869: Harold
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One thing that's been interesting watching the rise of the New York mayoral candidate, Zorun Mamadani, who's a Democrat, is watching precisely how much of the Democratic machine has come out to support him. After he won the Democratic primary, of course, normally the party would fall in behind him, and in fact some prominent Democrats have come forward and endorsed him. But not all of them, not some of the most important New York Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. And I'm bringing this up today because watching this, it reminded me of the story of another charismatic politician ages ago, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago. Harold became mayor back in 1983, and that was so revolutionary at the time that a black man would become mayor of the city of Chicago, that after the primary, the Democratic party turned on him. And an old-school Democrat, a white guy, ran as an independent, against Harold in the general election. Matraig, Andrew Cuomo, has done with Mamadani. The back then, most of the Democratic machine endorsed the white guy in the general election. Then, once Harold took office, Democrats continued to fight him, and the changes that he wanted to make. I want to be clear, like I don't want to oversimplify in comparing these two stories. So much of Harold's story is very different than so run Mamadani's. The opposition to Harold was over race. The opposition to Mamadani is more about his views on Israel, and his socialism, or progressivism, or whatever you want to call it. The race and religion, the fact that he's Muslim, is definitely in there, too. But Harold's story is parable about a Democrat whose very existence made the party have to question what it was all about, which seemed very much like Mamadani. So we're going to replay his story today. Back in 1997, ten years after Harold died, we did a full episode about him, and can I say, if you don't know anything about Harold Washington, you're in for a treat. He is this charismatic, idealistic man, very funny, very smart, great talker, a Democrat, framing issues with a skill that it is really hard to think of any Democrat in office right now who does it as well, but also a pragmatist. Somebody got elected, somebody got things done. So I hope you like this. It's one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Here we go. Here's that show from 1997. The first story begins, let's remember how it used to be. Jackie lived on the south side in a black neighborhood. City didn't enforce the housing code properly, didn't investigate Arson's. There would be fires going down, it wouldn't go on daily, several times a day, and it was just fire engines all the time, and so my daughter started to believe that when buildings got old and died, like people got old and died, that you knew a building was old and was dying because it would burn up. Before our story begins, Chicago was run by the Democratic machine, and Black Alderman, Danny Davis, we turned out the vote for the machine, election after election, but the machine didn't reward the black wards of those votes, the way it paid back the white wards on the north side, with street cleanings and sewers with newly paved roads and sidewalks and economic development money.
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