Posted on 06/06/2006 12:21:34 PM PDT by george76
From the time Mayor Richard Daley took office, dozens of city department managers gathered before elections at the plumbers' union hall or other sites to get campaign marching orders from top mayoral aides, a former Daley loyalist testified Monday in the City Hall corruption trial.
Donald Tomczak, a longtime Water Department official and veteran political operative, said he then would summon his top deputies to his office in the Jardine Filtration Plant to tell them which candidates would get help from hundreds of blue-collar city water workers.
After elections, Daley aide Robert Sorich fielded requests for promotions from the political workers and tried to accommodate them, Tomczak told jurors.
When Sorich rewarded his effective campaign workers by advancing their careers, Tomczak said, he thanked Sorich.
But Tomczak said he also made sure to complain to Sorich when his campaign troops did not get what they wanted: "Robert, how can I keep this thing together if I can't get these people promoted?"
Tomczak is the latest in a growing line of former Daley administration officials to detail systematic patronage hiring in the federal trial of Sorich and ex-city officials Timothy McCarthy, John Sullivan and Patrick Slattery.
Prosecutors say the four were involved in a scheme to rig hiring and promotions in favor of applicants endorsed by the mayor's office, including pro-Daley political workers, in violation of a federal court decree restricting patronage.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
As part of his guilty plea last year, Tomczak agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
In exchange, he will be sentenced to 4 years in prison instead of receiving a longer term.
Corruption in Chicago politics??? I shant believe it.
Although Daley has long insisted that machine politics in Chicago are dead, Tomczak described a Daley campaign organization in which high-ranking city officials doubled as political coordinators.
Promotions for water workers were based more on precinct-by-precinct election results than actual job performance, Tomczak said.
Tomczak, 70, provided jurors with a tale of his lifetime journey through Chicago politics and City Hall--from his first public job as a Water Department laborer to his admission last year that city trucking contractors gave him almost $400,000 in bribes.
Tomczak testified, he was the leader of between 100 and 250 department workers who served in his political army.
The troops were divided into three groups--black, white and Latino--because "areas that we worked in were diverse areas. We needed groups to go in and talk to the various people."
It would also be sweet to feel an odd sensation against the right side of my butt, as if I was sitting on a big bump on my chair, and reach back and find that my wallet had magically been stuffed with $50,000 in hundreds.
The two events are about as likely to occur.
I call "Culture of Corruption"!!!
I will always be grateful to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for bringing to the forefront of political discourse a greater degree of scrutiny in regard to this culture of corruption.
Sorry. I guess you called it first. I read the article before I read your headline.
I am shocked, corruption in Chicago politics. No it can't be. (SARCASM OFF)
I am 100% certain that you could replace the names of Chicago and Dailey with many other Democrat controlled cities and Mayors, SF - Brown, especially come to mind.
I'm amazed he's still cooperating with the feds, and not stuffed into a car trunk somewhere full of bullet holes.
From 1989 until he left city government in 2003, Tomczak said his campaign group took orders from Timothy Degnan, Victor Reyes and John Doerrer.
Degnan was Daley's first Office of Intergovernmental Affairs director,...
Intergovernmental Affairs, which Tomczak repeatedly referred to in his testimony as "the patronage office."...
Directed by that trio, Tomczak said, he deployed water workers to help Al Gore for president, Glenn Poshard for governor, Rahm Emanuel for Congress,...
Corruption in Cook County politics? Say it ain't so!
I worked for Nixon-Lodge in '59 and '60, in the Arlington Heights suburb, and we saw it all the time, especially after tens-of-thousands of dead voters, voted in the city.
RULE 1: Corruption is endemic to all politics, everywhere. RULE 2: You can't change rule 1.
Just think about this..a democrat would lie, steal, and cheat at politics and elections? In Chicago? Who would have thunk it?
Former Demonrat Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of MD, William Darnold Schaeffer, was a great admirer of Daley's father. Yes, this kind of corruption is typical of every large Demonrat city.
do I really have to say it???
Term Limits.
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