In 1879, Chicago politicians debated what to do with rancid meat that was confiscated by the city’s health commissioner.
The City Council, hoping to protect meat sellers, wanted to compel the city to sell the sour steaks to the “highest and best bidder” and pass the cash back to the owner.
But the mayor objected to the ordinance and used his veto power to kill it. So the plan to sell bad meat — what newspapers called “an attempt to poison the public by statute” — did not become law.
Over the past 174 years, Chicago mayors have wielded their veto on matters big and small: a corrupt contract, a milk inspector’s appointment, annual appropriation bills and a license to sell horses on Market Street, which is modern-day Wacker Drive.
Chicago’s 57 mayors have issued at least 1,889 vetoes stretching back to 1851, when it’s believed that mayors got their veto power, according to records from the city clerk’s office.
The sheer number of vetoes might surprise Chicagoans, considering the veto rarely has been used by 21st century mayors, who already exercise vast control over legislation in the City Council.
In fact, Mayor Brandon Johnson recently issued the first veto by a Chicago mayor in 19 years.
The veto hasn’t always been such a novelty. The lengthy list of vetoes charts Chicago’s long history of the push and pull of power between the mayor and the City Council, which for decades had the ultimate say over how Chicago was governed, especially its finances.
The vetoes also show how much Chicago has changed (no, the city no longer has a milk inspector) and yet how cyclical governance can be (yes, they fought over public land for sports stadiums in the 19th century, too).
‘Council of the Grey Wolves’ era
The vast majority of vetoes took place in an era known as the “Council of the Grey Wolves,” from 1871 to 1931, when council members largely controlled the city’s purse strings.
“The reason for the name was that the gray-haired aldermen who were the party bosses split up the spoils in the back room like gray wolves would split up the prey that they killed in hunting,” said Chicago political scientist and former Ald. Dick Simpson.
They were Chicago’s first political machine, made up of “rings” of corrupt aldermen entrenched with powerful businessmen, Simpson said.
And this was no secret in that era.
When the 1878 council introduced an ordinance apparently to award taxpayer incentives to streetcar businessman J. Russell Jones, the Chicago Daily News was quick with wit.
“Wonder if J. Russell Jones thinks the people of Chicago are fools? It looks like it,” the paper said alongside a poem slamming Jones for threatening to raise horse-drawn streetcar fares if the city were to charge him a license fee.
Mayor Monroe Heath vetoed the ordinance, writing that it was passed “with exceptional haste.”
“‘With exceptional haste’ is a courteous way of putting it,” the Daily News wrote in reporting the veto. “The Aldermen who backed it knew very well that the less it was examined the better for them and for J. Russell Jones… Some of the members did not understand the conditions of the measure, only as they heard them explained by the ring… But the scoundrels who championed the measure knew full well what they were doing.
“It pays to have a good man in the Mayor’s chair.”
The newspaper often applauded the mayor for his vetoes in that period, at least the ones that made headlines.
Banning the sale of rancid meat
Concerned with the over-regulation of the meat market in 1879, the council voted 28-to-6 to compel the city health commissioner, when he confiscated “diseased, tainted or sour meats,” to sell them at auction and give the proceeds to the original owner.
“The Mayor would be entirely derelict in his duty if he did not incontinently veto it,” one article said.
Mayor Carter Henry Harrison III agreed. He wrote in his veto message that, while the measure might help shield “honest and innocent dealers” who don’t know their meat has gone bad from “arbitrary officials,” it mainly would protect “unscrupulous dealers, who willfully offer for sale, as food, the product of diseased animals.”
Banning the sale of rancid meat, he said, would protect the poor, not the rich, who can afford higher quality meat markets:
“The poor have neither the time nor the means to seek these markets. They are forced to go to those which are at convenient distances and where prices are moderate… They are compelled to look to you and the health ordinances for their protection.”
Some vetoes were much more whimsical.
In December 1906, council members wanted to direct the fire department to “flood the old ball park” in what is now Little Italy so that it “can be used for public skating.”
Mayor Edward F. Dunne’s veto noted that the plan didn’t ensure that the rink wouldn’t be “used for somebody’s private profit.”
The same day, the council substituted the order to read:
“That the Chief of the Fire Department be, and he is hereby directed to flood the old ball park, corner of Harrison and Throop streets, so that the same can be used for public skating; providing, however, that no charge shall be made for skating.”
In many instances like this, issuing a veto was just a way of negotiating to prime an ordinance for passage. In others, the mayor opposed the measure entirely.
Mayor Carter Henry Harrison IV vetoed a proposed ordinance that would have ordered the removal of all newsstands from sidewalks and streets. The stands had crept up amid a 1912 newspaper strike.
“It is true that there is to-day a newspaper strike in this city; that the great majority of the newsboys have refused to handle the regular daily papers; that these papers in self-defense have been forced to establish stands from which the public may obtain copies,” Harrison wrote.
But “strikes are not permanent,” he wrote. “The obstruction of the streets and sidewalks by newsstands is tolerated, I take it, not for the sake of the newsboys nor of the newspapers, but for the convenience of the general public. Newspapers have come to be regarded as necessities of daily urban life.”
Fight over the Chicago White Stockings’ field
Fights over public land for sports franchises didn’t begin with the Bears’ current battle for a new, taxpayer-subsidized stadium.
In 1877, the White Stockings, now the Chicago Cubs, were without a satisfactory home field after the Great Chicago Fire. Once having played at a lakefront field known as Union Base-Ball Grounds, which had burned down, the club wanted to make its return east of Michigan Avenue. It lobbied the council, which passed an ordinance leasing the lot in the area now home to Millennium Park to the team.
Amid debate over whether the council had the authority to enter into such a contract, the mayor, Heath, vetoed the measure. While he said he was OK with ceding that authority to the council, Heath questioned how Chicagoans would benefit from leasing the public land.
“The revenue to be received is merely nominal, and cannot be taken into consideration,” he said.
He said he also had concerns over relinquishing the land to a private entity.
“What may be, and I am satisfied is, to-day a very respectable organization of gentlemen, may next year be controlled and managed by men less entitled to public favors and confidence,” Heath wrote. “It is very easy to part with the possession of this property, it might not be so easy to regain it.”
But the concil and the club owners didn’t surrender.
“The base ball managers of the White Stockings have not yet given up hopes of securing the lake front grounds for ‘78,” the Chicago Daily News reported. “They will endeavor to get the Council to pass the ordinance over the Mayor’s veto.”
Instead of a veto override, the council sweetened the deal — and ended up giving the mayor sole authority to enter into a contract with the ballclub, which he appeared to ultimately do.
The White Stockings went on to win three straight National League championships at Lakefront Park, which, not by coincidence, had one of the shortest outfields in league history. In 1884, the city reclaimed the land, and the White Stockings moved to the West Side, according to the Digital Research Library of Illinois History, a blog run by historian Neil Gale.
Maxwell Street Market corruption scandal
Mayoral vetoes dovetailed with political dogfights, too.
In 1926, the leaders of the Maxwell Street Market — including Ald. Henry Fick, a “gray wolf” from the 20th Ward — were in hot water over widespread corruption allegations.
The market had “become honeycombed with graft and political favoritism” in which the “marketmaster” and Fick were “granting favors to the peddlers and hucksters in return for political activities,” the Daily News reported.
On a mission to clear his name and win re-election, Fick proposed an ordinance calling for an investigation into the allegations against him.
“It is only fair that the parties against whom the charges of graft and mismanagement have been made should be given an opportunity to establish their innocence,” his proposal read.
No surprise, Mayor William E. Dever, a reformert who ousted Fick’s market-master and bolstered the allegations in the first place, vetoed the investigation.
The debacle hamstrung Fick’s political future. After three decades on the council, he was “defeated overwhelmingly” in the February 1927 election, the Daily News reported.
Strong-mayor system takes hold
In the decades to follow, the Chicago machine known today, concentrated in the mayor’s office, started to take root, Simpson said, and the number of vetoes dwindled.
That was in part because, as industry grew in Chicago, there was a larger need for citywide legislation, which the mayor’s office was better equipped to control, Simpson said.
“The aldermen became weaker, and the mayor became more powerful because of his ability to affect elections,” he said.
The strong-mayor system started with Anton Cermak, who was assassinated during his first term. He won election with a single, unified machine behind him, Simpson said.
But the veto wasn’t yet dead, and Cermak issued dozens during his short time. His strong-mayor beginnings carried on to Mayor Edward J. Kelly and were later cemented by Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Though Daley is famous for never losing a vote, the clerk’s records show he issued two small vetoes — one on a 1965 zoning reclassification on the South Side and another to correct a technical error.
Mayor Jane Byrne issued a single veto, according to the clerk’s office.
The city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, issued more vetoes than all modern Chicago mayors combined. His first veto came just 12 days after his inauguration, and he would proceed to ink 43 more in his four years as mayor.
That was as Washington battled a group of mostly white council members known as the Vrydolyak 29, set on stripping Washington of the powers that by this point had been vested in the mayor’s office.
They formed a coalition after what they saw as a declaration of war in Washington’s inaugural speech, in which he famously said “Business as usual will not be accepted.”
Washington’s first veto came after just his first council meeting, at which the Vrydolyak 29 refused to adjourn a meeting at Washington’s order and proceeded to pass their own council rules and committee chairs without him present. The council is, by law, technically allowed to organize itself, but the move flew in the face of tradition.
As the council proceeded, other council members loudly objected.
“If you will allow me to speak,” Ald. Ed Vrydolyak said repeatedly, eventually stating, “I would like to tell all of you that we want Harold here, too, but he ran away.”
At one point, Ald. Marion Volini, a key ally of Washington, pleaded with the council not to move forward with their own, mostly white committee structure: “What is happening here today will dictate what will happen in the city of Chicago for the next four years. We are looking at neighborhood against neighborhood. We are looking at race against race.
“We are making a decision that will make it impossible for the mayor of the city of Chicago to deal with the problems of the city because he will be fighting you, the members of the City Council.”
Vyrdolyak responded: “It has already been done.”
In his message vetoing the committee structure, Washington said committee assignments “should reflect the diversity of the City Council” and that “Black members were intentionally denied participation” in committee membership.
Washington would go on to veto measures as small as setting the time for the next regular council meeting to four different annual budget proposals pitched by Finance Chair Ald. Edward Burke, now a convicted felon.
Richard M. Daley’s one veto
Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a single veto during his 22 years in office — the most recent one in Chicago until two weeks ago — on a measure that would have forced big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to pay non-union workers $10 an hour. The proposed ordinance came after a battle over whether to even allow Wal-Mart, with its reputation for killing local business and underpaying employees, to enter the Chicago market at all. The council allowed it to do so.
Ald. Walter Burnett, one of just two council members still in office who voted on the measure, said he was “shocked” when reminded that he voted against Daley to override his veto. He said it was because of pressure from unions upset after Burnett voted in favor of allowing Chicago’s first Wal-Mart.
“The unions were so upset with me, especially the biggest union — the commercial food workers union, which was very active in politics,” Burnett said. “So I think some of us — to make up with the unions… [were] trying to cut the baby in half.”
Though the ordinance was passed with a veto-proof, 35-member majority, Daley was able to convince three members to flip, including Ald. Shirley Coleman, who was hopeful of getting a Wal-Mart in her ward, according to the Chicago Tribune. The council voted to override the veto but failed.
Today, the role of the veto is still being determined. The City Council, increasingly independent, will likely try to override Johnson’s sole veto — of a proposed ordinance to allow the police to institute snap curfews for kids.
Johnson’s veto message started the same as all have for the past 200 years: “I return herewith, without my approval, an ordinance passed by the City Council,” and continued with his reasoning. “At a time when violent crime continues to trend down… it is critical that we continue our investments in community safety strategies that have a proven track record of success.”
The council had passed the curfew ordinance with 27 votes, seven shy of a veto-proof majority.
