The year the party machines broke
2018 marks the demise of the big-city Democratic machine.
For centuries, those storied machines dominated America’s largest cities, driving volunteers through neighborhoods and delivering voters to the polls.
But for the last several years, those machines have come under intense pressure, from a rising generation of progressive and minority activists and from rampant scandals of corruption and rot — twin factors that are driving the demise of the last of the country’s powerful political bosses.
The days of Boss Tweed running New York City from Tammany Hall, or James Michael Curley in Boston, or even the Daley family in Chicago are long gone. Still, for the past few decades their successor organizations have dominated big-city politics.
Until now.
In Philadelphia, Rep. Robert Brady (D), who heads the city’s Democratic Party apparatus, announced last year he would retire. Brady, 73, said his departure had nothing to do with a federal investigation into payments his campaign allegedly made to a challenger several years ago. But several of Brady’s close allies have been charged in the case.
Where Brady’s organization held a lock on white ethnic voters, African-American turnout was the domain of former Rep. Chaka Fattah (D), who held the city’s other seat in Congress. Fattah resigned in 2016 after being convicted of 23 counts of fraud, racketeering and corruption.
In New York, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D) ran the Queens County Democratic Party’s massive turnout machine, controlling the patronage jobs that came with local elected offices.
Crowley, 56, ran headlong into the excitement and enthusiasm that drove turnout among minority voters, and he lost his primary this year to 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-time candidate who painted her rival as a staid fixture of the past.
In Chicago, state House Speaker Mike Madigan (D) has held sway over city and state politics for decades. But even his power is coming under fire, after allegations that several members of his political organization had sexually harassed volunteers and campaign workers over the years.
And on Tuesday, another political machine showed its vulnerability. In Boston, City Council member Ayanna Pressley ousted 10-term Rep. Michael Capuano (D) in the Democratic primary. Capuano, 66, had support from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (D) and most of the city’s prominent labor unions, who hold the levers of power.
Politicians and historians who have studied political machines say the old way of doing business is dying for four reasons. The number of patronage jobs, once a key lever machines used to ensure loyalty, has fallen dramatically. The big cities where those machines operate are changing demographically, as ethnic white populations dwindle and minorities rise. The internet has democratized information, which robs machines of their hold on local offices. And, ironically, opposition to President Trump has infused an energy and enthusiasm among younger Democratic voters tired of the old ways of doing political business.
“I think the trend of declining machines is one that goes back a long time, but I do think recent shifts make it even harder for machines to survive,” said Eric Schickler, a political scientist at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied party bosses and machines.
Patronage jobs were once the hallmark of a political machine’s power. Boss Tweed in the 19th century stocked New York government jobs with friends and allies, and in return those workers — from garbagemen to clerks — voted for their patrons.
But good-government reforms have dramatically shrunk the number of jobs that any political boss can fill. In the 1970s, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley could hand out as many as 35,000 jobs, according to Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
