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| Turnout | 70.31%[1] | ||||||||||||||||
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TheChicago mayoral election of 1947 was held on April 1, 1947. The election saw DemocratMartin H. Kennelly being elected, defeating Republican Russell Root by a more-than 17% margin of victory.
The election was preceded byprimary elections in February 1947 to determine the nominees of both theDemocratic Party and theRepublican Party.
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After fourteen scandal-filled years in office, incumbent DemocratEdward J. Kelly was seen by many as unelectable in the year 1947.[2][3] TheCook County Democratic Party (led byJacob Arvey) desired to run a candidate with reform bona-fides, wanting to avoid a candidates with allegations of mismanagement and corruption.[4] Thus, they convinced Kelly not to seek reelection.[4][5] This would be the last Chicago mayoral election until2011 in which an incumbent did not seek reelection.[6][7] It was also the first since1923 in which this was the case.
The Democratic Party opted to back Kennelly, a wealthy warehouse magnate. Kennelly had no prior experience in political office.[3] Kennelly was the third mayoral candidate to reside inEdgewater, followingNathaniel C. Sears andWilliam Emmett Dever, and would consequentially be the second Edgewater resident elected mayor (after Dever).[8]
The number of voters who participated in the Republican primary was roughly half the number of voters who participated in the Democratic primary participated.[9] Republicans nominated Russell Root. Root, considered rather politically undistinguished, had been strongly backed by the statewide Republican organization of GovernorDwight H. Green.[2]
Root, appealing to the onslaught of thesecond red scare, characterized the race as a "vote for or againstCommunism".[10] Root attacked the nature Kennelly's nomination, having been selected by the Democraticmachine.[2] However, these charges were perhaps rendered less than effective by the nature of Root's own nomination, having been pushed by Green's Republican organization.[2] Kennelly attempted to run on an image of having clean record.[2] Much of the platform he extolled could be attributed to theProgressive Era values he had grown up around.[2] Republicans accused Kennelly of having, in his career as a warehouse magnate,profiteered off of the city in public contracts he received to store polling place materials.[2] Kennelly rebuked these allegations, arguing that he charged the city the same price in 1947 that he had when he began providing the city this service in 1923, and that he considered it more of a civic duty than a profit-making venture.[2] Kennelly benefited from the strong inroads that Kelly had built withAfrican Americans.The Chicago Defender endorsed Kennelly, arguing that the city's black population saw it as important to, "continue and expand the progressive and far-reaching racial policies" of Kelly.[2]
The election saw a record-breaking total, with more votes being cast than in any Chicago mayoral election before it.[11] Kennelly won the greatest vote total of any mayoral candidate in Chicago history.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Martin H. Kennelly | 919,593 | 58.73 | |
| Republican | Russell Root | 646,239 | 41.27 | |
| Turnout | 1,565,832 | |||
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1 tenure as acting officeholder. 2 Election declared null and void. | ||
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