; Walter Mondale endorsed Daley, and Alan Cranston endorsed Washington.
The lesson for Republicans is that the key to election victory is not money, not media, not name I.D., not endorsements, but who goes to the polls on election day. The challenge to Republicans is to find a way to make it worthwhile for the black bloc to come home” to the Republican Party.
The second lesson of the Chicago mayoralty election is the moral factor. Jane Byrne nblew” her advantages of incumbency, money support by the business community, and unprecedented media exposure when she announced that she would march in the Gay Pride parade and thereby won the endorsement of the homosexuals.
But Chicago is no San Francisco. The 5-column headline in the Chicago Tribune proclaiming “Byrne Gains Support As She Promises to March In Gay Parade” was probably the most effective piece of negative advertising ever hurled at any candidate.
Eleanor Smeal, past president of the National Organization for Women, came to Chicago for a day of media appearances to endorse Byrne and promise feminist support. This was repayment of the political debt incurred when Byrne appeared at a N.0.W. Illinois rally in 1982, but the N.0O.W. endorsement probably cost Byrne more votes than it gained her.
A tremendous opportunity for all Republican candidates (including Ronald Reagan) in 1984 is opened up by the Byrne experience, plus the attendance at a “gay rights” fundraiser by Ted Kennedy and walter Mondale, plus the official acceptance of the “Lesbian and Gay Caucus” by the Democratic National Convention.
If Republicans are smart enough to recognize that “what plays in Peoria’ does NOT include gay pride parades, gay caucuses, and feminist goals, they can build a winning strategy for 1984 for all their candidates from the courthouse to the White House.
The tremendous political plus of using a pro-family platform structured on the pillars of a coalition of pro-family groups is that it is the key to substantially reducing Democratic ownership of the blacks as a voting bloc. The blacks are NOT attracted by gay rights, and on moral grounds, can be persuaded to vote Republican rather than for gay rights advocates.
So Ronald Reagan and the Republicans can take heart and face the 1984 elections with confidence if they learn that the polls and the press are irrelevant, and all that matters in elections is who goes to the polls. There is a great crop of voters out there waiting to be harvested by Ronald Reagan and Republican candidates if they will reaffirm the 1980 Republican Platform, and then line up the state and local leaders to harvest the votes.
