Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Two years ago I was walking through Washington Park, asking park users for their thoughts on Mayor Daley’s proposed Olympics. Pretty much everyone I spoke with was against it, though no one thought it could be stopped. I spent about half an hour talking to some old-timers at the tennis court. We ran down a roster of south-side politicians, looking for one–that’s all–who would oppose Daley’s Olympic land grab, but we came up empty. “We need another Leon Despres,” one tennis player told me. “That’s how long you got to go back to find anyone with guts.”
Funny line–it sort of sums things up. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the Daleys, and political courage is always in short supply around here. In fact, it’s kind of futile to expect any alderman to be as courageous as Despres. It’s a little like expecting every Bull to be as driven as Jordan or every local journalist to be as funny and insightful as Royko. In some ways, we’re lucky to have had one Leon Despres. But hey Ric Munoz, Toni Preckwinkle, Joe Moore, Leslie Hairston, Scott Waguespack, and even you, Helen Shiller: at least you can try.
