What was political machines

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Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Kelly not only held the fledgling political machine together in its infancy but strengthened it by utilizing three important sources.

First, he became a fervent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and kept the city solvent through the liberal use of federal funds at a time when the Great Depression provided the most serious threat to the financial well-being of municipal governments.

Second, he acquired additional financial resources from organized crime. Third, he actively cultivated African American voters, and his success paid huge dividends in later years when Chicago's black population increased dramatically.

Kelly won reelection in , , and , but problems arose by Concerns about the number of scandals in municipal government especially in the public school system surfaced alongside a rising public outcry against the highly visible presence of organized crime in the city. But among the Democratic faithful, Kelly's greatest liability proved to be his uncompromising stand in favor of public housing and desegregated public schools.

The party leadership persuaded Kelly not to seek reelection in and replaced him with a figurehead, civic leader Martin H. The Democratic machine endured Kennelly's presence in the mayor's office for two terms but then replaced him with a party regular, Richard J. Daley, in During Daley's prolonged tenure in city hall—he was reelected five times prior to his sudden death in —the machine reached its apogee.

At a time when virtually no urban political machines survived, Daley steered the Cook County Democratic organization to one electoral triumph after another. As government workers died or retired, the machine filled their positions temporarily pending civil service exams that were never given. A series of court decisions in the s, culminating in the Shakman decrees , severely reduced patronage by first prohibiting the politically motivated firing of government workers and, several years after Daley's death, by outlawing politically motivated hiring practices.

By the s, the mighty Democratic patronage army shrank significantly, but during the Daley years civil servants who worked hard for the party at election time and precinct captains who produced healthy victory margins at the polls kept their patronage jobs and received other rewards. Long reliant upon the electoral support from a rapidly expanding black population, the political machine's prolonged success finally wavered because of demographic changes.

Daley was an avid defender of residential segregation and an opponent of affirmative-action policies in government , and his conservatism ran afoul of the civil rights and black power movements. Daley's support among black voters dwindled in the s, and wholesale changes came following his death in Bilandic, a colorless party functionary whose inept handling of a record-setting snowstorm led Chicagoans to question whether the machine could still deliver services efficiently.

Unseating Bilandic at the first opportunity, the voters opted instead for Jane Byrne, a former machine regular who campaigned as a reformer but whose chaotic and ineffectual years in office enhanced the level of dissatisfaction with city government. Despite campaign promises to the contrary, Byrne ignored black political demands.