Richard M. Daley

Richard Michael Daley (born April 24, 1942) has been Mayor of Chicago since 1989. He is the fourth child and eldest son of former Mayor Richard J. Daley, originally from Bridgeport, a Chicago neighborhood located just Southwest of the Chicago Loop.

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Daley previously served in the Illinois State Senate during the 1970s and then from 1980 to 1989 as State's Attorney for Cook County. In 1983 he made his first run for mayor, losing in a 3-way Democratic primary against Congressman Harold Washington and incumbent Jane Byrne, but setting the stage for his future successful run.

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He won the office in 1989 after defeating incumbent Mayor Eugene Sawyer in the primary, and Timothy Evans and Edward Vrdolyak in the general election. Daley proved to be a uniter, although not always clear of controversy. He has taken after his father in making civic improvement a high priority, announcing the desire to turn the entire Chicago lakefront into a park.

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Like his father, Daley is also known for being one of the most powerful and influential figures in Illinois politics, and the center of a vast political machine that is deeply entrenched in the state's Democratic Party.

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Daley has drawn attacks for his controversial closing of Meigs Field, an airport for small aircraft with a single runway surrounded by water, and a familiar site on the downtown waterfront, shortly after he was re-elected on February 25, 2003 for a fifth term with 79% of the vote in a four-candidate race.

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While Daley has won an ever-increasing share of the votes in each election since 1989 (with the exception of 1995, when he ran against Roland Burris and Ray Wardingley, also known as "Spanky the Clown"), voter turnout has also declined significantly during this period. In 1989, Daley won with 55% of the vote and 67% voter turnout. This means that, counting eligible voters who stayed home on election day, 37% of registered voters cast a ballot for Daley. In 2003, Daley won with 79% of the vote but only 34% turnout, for a total of 26% of registered voters. In other words, while Daley's vote percentages have been going up, fewer total votes have actually been cast for him.

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However, although support for Daley is no longer as deep as it once was, it has grown considerably wider. Daley's election in 1989 can be attributed largely to his overwhelming pluralities in wards on the city's Northwest and Southwest Sides, generally the more conservative areas of the city. In 1989, Daley's pluralities in his 15 highest vote-getting wards (out of 50) accounted for 264% of his citywide plurality. This means that support for Daley was incredibly concentrated in these wards. In 2003, Daley's pluralities in his top 15 wards accounted for just 57% of his city-wide plurality. This signifies much broader support. If support for Daley were uniformly distributed throughout the city's 50 wards, we would expect each set of 15 wards to deliver around 30% of Daley's total plurality (give or take a few due to differences in population between wards).

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If he remains in office, Daley will break his father's record for time as mayor on December 25, 2010.

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On November 30, 2004, Daley's son Patrick announced that he has joined the U.S. Army as an enlistee. Patrick is Daley's oldest and only living son. His second son, Kevin, was 33 months old when he died of complications of spina bifida in 1981.

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An April 2005 issue of Time Magazine ranked Daley as one of the five best current mayors of large US cities.

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In July of 2005 Cook County Republican Chairman, Gary Skoien, was fired from his job with a real estate company after offering $10,000 for information leading to the conviction of Mayor Daley in the ongoing corruption scandals in Chicago involving patronage hiring.

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