Marking the end of Lipinski political era
A 45-year reign on Chicago’s Southwest Side comes to a close
For decades, a member of the Lipinski family representing the Southwest Side middle class bungalow belt has been as much of a way of life as the airplanes roaring overhead from nearby Midway Airport.
But at noon Sunday, a political reign that spanned 45 years from the aldermanic offices of the 23rd Ward to the halls of Congress will come to an end when U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski’s term expires and progressive Democrat Marie Newman takes the oath of office to succeed him.
Just as patriarch William O. Lipinski’s tough-as-nails approach to ward politics led to his rise in the famed Chicago Democratic machine, the younger Lipinski’s adherence to the family’s socially conservative viewpoints ( including opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage) led to defeat in a Democratic Party that has marched to the left while the Lipinskis largely stood still.
The loss has left father and son both wistful for what they consider better political times.
In separate interviews, Dan and William Lipinski both expressed worry that the party has become far too liberal, leaving behind lunch pail, working-class voters in favor of progressive bench marks like the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All .” National political identity, they both lamented, has supplanted the neighborhood politics of fixing problems and bringing money back to the district — a specialty of both Lipinskis.
The family has been instrumental in bringing billions of dollars in
infrastructure funding back to Chicago, including the construction of the Orange Line that runs from the Loop to Midway and the CREATE rail program, a package of 70 projects that have reduced freight train congestion, reduced commuter train times and improved rail crossing safety.
“In the last few years, and especially in the Donald Trump era, there has been much more focus on national issues and much more focus on what’s going on in Washington and a lot more focus on rhetoric and not as much focus on getting things done,” said Dan Lipinski, 54, who lives in Western Springs. “I don’t think all politics is local anymore, and that’s detrimental because it’s those issues closest to home that really do matter the most.”
Progressives in the 3rd Congressional District, however, view him as a relic of a bygone era and his loss as another rusty lever seizing up on what’s left of Chicago’s once omnipresent Democratic machine. Political office, they contend, should no longer be handed down from one generation to the next as if it’s a birthright.
Sheila Maloney, a Beverly attorney who lives in the district, said she first became agitated with the congressman when he voted against Obamacare. Lipinski, a devout Catholic, cited his opposition to the government funding of abortion. Maloney, who threw a fundraiser for Newman, said the congressman was wrong to “deny people health care based on these litmus tests of abortion policy that favor a small religious minority.”
Lipinski also voted against the DREAM Act to grant young immigrants citizenship. After attending a Lipinski town hall a few years ago, Maloney said she came away even more motivated to vote him out.
“Hearing the way he talked about issues like immigration, I thought, ‘This isn’t modern America. What era is he from?’ said Maloney, 41, whose father grew up in Beverly and whose mother is a Brazilian immigrant. “He represents a different time in America, and I’m part of a group trying to move forward, trying to move past this time that he seems very stuck in. I didn’t feel like he was fighting for me.”
Illustrating his increasingly isolated position within his own party, Dan Lipinski was just one of two House Democrats to vote against increasing $600 relief checks for most Americans to $2,000. He contended that while stimulus was needed, the payments would add too much to the national deficit, a position that drew ire from progressives and a statement from his successor.
“In less than a week, Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District will have a representative that knows damn well that a $600 stimulus check is not nearly enough to support American families who continue to struggle every single day due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Newman said.
Lipinski’s vote also could be viewed as a parting shot to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In his House floor farewell speech, Lipinski argued too much of the power in the legislative process had been concentrated in the speaker’s office. William Lipinski was more blunt, saying the speaker’s chief responsibility used to rest with protecting members from difficult votes and primary challenges while much of the lawmaking power rested with committee chairmen. Pelosi, the elder Lipinski said, stood back and allowed millions of dollars in outside money to be spent against his son, despite his status as a long-serving incumbent.
Newman outspent Dan Lipinski about 2-to-1 on the airwaves in the March primary, while outside groups flooded the race with advertising that attacked Lipinski for his opposition to abortion rights. “I’m sure if Nancy had talked to some of the big left-wing money people to leave him alone, they would have done so,” William Lipinski said. “But she certainly didn’t do that, and she wasn’t going to risk her support with some of those people by standing up for one of her members.”
Power rooted in patronage
The absence of a Lipinski from the Southwest Side political scene provides another example of how Chicago’s fabled machine — built in part by the city’s Polish Americans decades ago — is evolving out of existence as the spoils of political patronage have been greatly diminished.
William Lipinski was an example of the power of a political system with a reliance on patronage hires for political devotion. He began with a patronage job in the Chicago Park District, serving as a weekend “recreation leader.” Eventually, he was responsible for personnel and management at 34 local parks in his 17 years there.
In January 1975, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley selected him as 23rd Ward Democratic committeeman. Two months later, Lipinski was elected alderman, representing a ward he estimated was half Polish American, with the remaining constituents mostly of Irish and Italian descent.
William Lipinski’s two predecessors had gone to jail for accepting bribes for zoning changes, so he said his first order of business was setting up a zoning committee of community leaders to handle the requests. In 1982, he defeated U.S. Rep. John Fary in the Democratic primary and won the general election to begin his congressional career.
In 1993, William Lipinski had a falling out with Jim Laski, a loyal political aide he’d installed as alderman. Laski failed to back a mayoral property tax increase and was booted from the ward office.
Not long after, Laski worked to help Lipinski’s congressional reelection and was rewarded with his backing to become Chicago city clerk. Eleven years later, Laski pleaded guilty to federal obstruction of justice for urging witnesses to deny he had taken bribes. He served 17 months.
Lipinski was part of the power collaborative of Southwest Side Democratic committeemen that included the late former Cook County Assessor Tom Hynes in the 19th Ward, Cook County commissioner and mayoral son and brother John Daley in the 11th, Ald. Edward Burke in the 14th and House Speaker Michael Madigan in the 13th.
“It’s hard to say that the Lipinskis were leaders of the politics of this area because of the shadow from Madigan and Burke,” said Brian Bernardoni, a veteran political activist and lobbyist from the Southwest Side who founded Aurelius Public Affairs. “But they were a vital connection for the ability of the Chicago machine to do the things it needed to do.”
William Lipinski’s blue collar and socially conservative constituents were the epitome of what were known as “Reagan Democrats,” who twice backed Republican Ronald Reagan for president in the 1980s, and repudiated Democrats who were too far left.
Federal funding to build the CTA Orange Line was the result of a conversation between Reagan and Lipinski. The president thanked Lipinski for a vote to aid the Contras trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s Marxist government. Asked by Reagan if there was anything he wanted in return, Lipinski said, “Have you ever heard of the Southwest Side rapid-transit system?”
Less than a year later, the feds fully funded it.
The Orange Line remains a crowning achievement of the elder Lipinski’s political career, but he also was responsible for the socalled passenger facility charge that is tacked onto every U.S. plane ticket to fund improvements at airports nationwide. The elder Lipinski also pushed through funding to revive Midway, expand O’Hare International Airport, reconstruct the Stevenson Expressway and provide what was at the time record funding for the CTA and Metra.
But the way William Lipinski stepped down from his congressional seat earned him the sharpest criticism of his career.
After easily winning the 2004 Democratic primary, he announced his retirement and urged party leaders to handpick his son to run in his place for the general election. At the time, Dan Lipinski was living in Tennessee and working as a political-science professor.
William Lipinski contended that he was trying to pass a massive reauthorization of the nation’s entire federal transportation funding and held off announcing his retirement as long as he could to work on the legislation, which never passed. The scenario, however, was quite convenient for his son.
“I had no choice in what happened there,” Dan Lipinski said of how he assumed office. “I’ve always felt that I had more to prove because of what people said about that … and I think getting reelected several times over those 16 years shows people were happy with what I did.”
William Lipinski then turned to a career in transportation lobbying, raking in at least $4 million over eight years by exercising his influence with his former congressional colleagues and fellow Democratic power brokers in Illinois. The elder Lipinski lobbied on behalf of the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, BNSF Railway and the Association of American Railroads on business before the Transportation Committee, on which his son sat.
The senior Lipinski, 83, said he upheld a pledge never to lobby his son and retired from federal lobbying in 2015, but confirmed he continues to represent the CTA, Metra and the village of Bedford Park before state officials. In an interview, he expressed no
regrets on his second career or on how he handed his seat off to his son.
“I understand why people were upset about it and bothered by it, but I knew Dan had grown up in the district, was very familiar with all of the people and all of their concerns as I was, and I knew hewas a man of principle as he demonstrated on refusing to give up his pro-life position,” William Lipinski said. “My choicewas a choice that the people supported as time went on, and I ask you, how many people in that position with a son who was interested in runningwould not have supported him?”
‘End of an era’
Dan Lipinski continued the family tradition of bringing home federal dollars, including billions in money to improve local freight and transit rail traffic in a district that hasmore rail crossings than any other. The younger Lipinski also served on the Science and Technology Committee, where he worked to fund scientific research and improve technology innovation within the federal government.
Lipinski also personally opposes same-sex marriage and is especially vocal in his opposition to abortion. In the last year alone, Dan Lipinskiwas one of just two Democrats to support a ban on all abortion after 20 weeks and to sign onto a brief submitted by 200 Republicans urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The congressman said his ardent opposition to abortion made him a reelection target, pointing to “$6 million spent against me, almost all on the abortion issue.”
“I knew in the last few years especially that my view on abortion put me at risk, but I was never going to back down on it,” he said. “I wasn’t going to change what I believe in just to stay in office. It was not worth it to me.”
William Lipinski said the district’s changing makeup had a lot to do with his son’s defeat too. The ancestral 23rd Ward and much of the Southwest Side is now majority Latino, some suburban areas have become increasingly liberal and many of the reliable elderly voters in the city did not turn out to the polls inMarch because of the coronavirus pandemic, he noted.
Dan Lipinski representing old factions of his father’s political base while ignoring new constituents, communities of color and immigrants became an obvious problem in the district over the years, said Tammy Georgiou, a member of the grassroots group Southwest Suburban Activists who volunteered on Newman’s campaign.
“Marie brought people in from all different areas and demographics and backgrounds into her campaign, and her policies speak to all of those different groups,” said Georgiou, who is running for Palos Township clerk as an independent. “That’s what we never had with Lipinski. It was pretty evident to anyone living in the district that your voice was not being heard, your concerns were not being addressed.”
Lipinski’s place in the entrenched Democratic establishment iswhat allowed him to hang on to power for far too long, said Mervate Mohammad, a Hickory Hills attorney who volunteered on the campaign of RushDarwish, whoalso ran against Lipinski in the primary.
“It’s very concerning when you have the same politician stay in the same seat, as if it is something that is passed on from family member to family member for half a century,” said
Mohammad, who is running for Palos Township trustee. “Lipinski stayed in office as long as he did because he had the Chicago machine backing him up, or no one would run against him. If these people aren’t challenged, they’re going to continue to get lazy and do nothing.”
While progressives feel they have a new voice who speaks to them in Newman, the district’s remaining Reagan Democrats have been left in the political wilderness, said Marc Poulos, political director of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.
“It’s interesting that at the same time that Trump’s out, the Lipinskis are out. Where are the blue-collar union guys going to go? Who’s going to get them? Trump got them and that’ s a fact of life, and the reality is guys like Lipinski had them,” Poulos said. “By and large, we’re kind of lost. We don’t really have a home right now.”
Dan Lipinski said he’ll soon announce a part-time arrangement with a human rights organization, which he said is not related to the abortion issue. He also plans to write a book about his experiences as “a Catholic in public life.” He made no mention of future plans to run for office.
“It’s definitely the end of an era for the Southwest Side,” Poulos said of the Lipinskis’ departure. “The end of an era for moderates generally.” Or is it?
William Lipinski hinted several times that his son might run again and also noted he had a pair of grandsons “who have very serious political opinions” and “the blood flowing in them also.”
In any case, the Illinois congressional map will look much different in 2022, with the new census likely to result in the state losing one, if not two, congressional seats.
“Itmay or may not be the end of an era,” William Lipinski said. “Itmay be just a temporary interruption.”