- Hi, I am Hermene Hartman with N'digo Studio.

Today my guest is Mr. Forrest Claypool.

He's a bureaucrat, he's a professional politician, and he has served in several positions in the city, in the county, and in state government.

He's been the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he's been the superintendent of the Chicago Park District, and he was chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley.

He's also been president of the Chicago Transit Authority.

He worked on the campaign, president Obama, making history happen with a longtime friend, political media consultant David Axelrod.

And now he's written a book.

He's written a book called "The Daley Show: Inside The Transformative Reign of Chicago's Richard Daley."

And we're gonna talk to him today about his book and the transformational mayor, Mayor Richard Daley.

N'digo Studio, N'digo Studio For more information about this show, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this program was provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission.

The Chicago Community Trust, Sin City Studios, Lamborghini Chicago, Gold Coast, and Downers Grove.

Blue Cross, Blue, Shield of Illinois, Commonwealth Edison, and the Illinois Health Plan.

I'm happy to, to have you and to learn about the book and about the Daley years.

Why'd you write this book at this time?

- Yeah, I wrote it because I've become increasingly sort of disappointed, angry even about what's been happening in the city in recent years, you know, the return of violent crime, and businesses leaving the city in droves, and the chaos that the public schools.

And I felt like people had forgotten, sort of the history of how Chicago has evolved, you know, under Mayor Daley, in 1989, we had a very similar, even worse environment.

Violent crime was was an endemic, you know, homelessness, graffiti everywhere, schools.

Or.

Schools were the worst in the country, according to the US secretary of education.

And, you know, the Chicago Tribune ran a seminal four part series called city on the brink, calling Chicago an economic invalid.

And, you know, over 22 years, Mayor Daley turned the city around.

I mean, obviously, there were setbacks.

Obviously there were scandals and problems.

But the arc was an extraordinary renaissance that turned around that narrative and catapulted Chicago to international prominence.

By the time he left office, Foreign Policy magazine said that Chicago was the sixth most important global city.

A remarkable turnaround, and I felt like there's there's lessons there that we need to remember and apply to some of the problems that's facing Chicago today and other cities throughout the United States.

Daley took office April 4th, 1989, 47 years old.

He inherited, obviously, following the footsteps of his father, but also Jane Byrne, also Mayor Harold Washington, also Mayor Eugene Sawyer.

What was his premise as the 54th mayor of the city of Chicago?

What what did he wanna accomplish, and why was it so important for him to be mayor?

- Well, obviously he loved the city, I think that's what people liked so much about him, that he wore his emotions on his sleeve, he cared deeply about the city, And he took on the task in stages, and the first thing he did when he came in was, well, I call it in the book "the housekeeping period," the first two years of basically just restoring, you know, trying to get homeless off the streets and into shelters with support and help, you know, remove and eradicate graffiti, tear down abandoned housings that had been sites of fires and rapes and other problems, and just elevate cleanliness, and plant flowers and trees, and give a sense of order so that people felt safe and that this was a community you would want to actually invest in, and maybe raise a family in.

And that was sort of the foundation, then, that allowed for the more complicated things that came later, the turnaround of the Chicago Public Schools, tearing down the notorious public housing projects, you know, expanding O'Hare airport, you know, building Millennium Park.

But it started with those very basics about the high quality of life in a city, what makes people want to live in a city, what makes them want to raise a family in a city, what makes businesses want to invest in a city?

And a lot of that has to do with order and cleanliness, basic things.

- So as chief of staff, how did you function?

- We knew what he wanted to accomplish, so my job was to bring together on a daily basis the various departments to make those things happen.

For example, one of our first tasks was to, you know, O'Hare airport was basically a sleeping zone for the homeless at that time, and we had to set up a humane program to remove them from the airport, but also provide them with social services.

So the mayor pushed through City Council attacks to provide a huge expansion of services for the homeless, shelters, beds, alcohol rehabilitation, job training.

And that was a comprehensive program that solved that problem, elevated, you know, the perception of order and cleanliness at the airport and on the streets, but also was a humane solution to a problem that other cities today still haven't figured out how to solve.

- One of the things that Daley did as he was rebuilding, if you will, the city, is he put city properties in neighborhoods.

The police department 35th, 35th and Michigan.

He also created a department, Inquiry and Information, why was that important, and what did that department do?

- Yeah, it was a hotline for citizens to report complaints.

And believe it or not, in 1989, the number one complaint was abandoned automobiles, you know, junkers in neighborhoods, tens of thousands of cars in impoverished neighborhoods that sort of sent a signal that no one cared.

And so that, along with graffiti and homelessness and all the other things we talked about, abandoned buildings, targeting that problem was issue number one, and so that was one of the first things he assigned me to do, was to get those cars off the street, and we did that in a unique public-private partnership that set the tone.

And as you point out, his investments in the neighborhoods were strategic.

So it was an economic development strategy that said, okay, we've got a pretty strong neighborhood here, but a weak one here, an impoverished one, what if we put a police station just inside the impoverished community, but not too far from the strong community so that over time the police and other people coming and going and spending money will attract private investment, and then at some point there's a tipping point where it all merges together into a stronger neighborhood.

And that strategy, throughout his 20 years, he invested strategically in that way.

- And he did that police department, libraries.

And I remember the controversy about Kennedy King College.

- Mm-hmm, yeah.

- Of putting it there, that was in- Inglewood.

In Inglewood.

And the Tribune wrote a scathing editorial to say white Elephant and that was not right.

Inglewood continues to struggle but but that college gave it an anchor and it and it allowed for affordable housing nearby.

It allowed for a food food desert to be eliminated with a new grocery store.

It allowed for hope to for the community.

And and that's carried forward to even to the day when the community rallied to build a new school in Inglewood, a brand new state of the art school in Inglewood.

They never gave up on the community and daily never gave up on the community.

And that was almost as important as the investment itself.

You write in the book that, "Cities have taken over functions that we should not be doing, and we lost sight of the vital responsibilities."

Explain that quote, that was a very powerful quote, what are we not doing that we should be doing as a city, as city government?

- Yeah, I mean, the city government under Daley.

I mean, it was taking on too many functions.

And when I was at the Park District it was a good example, because when Daley sent me to the Park District, Park District runs Soldier Field, the Marinas, the zoo, you know, the downtown parking garages, those are all businesses, and they were all losing money, so the taxpayers were subsidizing private businesses, and what do we know about running parking garages and stadiums and marinas- - And the zoo.

- And the zoo.

(Hermene chuckles) So the first thing I did was say, okay, we need to get private businesses to basically contract with them, to run them for us professionally, we'll take the money, we've turned them into money, losing the money making, and then we'll invest those monies into neighborhood parks.

And that's our mission, our mission is to beautiful neighborhood parks with programs, sports and cultural programs for families and kids.

And so that's sort of what I mean by that is like, we need to do a few, a few things well, rather than a bunch of things poorly.

It's a good business mentality.

Yes, it.

Does in the private sector too.

That's why businesses run.

They run for dead work.

Stop.

Move on.

Next.

- One of the things that Daley did not want in Chicago, that has been an issue for many years, is the casino.

Why was he against the casino coming to the city?

- Well, he was at first, and and because he didn't feel like the Chicago charac fundamental character would be altered by a casino, he didn't want it to be Vegas or Atlantic City.

In time, he changed his mind and actually saw the casino, but was shut down first by the Republicans and then, ironically, by Rod Blagojevich.

But I think that was probably a silver lining, because he turned his attention to more sustainable economic development strategies.

And and one of those was the entertainment district in the loop, which has grown and grown and grown since Chicago's become a national leader in sort of playhouses and theater and everything from Hamilton to, you know, wicked.

And.

Well, the pattern is that the, the plays come to Chicago first pre-Broadway and then they go to Broadway.

I mean, that has become a real pattern the last few years.

- Yeah, for sure, and it brings in just enormous amounts, tens of thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of revenue, and so that's a more lasting legacy, I think, and a more impactful one than a casino.

- You also made a powerful statement in the book, and that is, "Politics is not about logic, politics is about power."

You gotta have the power to do the kind of things that the mayor did.

- That's right.

- One of the more powerful tools that Daley created and used to build the city was the TIF program.

Tell me about TIF and how it works and how it came about.

- Yeah, it's a little bit complicated, but a TIF is essentially where you draw a circle around an area, and you say that all the incremental growth and property taxes in that area is gonna stay in that area and be invested in, you know, could be new infrastructure, it could be subsidizing a private business that won't move in otherwise, to try to jumpstart development.

And Daley started out slow, but then expanded that to cover almost a quarter of the city, and it allowed him to do things like, you know, tear down, you know, porn, the movie houses in the city, and eliminate, you know, vacant buildings and things like that, and then acquire them, condemn them, and then replace them with a new strategy like student housing, or the school, the art institute, or other strategic economic development tools.

And over time there were abuses, obviously, and those were well documented, and there were critics of TIFs, but by the same token, it was really the only tool at that time available to the mayor, there was no federal funding, you know, nobody was coming to the rescue, and so it was a self-help tool.

- This was all city funding?

- Yeah, it was self-funded through the city itself, and frankly it worked, it helped revitalize downtown first, and then spread, you know, out west, along with the development of the United Center and other things.

So that the city economic base was strengthened significantly.

- Did Daley think a TIF throughout Chicago, or some of Chicago?

- Yeah, eventually the furthest it went was, about a quarter of the city at one point was covered in TIFs, And obviously you can't cover the entire city with TIFs because you're temporarily diverting revenue from those areas to to away from away from other.

You know, you have to fund government as well.

And so when you're taking more and more revenue away in their incremental growth, you are you still have to do everything else.

So you can't you can't do 100%.

But I think he he certainly pushed the envelope by going to a quarter of the city.

So now let's talk about you.

You ran for office twice.

Now you're in the Daley machine.

You're in the Daley government.

And you ran for office but did not get the Daley support.

I found that so curious.

Tell me about that.

Well, it was interesting.

I ran again.

I ran against a guy named Ted Lefkowitz, who was a sort of a the personification of a machine candidate.

And, but he had become a close ally of, of John Stroger, who was the mayor's principal, you know, political ally, the head of the county board at long, and his brother ran the finance committee.

So there was a shortlist.

The mayor's brother John, the mayor's.

Brother, John.

So there's like, this alliance between like it was John Daley and John Stroger.

And by me running against Lefkowitz, I was sort of I was sort of like taking on that sort of that sort of power structure and which was important to Daley's overall empire.

So that's how I got on the wrong side of him on that one.

And and I managed to win that race despite the overwhelming opposition to Daley in the machine.

But but it was an interesting campaign that I talk about in the book, but it's kind of hearkens back to a much more colorful time in Chicago when ward politics was dominant and you had these tribal characters, you know, and, you know, people like these precinct captains in the machine, like John Boyle, who who got his name from, from pilfering $4 million and quarters from the tollway authority when he ran an armored car company.

And so some of those old color for Chicago stories are brought out through that chapter about my campaign against like a with.

Yeah.

Daley developed a city into really becoming a world class destination.

And I want you to talk about, major, the four things, the airport, O'Hare Airport, and did Daley want the third airport or not?

- No- - It sounds like, sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't.

- Well, he wanted to protect the city's monopoly, essentially, on aviation.

Nothing compares to the airports as a jobs engine, It is it is a O'Hare.

And midway airports are the single most powerful economic propellant for Chicago in the entire region and Midwest.

And keeping those in Chicago and protecting them was important.

And one of the most fascinating stories in the book is about how the Republicans in 1995 tried to take over those airports under suburban authority.

and how Daley thwarted that in a really creative, you know, secretive way, it's one of my favorites, how he did that.

But it was critical, because had that happened, O'Hare today would be a shadow of itself, because- - So was the thinking that the third airport on the far south side in the south suburbs would be competition?

- In the suburbs, yes.

As you know, and I write about as part of the story, the chapter's called "Airport Wars," Daley, to your point, did try to build a third airport, but in Chicago, in Lake Calumet.

That didn't that didn't work.

And the Republicans were trying to build one in Petone, in near Kankakee in this far south suburbs.

And that was what Daley was trying to block.

He wanted to protect Chicago's monopoly on on aviation infrastructure.

All right.

Now, one, one of the more controversial things that Daley did was the destruction of MiGs field, and which is now northerly Island.

Tell me about Mix Field.

Yeah.

What what that incident was.

I think probably for most people, that may be the most indelible memory of Daley's mayoralty that he sent in.

They tore the mayor.

Daley tore up mayor.

Makes sense that he sent in bulldozers in the middle of the night and tore axes in runways.

As there were at least 16 planes in the air and another several dozen planes on the ground that were stranded violated a host of FAA regulations.

His his actions were likened to those of a banana republic dictator.

He claimed he did it because he was worried about terrorism.

Someone using the airport to tip buildings downtown, which was ludicrous, of course.

And it was all because he had been stymied for years and years by the business community, by the Republicans for turning Meg's field into a park.

And he just had had enough and said, I'm going to stop this litigation and gonna stop this legislation, and we're going to do this.

So just tear it up.

Just, let's just go in at midnight and tear dared us.

Okay.

Actually, I thought it was one of the most courageous things he ever did.

That's.

That was my personal feeling.

Tell me how we got Millennium Park.

Yeah.

Great story.

And it's also a story of how one person can make a difference, you know, and.

That's that's the.

Story can change history.

And, you know, people may have probably forgotten by now, but those of us are old enough to remember that for forever.

Really, since the 1800s, there's been a 25 acre hole in the middle of downtown, in the middle of Grant Park, in one of the most beautiful or otherwise most beautiful part of the city and the most valuable real estate, really, in any metropolitan area that was owned by the Illinois Central Railroad, which had been granted the land in 1852, in exchange for building a breakwater in the lake.

And and for decades and decades, mayors and civic groups had tried to acquire the land and turn it into, you know, part of Grant Park.

And and all of them failed.

And it was because the Illinois Central Railroad owned the land.

There's nothing you could do.

Somebody did some research.

Lord, you did some research.

There to learn.

And Randy, mayor Bergen General and block and the and interestingly, he not only Central railroad hit it releasing the land to a parking lot operator.

And this parking lot operator was was cutting holes in the park district fence and letting commuters come through as a shortcut.

And they were creating these muddy, ugly bridle paths in the park.

So my lawyer, who was also in charge of the lakefront and all its assets, kept getting into a fight with this guy trying to stop that.

And the guy was just thumbing his nose.

And so he finally got so frustrated, he just had an epiphany because he had in a previous life he had been a railroad lawyer general, like, know, in railroad cases.

And he just on and out of anger and a kind of a hunch, he went over to the old land records and he he went and found the old, you know, original records from 1852.

And he blew the dust off the records, and he found the original deed for the Illinois central land.

And he discovered what he discovered changed Chicago history, because what he discovered was that the land wasn't owned outright by the Illinois Central Railroad, but it was owned subject to a covenant.

And the covenants said that if the land should ever cease to be used for railroad purposes, it would revert to the city of Chicago, and the Illinois Central Railroad had shut down railroad operations decades before.

So when they.

Didn't know it, that's.

Right.

So when they shut down those operations decades before, title had shifted to the city, but no one knew.

and now one person knew, Randy Mehrberg.

So we trotted over to Mayor Daley's office, and he sued, and six months later they had the land, and the rest is history as they say.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- How interesting.

- Yeah.

- It's all in the details, isn't it?

- All in the details, there's a couple chapters in the book about that.

Again, it's one of many chapters about how really one person can change history, and that's something we should not forget.

That's right.

One person can make a difference.

Yeah.

So one of Daly's hallmarks, and you were, you were, head of Chicago Public schools.

- Talk to me about the dynamic the dynamic of the Chicago school system and and how not only did you change the system, but the system was really run by Daley without authority, controlled by the state.

So step one was to get the authority right, to talk about that process and then how the school system changed because we're still going we're still recognizing some of that.

Yeah.

It was, you know, famously Chicago schools had been labeled the worst in the country before Daley's takeover.

And that was one of the justifications for the legislature giving the mayor authority to do so in 1995.

And but that allowed the mayor, really to bring the entire city, you know, the entire city, all philanthropic organizations, universities, businesses, all united really for the next 25 years behind two mayors to reform those schools, and took them from the worst in the country to really a position of national urban leadership.

And, you know, they weren't perfect, they weren't a model of excellence, but they were a remarkable, remarkable transformation in which the majority of kids passed standards, you know, more went to college, more graduated, more led better lives because the school system was managed better.

And so it did allow that the power of the mayor's officers brought to bear in a way that helped a whole generation of school children.

- Talk about crime in the city under Mayor Daley, - The city struggled the first few years under his leadership, crime was endemic, not just in Chicago, but nationally, and it peaked in 1991 in his end of his first term.

But he turned increasingly and listened to Barbara McDonald and Charles Ramsey, who at the time were deputy superintendents who were experimenting with community policing, the notion that instead of 911 response calls, that you've embedded police in neighborhoods, developed relationships with neighbors, and preemptively fought crime.

And that initiative, you know, took time, it involved beats where the community would meet with police weekly and share information and work together.

But over time it was incredibly successful.

Later, as crime spike was beginning to spike again, they shifted to a more tactical strategy that said, we're gonna put cops on dots, whenever you see a flare up, we're gonna flood the zone with police officers, and that worked well too.

So the balance of the two, there was an evolving series of tactics and strategies under different leadership, but it all consistently drove violent crime down to 40-year lows, and actually exceeded national trends by almost 50%.

- So my final question, name the three things Under Daley.

We got two neighborhoods in Chicago.

We got the South Loop and we got the West.

Those areas were totally transformed.

Yes, and are now some of the best properties in Chicago.

Tell me about, the building of those communities.

Sure.

Well, the most fun one is the West Side because it was a combination of sort of, serendipity as well as strategy.

And I mean, I write in the book about that, this, that the first part was something that no one could have predicted.

In 1994, the Chicago Bulls had had the third worst record in the NBA.

And, at the time, the league was dominated by big men.

And so the Bulls wanted one of the available seven foot two available two seven foot centers.

But because they pick third, they had to settle for this 21 year old guard from North Carolina named Michael Jordan, you know.

So, and it goes to show that, you know, it's better to be lucky than good.

So my final question, name the three things that were the best of the Daley years.

What three things stand out?

- Well, to me, the biggest miracle, both managerial and politically, and one of the most significant, if not the most significant, to me, is the tearing down of the notorious Chicago public housing high rises- - Right, transformation?

- Yeah.

Which was a cancer on the city, it corrected a historical error in public policy, which ironically had been spearheaded by the mayor's father who built most of them, and allowed for the creation in their place of much healthier mixed-income communities.

And it also allowed the rebirth of Bronzeville.

I mean, Bronzeville was reborn for a lot of reasons, proximity to the south loop, close to lakefront, great community organizations and leadership.

But, it was surrounded by these notorious public housing high rises, which created an environment that was not receptive to to to your community being reborn, investing.

In.

Gang infestation.

So the plan for transformation, which tore those communities down and invested in new housing, allowed Bronzeville to be reborn in Bronzeville today is one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Chicago.

The second is obviously, I think, the Chicago, the turnaround, the Chicago Public Schools, because for two reasons.

One, it it allowed for a it encouraged a return of middle class families to the city that had abandoned them, you know, when their kids became school age and so that strengthened neighborhoods.

But also, it gave an entire generation of children better life outcomes because of the quality of education they received, and it was really a national story.

And then third and finally I think, and close to my heart is obviously Millennium Park.

- Millennium Park, yeah.

- With a new front lawn for Chicago of you know, extraordinary beauty and architectural marvels.

And also an economic engine, I mean, the tourism draw from Millennium Park on the city.

- He gave the city a living room.

- He did.

And people like John Bryant who helped lead that, who was a former CEO of Sarah Lee, who had a vision as well.

- And the Pritzkers.

- And the Pritzkers and so many, it allowed the city to come together in a way to build something that really defines Chicago now for generations to come.

- It's our home.

- It's.

- It's our home, it's our common home.

Well Forrest, you've written a great book.

- Thank you.

- I enjoyed reading it, and was reflecting back, but also looking forward.

And to your point, one person can make a difference, Daley years were transformational, and he's probably been the most consequential mayor, I think that Chicago has seen.

Thank you.

You might wanna read the book, it is good, it's "The Daley Years," a little history, but a little history that'll bring you right up to date.

I'm Hermene Hartman with N'digo Studio, and our guest today has been Forrest Claypool.

Thanks for being with us.

For more information about this show, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this program was provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the Chicago Community Trust.

Sin City Studios, Lamborghini Chicago, Gold Coast, and Downers Grove.

Blue cross, Blue Shield of Illinois, Commonwealth Edison and the Illinois Health Plan.

N'digo Studio.