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| Turnout | 64.8%[1] 4.8pp | ||||||||||||||||
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TheChicago mayoral election of 1967 was held on April 4, 1967. The election sawRichard J. Daley being elected to a fourth term as mayor. Daley's main opponent was Republican nominee John L. Waner, who he defeated by alandslide 48% margin.
The election was preceded byprimary elections held on February 28, 1967[2] to determine the nominees of both theDemocratic Party andRepublican Party.
After, in the previous election, having been routed by his Republican opponent among the white electorate, and only winning reelection due to his overwhelming support by black voters, Daley had adopted more conservative stances on race and other issues.[3] Among his efforts to appeal to the "white backlash" voters that had abandoned him in 1963, he came out more strongly in opposition to "open housing" and equal rights for blacks.[4] Daley sent messages to white voters that he was going to protect them against the encroachment ofAfrican Americans into their neighborhoods.[3]
Ahead of his reelection campaign, Daley unveiled the city's firstcomprehensive plan since the 1909Burnham Plan of Chicago.[3] The plan called for 1,850 acres ofslum clearance, 35,000 new units ofpublic housing, adding fifty more acres to the campus of theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, and constructing the (controversial)Crosstown Expressway.[3] It also called for the creation of sixteen distinct development plans for neighborhoods across Chicago, two of which had been drafted by the time the comprehensive plan was unveiled.[3] The plan made clear Daley's intentions to protect white voters from the encroachment of African Americans.[3] The plan stated that the city wanted a "diverse harmonious population" but also outlined that it wanted to take steps necessary to, "reduce futurelosses of white families."[3] The plan additionally talked about "blight" removal from the central area and moving in more affluent families.[3]
46.50% of registered voters participated in the primary elections.[5]
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To project strength, on January 4, when Daley formerly filed his candidacy, he submitted nominating petitions extremely exceeding the requisite signature requirement, with 500,000 signatures.[4] In contrast, the Republican Party'sslated candidate John L. Waner had only 11,000 signatures on his petitions.[4] Daley won the Democratic nomination, receiving 420,000 votes.[3]
Originally, 1963 nomineeBenjamin S. Adamowski expressed interest in running as the Republican Party's mayoral nominee again, but he ran into widespread opposition from Republican leaders, including fromCook County Board of Commissioners presidentRichard Ogilvie.[4] Seeking to replicate the1965 Republican victory ofJohn Lindsay inNew York City, Chicago's Republican Party sought to find a candidate of a similar mold.[4] They were unable to do so.[4] After a charismatic and young bank executive declined the nomination, they turned to 23rd Ward RepublicanCommitteeman John L. Waner, who was a wealthy air conditioning contractor.[4] Waner agreed to run. Waner had little overlap with Lindsay.[4] For instance, while Lindsay was aWASP, while Waner (born Jan Ludwig Wojanarski) was the son of Polish immigrants.[4] However, Republicans believed that Waner was a fresh-face who might be able to appeal to the city's large Polish electorate, and who was wealthy enough to be able to contribute finances towards his campaign.[4] Waner won the Republican primary. He defeatedperennial candidates Howard J. Doyle and Lawrence "Lar" Daly.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | John L. Waner | 145,122 | 82.46 | |
| Republican | Howard J. Doyle | 10,504 | 5.97 | |
| Republican | Lawrence "Lar" Daly | 5,722 | 3.25 | |
| Republican | Write-in | 14,644 | 8.32 | |
| Turnout | 175,992 | |||
Civil-rights activist Dick Gregory ran as a write-in candidate.[6]Goldwater RepublicanLawrence "Lar" Daly also ran as a write-in after losing the Republican primary.[6]
Daley attempted to appeal to both white and black voters on the issue of civil rights, leading to him often speaking empty platitudes when addressing the topic.[3] An issue Waner hoped to use against Daley was the fire that destroyed theMcCormick Convention Center, built just a few years earlier at the cost of $35 million.[3][7] However, the fact that theChicago Tribune had campaigned vigorously for its construction earlier and was a prominent force in the Illinois Republican Party, prevented Waner from monopolising off of the incident.[8] Additionally, Daley was quick to announce that a new McCormick Place, to be twice as large as the one that was lost, would be constructed.[3] While campaigning, Daley pushed forward new infrastructure projects.[3] Daley proposed the construction of fifteen miles of transit lines along theKennedy Expressway and theDan Ryan Expressway, which was immediately approved by theChicago Plan Commission[3] (this would ultimately materialize as theChicago Transit Authority rapid transit route opened in 1970 along the Kennedy Expressway containing the five stations from theLogan Square station to theJefferson Park Transit Center).[citation needed] Daley also announced several federal grant funds the city had received during the campaign.[3] Downtown business leaders supported Daley, with some even forming the Non-partisan Committee to Re-Elect Mayor Daley to support his candidacy.[3]
Despite urging from some supporters for him to seek the white backlash voters, Waner instead ran a campaign that took a stronger stance in support of civil rights than Daley's did.[3] Wanter criticized Daley as, "more interested in maintaining plantation politics in public housing" than solving the ills of those who lived in public housing.[3] However, Waner did not support "open housing", which would have strongly alienated his Republican base.[3] He argued that jobs andurban renewal projects were of greater concern to blacks than "open housing".[3] Waner commented on urban renewal, "Since 960 the city has displaced over 50,000 people, and after new buildings went up, no one could afford to move back into the new neighborhood. There was no attempt made to provide decent low-cost homes for rent or for purchase".[3] Waner argued that Democrats liked to trap blacks in public housing, "because it enables the Democratic precinct captain to corral votes for themachine".[3] When speaking in Chicago on March 24 at an anti-Vietnam War rally, King criticized what he saw as Chicago's, "failure to live up to last summer's open-housing agreement". King remarked that it might be necessary to hold even larger open-housing rallies in the summer of 1967.[3] Daley hit back, accusing King of making "political" statements aimed at harming his reelection prospects, and pledged that he would not allow civil rights marchers to disrupt the city.[3] This was seen to appeal to the white backlash voters.[3] Polls showed that Daley had improved his support in the city's white working-class Bungalow Belt over his support there four years earlier.[3]
Daley won a landslide victory, carrying all fifty of the city's wards.[4] The 792,238 votes he received was more than he had received in any of his previous three mayoral races.[4] Dick Gregory received a record-breaking number of write-in votes for a candidate in a Chicago mayoral election.[6] Daley carried all 50 wards;[9] Waner failed to carry his home ward, of which he had been the longtime Republican committeeman.[9]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Richard J. Daley (incumbent) | 792,238 | 73.04 | |
| Republican | John L. Waner | 272,542 | 25.13 | |
| Independent | Richard C. "Dick" Gregory (write-in) | 19,480 | 1.80 | |
| Independent | Lawrence "Lar" Daly (write-in) | 467 | 0.04 | |
| Turnout | 1,084,727 | |||
Daley felt sorry for Waner after the election, being the only one to call him the day after the election and calling to say that he had run a good campaign.[9]
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1 tenure as acting officeholder. 2 Election declared null and void. | ||
