Illinois Politics

The Politics of Chicago have been dominated by controversy, corruption, turn-of-the-19th century businessmen, Irish Catholics, and Richard J. Daley and the Daley family. Democrats have usually dominated city politics, and they produced presidential nominees in Stephen Douglas (1860), Adlai Stevenson (1952 and 1956), and Barack Obama, who was nominated and elected in 2008. In 1855, Chicago Mayor Levi Boone threw Chicago politics into the national spotlight with some interesting proposals that would lead to the Lager Beer Riot. During much of the last half of the 19th century, Chicago's politics were dominated by a growing Democratic Party organization dominated by ethnic ward-heelers. During the 1880s and 1890s, Chicago also had a powerful radical tradition with large and highly organized socialist, anarchist and labor organizations. Worker exploitation, extremes of wealth and poverty, and the corruption of both businessmen and politicians all existed in Chicago because neither federal nor local governments had the power to confront the worst aspects of economic and social injustices that were multiplying in the nation's cities.