Eugene Schulter has been alderman of the 47th Ward for nearly a quarter century and four and a half years ago became its undisputed boss. But long before the ward, which includes most of North Center and Lincoln Square, was taken over by a Mayor Daley loyalist and one of the most cautious cats in the City Council it had a much different kind of politician at its helm—a fiery Republican who railed against Machine politics and gave the first Mayor Daley fits. His name was John J. Hoellen Jr. and he belonged to a political species that’s almost extinct now: good government Republicans.
That was eight years before Richard J. Daley was elected, when the current mayor was only five years old. But then as now the city was a cesspool of corruption and inside deals. In his aldermanic campaign, Hoellen vowed to clean it all up. Voters apparently decided to let him try.
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Hoellen thirsted for higher office, but he never made it out of the council. He ran for mayor, county clerk, and Congress (three times), losing every race. “I’m a politician,” he told reporters. “When the bugle calls, I come running.”
Schulter remembers things a little differently. As he recalls it, he wasn’t exactly a creation of Kelly’s organization. “Yes, I had the Democratic Party’s support, but I had a lot of support in the area,” he says. “I was a community activist.”
The calm in the 47th Ward was briefly disrupted in 2000, when Hoellen’s onetime adversaries broke out in a scuffle. With Mayor Daley looking on, Schulter took the biggest chance of his political career and ran against Kelly for committeeman (most aldermen are also the committeemen of their wards). The race between these two longtime allies was bitter and bruising. In a Shakespearean struggle—the son against the father, Schulter plastered the ward with his posters. But Kelly got the last laugh. One of his workers painted out a sign hanging on the el track at Montrose so that “Schulter” was converted into “Shitter.”
Care to comment? Find this story at chicagoreader.com. And for even more local politics, see our blog Clout City. Ben Joravsky discusses his Reader stories weekly with journalist Dave Glowacz at mrradio.org/theworks.
