Free American Pharaoh by Elizabeth Taylor, Adam Cohen Page B

How would it be if I voted in the Democratic primary?” After the captain pursued the family
     for a month, a compromise was arrived at. The man and his wife, who shared a last name with the cousin, could vote Republican.
     The man’s two daughters and sons-in-law, who had different names, would vote the straight Democratic ticket. 54
    On election day, precinct workers often turned to more blatant forms of persuasion. Precinct captains handed out turkeys,
     nylons, and cash in exchange for votes. A captain from the poor West Side 27th Ward was once convicted of buying votes for
     one dollar a head. In the South Side 4th Ward, a newspaper reporter observing the voting caught a precinct worker handing
     out bags of groceries. “We gotta get these voters out any way we can,” the worker explained. On skid row, precinct captains
     often lured winos with free liquor. The fact that bars were legally closed on election day worked in the machine’s favor:
     many alcoholics considered the few minutes it took to vote a small price to pay to make the shakes go away. Clory Bryant,
     who ran for alderman in the early 1960s against the machine’s candidate, saw the effect of the machine’s generosity toward
     voters first-hand. “I had asked a neighbor of mine was she going to vote for me,” Bryant says. “As a matter of fact, I says,
     ‘I know you’ll vote for me.’ And she said, ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t, because my alderman always gives me a Christmas tree for
     my vote. And I know you can’t afford to go around buying these many trees.’” Bryant did not get her neighbor’s vote. The machine
     also did favors for neighborhood organizations that could help it win votes. The West Side 25th Ward Organization used to
     give regular donations to the thirty-five churches in the ward. One election day, the ward boss arrived at a polling place
     located in the basement of St. Roman’s Church. The priest was handing out coffee and doughnuts. Asked what he was doing, the
     priest responded, “What the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to get some Democratic votes.” Ward organizations also
     wielded the stick in order to round up votes. Captains in black precincts frequently told voters they would lose their government
     benefits if they failed to vote a straight Democratic ticket. “Every welfare recipient is afraid to oppose the wishes of the
     precinct captain,” the pastor of a Mennonite church once complained. “Everyone living in public housing is afraid. They have
     been told that the machine alderman is the one who ensures them living quarters.” It was not an idle threat. Welfare programs
     were so rule-bound at the time, and enforcement was so arbitrary, that a determined precinct captain often could get a voter’s
     benefits cut off if he really wanted to. Saying hello to the precinct captain at the polls every year also came in handy when
     a public-housing recipient’s refrigerator or stove broke down. 55

    In addition to his position as precinct captain, Daley was now working for McDonough in his City Council office. The job of
     “secretary” to an alderman was not glamorous. Daley was one of a corps of glorified gofers. But McDonough was a garrulous,
     old-style politician who liked to spend most of the workday at the saloon or the racetrack. He was more than willing to have
     the hardworking and detail-oriented Daley plow through the draft bills and proposed budgets that regularly crossed his desk.
     Working at the City Council, particularly for such a lackadaisical alderman, gave Daley a chance to observe city government
     up close. It also put Daley in the political mix, letting him make personal connections with machine politicians from across
     the city. Daley’s work for McDonough fit a pattern he followed throughout his career: he apprenticed himself to powerful men
     and made himself indispensable by taking on dull but necessary jobs. “I’ll tell you how he made it,”