By Cyryl Jakubowski
It sure is beginning to look like an old fashioned, backyard cockfight between Alderman Bernard “Berny” Stone and state Senator Ira Silverstein in the race for 50th Ward Democratic Committeeman. We’re talking two roosters, one old skool and one hip hop, with Sweeney Todd-sharp claws ready to fight and tear at each other’s feathers for a non-paying political post on the city’s Far North Side. Figuratively speaking, mind you. I’m sure neither would like to be compared to fighting roosters.
But this time it’s personal, its about power and control, and its about what the future holds for Berny Stone.
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Stone, who is 80 and still kicking (and thank God for that), has had the committeeman post since 1998 and is one of the council’s graybeards with more than 30 years as an alderman. Only Ed Burke’s tenure has been longer.
His political days, however, may be numbered. Last spring, Naisy Dolar took him to a runoff, which he barely survived.
“After the last aldermanic election, I went to the alderman and told him that things have to change,” says Silverstein, who had supported the alderman and was even, by some accounts, a protege of sorts. “It is a ward that is very evenly divided and he only won by 661 votes. And he said that this is not a time for change, and I said there should be change, so that’s why I’m running.”
But Stone says Silverstein has other motives. “I think it is stemming from certain aspirations for power. For certain deals he’s made with other people who aspire for power, the congresswoman, Ms. Dolar, who sought to unseat me and wasn’t successful.”
And now it’s a cockfight.
STONE: “If Silverstein had come to me and been active in the Democratic organization and come to me and ask me for the job and if he had shown an interest in it, then maybe I would have sent it over to him. But he went behind my back and tried to steal it instead of coming like a man and that’s why I’m not turning it over to him.”
SILVERSTEIN: “I spoke with alderman Stone before, and I announced and that’s what I did. If he thinks that I should have gone earlier then that’s in his mind, but I did talk to him before announcing the candidacy.”
STONE: “Yeah, after trying to steal my precinct captains, and after he told everyone else, then he came to me. I helped this kid from the very first day that he came into politics and this is the way
he repays me?”
SILVERSTEIN: “He was never my political sponsor and he never got me involved in politics. Late Judge Herman Knell did.”
STONE: “Herman Knell was my close friend, and him and I were the ones who really supported him in his first run. Herman Knell was the one who convinced me to help Ira Silverstein get started and we did and this is how we got repaid? Herman’s gotta be twirling in his grave when he sees Ira turning on me.”
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Hurt egos aside, there is still the question of what each plans to do with the job.
Silverstein says his priorities are voter registration and turnout. “My job is to build a political base and to get people involved, which, I think, hasn’t been done for a while. I think the organization has been kind of stagnant for a while and I tried to improve it for a while but nobody wants to listen, so that’s why I’m doing it.”
(There are 23,571 registered voters in the 50th ward, according to Chicago Board of Elections. Stone won his seat last time around with 5,965 votes, to Dolar’s 5,304, for a total of 11,269 votes cast.)
“We’ve registered a tremendous amount of new citizens and we tried to bring in new people to the ward organization,” Stone says. “There is no such thing as patronage anymore, so I don’t know how he intends to do better than I, but he certainly had an opportunity to do so when he was a part of our organization.”
Stone says it’s Silverstein whose outreach is lacking.
“During the time he was in our ward headquarters, he never had regular hours,” he charges. “He doesn’t have regular hours now for the senatorial seat. I don’t know if he understands that you have to see the people. He puts out literature that he cares and listens, but if you really listen, then you have to have hours in order to see the people.”
Stone told me that if I dialed the phone number for Silverstein’s Chicago office right then and there, the phone would ring in Springfield and I’d get a voice mail message. He was right. But Silverstein says that he does, in fact, keep office hours.
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Silverstein isn’t the only one who’s turned on Stone. Mayor Daley himself, who rallied his troops on Stone’s behalf in the last election, is backing Silverstein, apparently as punishment for the alderman’s opposition to the mayor’s budget.
That would seem to seal the deal for Silverstein, but maybe Stone has one more win left in him. “[Dolar] was unsuccessful and he will be unsuccessful. Maybe they will follow her into oblivion.”
Posted on January 30, 2008