Good Old Chicago Politics!

Day of reckoning at shrine of St. Richie
John Kass

February 28, 2007

Election Day in Chicago still is a political day of obligation, and though Tuesday's low voter turnout suggests many have fallen into apostasy, even heretics like me know the rituals must be observed.

Like visiting the shrines of St. Tim Degnan the Shepherd and St. Robert Sorich the Mute, and the Tommy DiPiazza Pilgrimage, where influential real-estate developers are said to humbly light candles, to illuminate the darkness of City Hall's Department of Buildings.

Based on Tuesday's election returns, causing panic among several incumbent aldermen, let's not forget the Mystic Sanctuary of the Aldermanic Runoff. It's on the carpet outside the mayor's office, where they kneel and beg mercy.

At these shrines, you pause and reflect upon the wonders of Mayor Richard Daley, who won re-election Tuesday. When you pause, it helps if the voice in your head doesn't sound like your own, but more like the guy narrating NFL Films.

Because without Daley, the city would not merely fall into the lake--it would leap into the lake, shrieking. Chicagoans would issue pitiful cries, their mouths twisted in pain, just like the damned in Hieronymus Bosch paintings, poor souls jabbed in the behind by demons.

Rather than risk these torments, I took my new legman (who still doesn't have a decent nickname) on a pilgrimage. We began in Daley's 11th Ward, at a polling place in the Valentine Boys and Girls Club on South Emerald Avenue. Several precinct captains stood outside.

"Are you really going to ask about the shrines?" the young guy said.

Patience, my young apprentice. All shall be revealed.

So we walked up to the Daley machine captains, including one man who ate two slices of sausage pizza but didn't offer me any, and I asked them about the political shrines.

"Shrines?" said one. "You kidding? We don't got no shrines in this neighborhood."

How dare you pretend not to know! My back hurts, and I was hoping to buy a relic at the Shrine of Robert the Mute, and drink from his fountain, and so be healed.

"What?" asked the captain.

Robert the Mute. Robert Sorich.

"That's ignorant," said another Daley captain and friend of Sorich. "That's in poor taste. It's ignorant."

Humbled, I took my leave, quite ignorant, since I couldn't find the secret site.

Sorich, a top mayoral aide and Daley's patronage boss at City Hall, was convicted last year in federal court of helping to defraud taxpayers by rigging thousands of city job applications in order to build a mayoral patronage army that helped Daley control the city. Immediately upon conviction, the pastor of the Daley family church compared Sorich to the Holy Redeemer, saying Sorich had legal problems, too, at the hands of those federal Pharisees.

Sorich kept his mouth shut, and at a fundraiser in the 11th Ward's Church of the Nativity, mayoral brain Tim Degnan was seen watching over the proceedings for Sorich, as would any good shepherd. They wouldn't tell me where the St. Tim shrine was either.

Happily, I found the Tommy DiPiazza Pilgrimage--blocks and blocks of expensive homes at the Bridgeport Village development--tucked near the South Branch of the Chicago River.

According to a lawsuit filed recently in federal court by developer Thomas Snitzer, he complained about having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Degnan's buddy, DiPiazza, for "consulting services."

When Snitzer stopped paying, according to the suit, the Department of Buildings fell down upon Snitzer.

DiPiazza was his usual silent self, but City Hall scoffed loudly, saying Snitzer was a blasphemer. The mayor himself said there was nothing to it, that it was all "just politics."

From the 11th Ward, we journeyed to the lakefront's 43rd Ward, expecting to see Ald. Vi Daley (no relation to the mayor) in a political hair shirt.

The 43rd Ward was once independent but is now the political satellite of the Southwest Side's 19th Ward. Peg Roth, the ward's Democratic committeeman, is from the 19th. She's employed as an assistant to Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, also of the 19th/43rd Ward.

Not everybody in the ward who counts comes from the Southwest Side.

The O'Brien family is quite local. They own much pricey real estate in Old Town. Their 19th Ward connection is another top mayoral political brain: the devious Jeremiah Joyce, whom the mayor's own press secretary once compared to Keyser Soze from the movie "The Usual Suspects."

Vi Daley apparently angered the O'Brien clan over a zoning deal, and presto--she had four challengers. So I asked Roth how many Democratic workers she had committed to cover Vi's 59 precincts.

"Oh, about 15," she said.

Now Vi Daley looks to be in an April runoff and has to make her own separate pilgrimage, and light her candles, and offer confession, seeking political grace from the only one who can give it. She knows who he is.

And so do you

Chicago Tribune