When Tumia Romero quit her job in the City Hall press office in February to go back to school, her friends and colleagues gave her a quiet good-bye party and some gentle words of good luck.
To switch from Daley to Gardner–from the favorite to the long shot–may seem flaky, even politically suicidal. But Romero knows too much about city politics to be casually dismissed. For eight years she was the Radar O’Reilly of the City Hall press operation: the lower-level clerk who got things done. She sat at her desk in Room 602 answering calls from reporters and keeping track of day-to-day details for four different mayors–Washington, David Orr, Eugene Sawyer, and Daley–and their henchmen.
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What might be most remarkable is that she got the job in the first place. Thirteen years ago she was a 16-year-old junior at Senn High School with a unique first name (pronounced tee-ama, it’s “an Indian name that means beautiful one,” she says) and a baby on the way.
In 1986 she was a volunteer in the epic 26th Ward aldermanic campaign of Luis Gutierrez, whose victory gave Washington control of the City Council. It was during that race that she caught the eye of Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett, who mentioned her to Alton Miller, Mayor Washington’s press secretary.
When Washington died, Romero was devastated. “I felt like a big part of me had died–this was the man who gave me an opportunity to prove myself. Who else would hire a 20-year-old black girl, a single mother with no college degree? To a large degree Harold Washington is my generation’s Martin Luther King. He liberated us by standing up for what was right.”
And what does LaVelle, who now works in Washington as a press officer in the Clinton administration, think about her former “right arm” going to work for the opposition? “I’m really proud of her and proud of what she has become. She remains my friend. So much is made about political camps, but in politics there are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, just permanent interests.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jon Randolph.
