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Chicago is a great center of both commerce and industry,
and if its white collar offices are heavily concentrated in the
Loop, its blue collar heavy industries are most visible on the
far South Side. This heavy industry Chicago, diminished in importance
economically today, is historically significant and, with the
remnants of its great hulking factories around Lake Calumet and
the nearby rail yards, has a certain undeniable majesty.
Thomas Geoghegan, who writes more poetically than a lawyer ought
to be able to, has told in his book, Which Side Are You On?,
of the fights to wrest severance benefits and pension rights
for the workers whose steel mills shut down, of the decline in
the labor movement in a place where it got much of its inspiration.
This is where the Pullman strike of 1894 was broken by federal
troops and where policemen killed 10 union supporters in the
Little Steel strike of 1937.
Over the years, Chicago grew around the tight ethnic neighborhoods
where workers went home at shift break each afternoon or midnight;
today, they are mostly empty buildings that suburbanites speed
by on the Calumet and Dan Ryan Expressways. The 2nd Congressional
District includes much of Chicago's old South Side industrial
area plus many suburbs to the south. About two-thirds of its
people live in Chicago, in widely separated neighborhoods. Some
are in the old factory towns around Lake Calumet, some in the
once heavily Jewish South Shore neighborhood, some in black wards
west of Halsted Street.
The Chicago portion of the 2nd is overwhelmingly black;
many blacks, especially young parents fleeing Chicago public
schools, are moving into suburbs directly to the south--Harvey,
Dolton, Posen (a reminder of its Polish origin), Markham. Farther
south are Homewood and Flossmoor, with significant Jewish populations,
high-income Olympia Fields, the planned town of Park Forest,
and Chicago Heights, home town of America's premier political
reporter for three decades now, David Broder. Two-thirds of the
district's voters are black, and most are middle class.
The congressman from the 2nd District is Jesse Jackson Jr., a
Democrat first elected in December 1995, and son of civil rights
activist and 1984 and 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.
Jesse Jackson Jr. was born in Greenville, South Carolina, while
his father was marching to Selma; he went to St. Albans School
in Washington (as did Vice President Al Gore), then to North
Carolina A&T (as did his father), and got a masters degree
at Chicago Theological Seminary and a law degree at the University
of Illinois. He worked for his father's Rainbow Coalition and
did not run for office until the spectacular rise and fall of
2nd District Congressman Mel Reynolds, who was hailed nationally
when he defeated the anti-Semitic Gus Savage in the 1992 primary
and then disgraced when he was convicted and sentenced to five
years in prison for having sexual relations with a teenage campaign
worker.
When Reynolds announced he would resign, Jackson promptly
decided to run. He faced serious opposition in Emil Jones, a
23-year legislator and state Senate minority leader who had the
support of Mayor Richard M. Daley and two other legislators.
Jones boasted of his clout and political experience; Jackson
said being his father's son was a lifetime of political experience.
He talked of bringing dollars to the South Side and, echoing
the argument Dan Rostenkowski made to Mayor Richard J. Daley
in 1957, said, ''The only way one grows into leadership in Congress
is to get elected young enough that you become speaker of the
House or chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.''
The November 1995 primary was a close contest, but Jackson won
with 46% to Jones's 37%; a state legislator endorsed by Louis
Farrakhan and Gus Savage won only 2%. Jackson easily won the
special general election with 76%.
In office, Jackson has combined advocacy of liberal positions
with careful attention to the interests of his district. He called
for a law to create full employment through job training and
a single-payer universal health care system--both nonstarters
even in a Democratic Congress. He bitterly opposed the 1997 budget
agreement. He opposed requiring eight hours per month community
service by public housing tenants--''Will picking cotton qualify?''
he caustically asked.
In 1997 he criticized Bill Clinton's race initiative as ''race
entertainment.'' He said Clinton's proposal to apologize for
slavery was a ''valid . . . symbolic act'' but was not enough.
In a 10-page dear-colleague letter he called Promise Keepers
a ''political Trojan horse'' designed to split minority voters
from the Democratic Party. He showed much the same suspicion
of assertions of military power as his father did in the 1980s:
''The drumbeat and path to war here in Washington is reaching
insane proportions,'' he said as Clinton confronted Iraq in February
1998. He opposed the Crane-Rangel Africa trade bill in March
1998, saying that he feared exploitation of African workers,
and proposed an alternative HOPE for Africa Act in February 1999.
Some of his stands defy categorization. He joined Budget Chairman
John Kasich to oppose reauthorization of the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation as ''corporate welfare'' and co-sponsored
the $18 billion IMF replenishment.
Jackson worked on local projects, notably on flooding and the
unpotable water supply in Ford Heights; he took advantage of
funding formulas and found Agriculture Department money for a
water tower, pump house and water mains. His great cause has
been the building of a third Chicago area airport in Peotone,
45 miles south of the Loop and just south of the 2nd District
along Interstate 57. He sees it as an economic development project:
''The point is, the third airport will provide 236,000 jobs.
. . on the South Side and in the south suburbs. . . . It means
a livable wage and union jobs. It means school funding.''
This fight has pitted him against fellow Democrats, including
Congressman William Lipinski, the great protector of Midway Airport
in his 3d District, and Mayor Richard M. Daley, the great protector
of O'Hare; his allies have included Republicans like former Governor
Jim Edgar, who first suggested Peotone, Congressman Henry Hyde,
who is worried about O'Hare noise over his suburban 6th District,
and Governor George Ryan. In the 1998 gubernatorial race, Jackson
refused to endorse Democrat Glenn Poshard, who opposed Peotone,
and made friendly noises about Ryan.
Jackson has been mentioned as a candidate for higher office but
seems bent on remaining in the House. ''I told the people of
my district I'd be their member of Congress for as long as they'll
have me,'' he said in 1998. He has taken pains to be on good
personal terms with Republicans, and, in the December 1996 Democratic
Caucus, delivered a stirring speech for ''one more term'' for
80-year-old Banking ranking Democrat Henry Gonzalez, which helped
persuade John LaFalce to withdraw his candidacy after the first
ballot. In the 1998 cycle he campaigned intensively for 30 House
Democratic colleagues. He became ranking Democrat on a Small
Business subcommittee in March 1997 and in December 1998 won
a seat on Appropriations.
In the 1999 mayor's race, Jackson endorsed his House colleague
Bobby Rush with considerable enthusiasm, but also made a point
of saying nice things about Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was re-elected
easily in February: ''As you know, this Mayor Daley has issued
no 'shoot to kill' orders. This Mayor Daley has positioned African-Americans
on the School Board, in the Police Department . . . and has done
a fairly decent job of fighting to include more African-Americans
at every level of his administration.''
Middle-class blacks, the heart of Jackson's constituency, are
moving in large numbers from Chicago to the suburbs, which reduces
his core constituency for some future race for mayor, and redistricting
after the 2000 Census may make this a mostly suburban district.
His advocacy of the Peotone airport suggests Jackson has anticipated
this and is set on representing a mostly-suburban, mostly-black
district for some time.
This article is Copyrighted and is
reprinted with permission from The Almanac of American Politics,
National Journal Group, Inc. |
