By Ben Joravsky
“This is my first campaign. A lot of voters are just meeting me,” says O’Donnell, an official with the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation. “Sometimes the best way to grab someone’s attention is to make them laugh. Once you have their attention, they’ll listen to what you have to say.”
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Kelly’s still the organization’s committeeman, but he lost most of his patronage and power when Mayor Washington ousted him from the Park District. (And no one needs him for garbage cans anymore, now that City Hall gives each household a “supercart”–one of those black plastic trash cans on wheels). Four years ago Nancy Kaszak, an independent of liberal persuasion, rode to victory in the district by appealing to women and distancing herself from machine politicians.
In December he prepared for the race by building a network of friends and allies, raising several thousand dollars, opening a campaign office, and going door-to-door throughout the district.
To his credit, O’Donnell, who bears a slight resemblance to John Candy, is an unabashed ham who eagerly mugs for the camera. “I paid a price for that flyer,” says O’Donnell. “We stuck a biscuit under my collar to get that dog to go for my neck, and I got drenched by that water.” But, he says, the pictures were based on things that really happened when he went door-to-door. “Dogs are always running at you. And once a lady throwing water out of her window almost drenched me.”
Oh, come on, didn’t it make you laugh?
In 1976 she and her former partner Bob Zolla were among the first to open an art gallery there, helping to ignite the ensuing real estate explosion. On March 21 the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery will hold a 20th-anniversary celebration with an opening featuring sculptor Deborah Butterfield–a tribute to their perseverance in the face of soaring rents, fires, and fluctuations in the art market. “I can’t believe all the changes I’ve seen,” says Lieberman, who took control of the gallery at 325 W. Huron after Zolla retired. “The neighborhood’s changed, but we’re still here. And this is where we plan to stay.”
