It was the most significant custodial discovery since Frank Wills found the tape over the door at the Watergate complex. In the summer of 1989 a busboy cleaning a booth at Counsellors Row restaurant found an electronic bug. Its cover blown, the FBI admitted that it had been using the monitoring device to eavesdrop on the conversations of First Ward politicians. The discovery changed the face of Chicago politics.
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What became of the First Ward? From being a center of attention of the city, it now occupies a relative backwater. The U-shaped West Town and Humboldt Park ward has virtually no industry, notoriously bad schools, and one of the highest rates of gang violence in the city. The aldermanic candidates who’ll be on the ballot February 28 have based their campaigns on economic development, education, and crime. But politics, not issues, should be the determining factor here.
The ward was created from neighboring wards’ spare parts, chosen to help elect a Latino alderman. Yet it is not out of the question that a non- Latino could be elected here. Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, blacks, white yuppies, and white ethnics combine in a yet-unexplored electoral mixture.
The presumed front-runners in the First are Almeida, a private Loop attorney with previous legal experience in city, county, and state government; Jesse Granato, an assistant to 32nd Ward alderman Terry Gabinski; Roberto Caldero, a former director of an urban housing study at the University of Chicago; and Francisco DuPrey, former executive director of the YMCA’s intervention programs.
Almeida and her troops have thrown as well as caught dirt. If one believes the Almeida campaign, Caldero is “not terribly trustworthy” and DuPrey is “a Puerto Rican nationalist working on a Puerto Rican agenda.” Granato’s name brings the response, “Is it fair for Gabinski to be controlling Division Street as well as the 32nd Ward?”
But the major battle of the campaign so far was fought with ballots, not bullets. State senator Miguel del Valle, arguably the most influential politician in the area, refrained from making an endorsement. But when his Volunteer Political Organization (VPO) made its endorsement on January 28, DuPrey and not the expected Almeida got the call.
