| Election Name: | 1927 Chicago mayoral election |
| Country: | Chicago |
| Flag Year: | 1917 |
| Type: | presidential |
| Ongoing: | No |
| Previous Election: | 1923 Chicago mayoral election |
| Previous Year: | 1923 |
| Next Election: | 1931 Chicago mayoral election |
| Next Year: | 1931 |
| Election Date: | April 5, 1927 |
| Party Name: | no |
| Image1: | William Hale Thompson (1) (3x4a).jpg |
| Nominee1: | William Hale Thompson |
| Party1: | Republican |
| Popular Vote1: | 515,716 |
| Percentage1: | 51.6% |
| Nominee2: | William Emmett Dever |
| Party2: | Democratic |
| Popular Vote2: | 432,678 |
| Percentage2: | 43.3% |
| Nominee3: | John Dill Robertson |
| Party3: | People's Ownership Smash Crime Rings |
| Color3: | d0d0d0 |
| Popular Vote3: | 51,347 |
| Percentage3: | 5.1% |
| Mayor | |
| Before Election: | William Emmett Dever |
| Before Party: | Democratic |
| After Election: | William Hale Thompson |
| After Party: | Republican |
| Map Alt: | Results of the general election by ward |
The 1927 Chicago mayoral election was held on April 5, 1927. Democratic incumbent William Emmett Dever was defeated by Republican candidate William Hale Thompson, who had served as mayor from 1915 to 1923. John Dill Robertson (the president West Parks Board, as well as former health commissioner and school board president), who had been previously allied with the ex-mayor, broke with Thompson to run on his own and received more than five percent of the vote. It remains the last Chicago mayoral election to be won by a candidate who is not a member of the Democratic Party.
Dever had enforced Prohibition despite being personally opposed to it. This led to increased bootlegging and violence in the city and reduced citizen support. Thompson and Robertson seized the opportunity and entered the race. Thompson promised to end the enforcement of Prohibition and accused the United Kingdom of trying to retake control of the United States, while Robertson promised to quash the crime wave. Thompson bitterly attacked his campaign opponents and it was public knowledge that he was supported and funded by Al Capone. Dever's supporters pushed back against Thompson's rhetoric, asserting that Dever had the sensible policies and the "decency" appropriate for the city. Thompson's victory damaged Chicago's national reputation.
To receive the Democratic nomination, Dever won the party's primary election with 91 percent of the vote, facing only a single weak opponent. Thompson defeated Cook County Board of Review Chairman Edward R. Litsinger in the Republican primary by a 14.61-percent margin of victory.
Democrat William Emmett Dever had been elected mayor of Chicago in 1923 and initially focused on reform.[1] Observing the corruption of city government caused by bootleggers, he resolved to crack down on the illegal liquor trade and strengthen enforcement of Prohibition.[2] He was himself opposed to Prohibition, but felt that disregard for one law could lead to disregard for others.[2] His crackdown on Prohibition was initially effective and led to him being considered a potential dark horse candidate for President of the United States.[3] Nevertheless, the limited supply of alcohol led to bootleggers competing with one another, increasing violence in the city,[3] lowering Chicagoans' approval of Dever's performance.[4] Aware of the effects of Prohibition enforcement on his mayoralty, Dever was reluctant to run for a second term in 1927, a feeling strengthened by poor health and lucrative job offers in the private sector.[5] George E. Brennan, chief of the Democratic party, felt that Dever was the Democrats' strongest candidate against Thompson,[6] and he and businessman Julius Rosenwald convinced Dever to run for reelection.[7]
Republican William Hale Thompson, known as "Big Bill", had been mayor for two terms from 1915 to 1923 and took advantage of the situation to run for a third term, promising to end the enforcement of Prohibition.[8] Having declined a bid for reelection in 1923, he had managed to stay in the public eye by constructing a yawl named the Big Bill with his head as the figurehead and spending $25,000 to take it on an expedition to Borneo to find a tree-climbing fish, all ostensibly as a publicity stunt for the Illinois Waterway.[9] He was immensely popular with the city's African-American community,[10] having served as alderman of the 2nd ward, home of Chicago's largest black population, from 1900 to 1902.[11] He also had enemies from his previous tenure, including the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Daily News,[12] and had started to wear out his welcome with former allies such as party boss Frederick Lundin.[13]
West Parks Board President John Dill Robertson, also known as "J.D.", "Doctor Dill", and "Dill Pickle", who had previously been the city's health commissioner from 1915 to 1922,[14] the President of the Chicago Board of Education after that,[15] and an ally of Thompson,[16] ran against Thompson in the Republican primary supported by Lundin. Serving at the time as President of the West Parks Board,[17] he promised to enforce Prohibition while it was still on the books and to smash organized crime in thirty days if elected, comparing gunmen gangs to boils and the bootleg industry to an appendix.[18] Lundin later had Robertson withdraw from the Republican primary in order to campaign for candidate Edward R. Litsinger, and Robertson agreed not to run as an independent in the general election if Litsinger won the primary.[19] Early in the campaign Thompson debated with live rats as stand-ins Robertson and Lundin.[20] [21]
Primary elections took place on February 22,[22] along with primary elections for City Clerk and City Treasurer and the first round of aldermanic elections. February 22 was incidentally Washington Day.[23]
The primaries were plagued by electoral violence. The New York Times characterized the primaries as plagued by, "shootings, sluggings, theft of ballot boxes, police raids and the arrest of about two hundred gangesters and repeaters at the polls".[24] The Associated Press provided a similar description.[23] Ahead of the election, Cook County Highway Police Chief Michael Hughes came into conflict with General Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department Morgan Collins regarding election security. Hughes had ordered county highway police to supervise polls on the city's West Side. However, Collins then ordered the city police to arrest any county policemen found to be "loitering" around polling places.[25]
Dever faced no genuine opposition in his party's primary.[24] [26] Attorney Martin Walsh of the 27th ward filed on February 2, claiming to have the backing of "the old municipal ownership leaders" and joining the race "to give Mayor Dever a little exercise."[27] Barratt O'Hara, former lieutenant governor of Illinois, withdrew from the race on February 11, claiming that running against Dever was hopeless and that he expected that Democrats opposed to Dever would vote in the Republican primary for Thompson instead of voting in the Democratic primary.[28]
Ahead of the primary election day, Dever put up a confident face, touting his leadership and his prospects for the general election, remarking,
Dever touted as successes of his mayoral term the construction of a large number of new school buildings, the construction of Wacker Drive, the construction of new bridges, road paving projects, river-straightening projects on the Chicago River, and street lighting installation.
Although he overwhelmingly defeated his token opponent, winning all the wards and securing the citywide vote by more than 10 to 1, Dever's vote total in the Democratic primary was less than the margin of victory Thompson had secured in the Republican primary.[8] [22] Dever's camp argued that this was not a bad omen but rather that, due to the lack of a competitive race in the Democratic primary, many of Dever's supporters either did not participate in the primaries or voted instead for Thompson in the Republican primary to try and nominate the weaker prospective opponent.[22] Dever anticipated that he would still be able to win reelection with more than 600,000 votes in the general election.[22]
Edward R. Litsinger, who was chairman of the Cook County Board of Review and backed by reform-minded U.S. Senator Charles S. Deneen and Edward J. Brundage,[17] (the latter of whom had split from his political ally Robert E. Crowe by supporting Litsinger[29]), announced his platform on January 9. He promised to compel the City Council to adopt an ordinance that would end the Chicago Traction Wars and consolidate all transportation lines under public ownership, to construct subways, to form a police investigation into the rampant crime, to look at causes of recent tax increases and investigate potential ways to reverse them, and to clean up streets and alleys.[30] He criticized Thompson as having been corrupt during his previous tenure as mayor. In his campaign, Litsinger pledged "to be a working mayor for all Chicago." Litsinger placed the blame for the city's crime on Robert E. Crowe, the Thompson-aligned Cook County state's attorney.[31]
Robertson initially planned to run in the primary before dropping out in favor of Litsinger per his agreement with Lundin, mounting an independent bid upon Litsinger's primary loss.[17] [32] Former policeman Eugene McCaffrey filed for candidacy on February 2 and attracted suspicion as many of the names on his petition sheets appeared to have been written in the same handwriting.[27] He was allowed on the ballot and received more than 1,500 votes.
The Republican primary was marked by intense vitriol between the candidates. Thompson accused Robertson of messy eating, stating that "[With] eggs in his whiskers, soup on his vest, you'd think the doc got his education driving a garbage wagon." Robertson retaliated, accusing Thompson of corruption. Litsinger reiterated such accusations against Thompson and further accused Thompson of conspiring to get 50,000 Democratic votes. Both candidates asserted that they were guaranteed victory and accused the other of conspiring to steal the primary.[33]
In an open letter, Thompson charged that Edward Brundage and Fred Lundin were suburbanites and were guilty of betraying their city roots.[32] He also alleged that Litsinger, who had come from Back of the Yards, had abandoned his roots, writing "You moved to the Gold Coast. Are you thinking of joining the high brows of Lake Forest and becoming a resident of Lake County too?"[32]
Thompson won by a surprisingly large margin;[34] to many, his victory itself was a surprise.[32] He carried 49 of the city's 50 wards.[34] After Thompson's victory, both partisans of Robertson and Democratic leaders claimed that Democratic voters for Thompson had propelled him to the Republican nomination, with the Democrats claiming that they did so in order to give Dever a weaker opponent in the general election.[26] Additionally, The New York Times reported that thousands of Republicans had refused to cast a vote for either candidate in the primary.[24]
Litsinger delivered a concession speech at his campaign headquarters in the Morrison Hotel, saying,