Free American Pharaoh by Elizabeth Taylor, Adam Cohen

a 24th Ward committeeman who was shot to death in the early 1960s under mysterious circumstances, once boasted that
     the post was worth $50,000 a year in insurance work alone. In exchange for his power and opportunity for enrichment, a committeeman
     was responsible for ensuring that his ward met the vote totals that the machine boss expected. Ward committeemen who failed
     to deliver on election day risked being “vised,” as the machine lingo put it, or fired, and replaced by someone who would
     do better. 49
    Daley’s new position of precinct captain made him a soldier in Mc-Donough’s 11th Ward army, and put him in charge of a unit
     of about four hundred to five hundred voters. Precinct captains were the prime practitioners of the retail politics that was
     the stock in trade of the old urban machines. A precinct captain was expected to form a close personal relationship with every
     voter in his territory; the machine relied on these personal contacts — rather than the strength of its candidates in a given
     year — to win. “I never take leaflets or mention issues or conduct rallies in my precinct,” a Chicago precinct captain once
     explained. “After all, this is a question of personal friendship between me and my neighbors.” To forge these connections,
     precinct captains were expected to be out in their neighborhoods virtually every night, attending community meetings, putting
     in hours in the ward office, or visiting voters in their homes. “I found that those who related to people and were sincere
     in trying to help their neighbors in the community turned out to be the best captains,” one ward committeeman once said. Jake
     Arvey, committeeman from the heavily Jewish 24th Ward, required his precinct captains to belong to a synagogue or church,
     and to fraternal organizations like the Knights of Columbus or B’Nai Brith. “Sure, I was looking for votes,” Arvey says. “But,
     in the process, I made them charity-minded, civic-minded, culture-minded, and sensitive to the needs of other people.” In
     his last mayoral campaign in 1975, Daley delivered a tribute to the underappreciated precinct captain. He “is as honest as
     the rest of us and he’s a better neighbor than most of us, for partisan reasons,” Daley said. “He has solicitude for the welfare
     of the family on his block, especially if they are a large family with dependable political loyalties. He gets your broken-down
     uncle into the county hospital. . . . He’s always available when you’re in trouble.” 50
    As a young precinct captain, Daley spent countless hours each week in one of Bridgeport’s great institutions: the 11th Ward
     headquarters. Daley’s new world had the feel of a Hibernian social club. One non-Irish Bridgeport native recalled how he felt
     when he stopped by for a political event. “In a short time the office was packed with precinct captains and workers — all
     Irish,” he says. “Outside of one Italian and myself, I saw nothing but red hair, freckles, and green eyes. I met an old high
     school chum who is now a helper in a precinct and who works at City Hall. I asked him how one can get into the organization.
     He smiled and said, ‘The first thing you have to do is be Irish!’” During election season, the 11th Ward was a campaign war
     room, where strategy was mapped out, precinct canvasses were analyzed, and campaign literature was handed out for distribution
     throughout the ward. The rest of the year, it functioned as a combination of constituent-service office and community center. 51
    In the 11th Ward offices, and every other ward office across the city, the machine dispensed favors systematically in exchange
     for political support. Priority treatment went to political and financial backers of the machine, and to those who came with
     a referral from their precinct captain — the kind of solid citizen that ward workers referred to as “one of our people.” But
     since the