Chicago's Mt. Greenwood: Working-class voters in an political identity crisis.
This Chicago South Side neighborhood embodies the resentment of Democrats nationally while embracing them locally.
If you ever visit Chicago and see a cop or a firefighter, there’s a high likelihood that he or she hails from Mt. Greenwood, Beverly, or some of the other surrounding South Side neighborhoods. Donning a Sox hat, which signifies that he or she is NOT an elitist North Sider (aka…a Cubs fan), these salt-of-the-earth, hard-working people who helped build Chicago into the city it is today usually call these neighborhoods, where their turn-of-the-century immigrant families found their way, home.
Far removed from the elite north Cook County suburbs of Winnetka and Wilmette (which I talked about last week) lies the Chicago South Side neighborhood of Mount Greenwood. Not only is this hub of Chicago’s Irish pride geographically removed from the north Cook County mansions lined along Sheridan Road, it’s economically, socially, and politically removed as well.
Over the last two decades, the tables have been turning when it comes to the politics of Mt. Greenwood. To put it in perspective, this is, and always has been, a strong Irish Catholic working-class neighborhood with high union membership. Many of the people here think that landing a union job is just as honorable as graduating with a college degree. It’s the beating heart of Chicago’s middle-class and working-class voice. It’s also a place where Donald Trump won 58.9% of the vote in 2016, and increased his total to 64.1% in 2020.
But why has Mt. Greenwood become so Republican at the federal and statewide level?
After the 2016 election, Ted Gregory of the Chicago Tribune interviewed people in Mt. Greenwood to ask them about their votes for Trump. One of the main issues that popped up was the issue of policing. Slogans like “defund the police” isn’t the best way for Democrats to win votes in a neighborhood that produces many of the city’s police officers (even though the slogan became popularized after Trump’s election). Still, many in these neighborhoods have seen the Democrats as being weak on crime, thus shifting their votes.
Other issues mentioned in the article were immigration, “draining the swamp”, and the economy. But even with this being the case, and Mt. Greenwood residents voting for Trump, it’s still a hard-working middle class neighborhood first and foremost. And while they have moved over to the Republicans for the time being, there is still some hope for the Democrats.
During the 2016 Presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Sanders won 57.6% percent of vote in a “partially open” primary, with Hillary only winning 36.1%. Had there been a blanket primary, where all the candidates regardless of party were on the same ticket, Sanders would have still won with 36.6% of the vote, and Trump only receiving 21.8%. In fact, of the 6,817 votes cast in the Mt. Greenwood precincts, Sanders received 1,011 more votes than Trump.
Fast forward to 2022. While the working-class pride of the neighborhood remained the same, the voters have also started voting for rural and conservative Republicans. Mt. Greenwood residents voted 60% in favor of Amendment 1 of the Illinois Constitution, which made collective bargaining and the right to form a union a constitutional right. However, they also voted for Darren Bailey, the conservative Southern Illinois (not “downstate”) Republican, giving him 64.7% of the vote. Even though Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker supported Amendment 1, and the Republican Party of Illinois opposed it, voters still picked the Republican.
While Mt. Greenwood voters are moving toward Republican candidates at the federal and statewide level, they are still sticking with the Democrats locally, for now. In the 2022 State Senate races, Democrats won 65.5% of the vote in Mt. Greenwood while garnering 68.5% of the State House vote. These numbers not only show that Democrats still have some support in these areas, but that politics are truly local. In fact, two of the elections to watch in Illinois are Illinois House Districts 35 and 35, as they could be closer than any previous election.
One issue that cannot be ignored, however, is race. Mt. Greenwood Elementary School, which is a private school, desegregated in 1968, eleven years after President Eisenhower mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to integrate Little Rock Central High School. The desegregation was stalled by the City of Chicago, and was met with large protests from the Mt. Greenwood community.
During the 1983 Chicago Mayoral election, which saw Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, elected, Ward 19 voted 79.7% for Bernard Epton, whose racially-charged campaign slogan was “Epton for Mayor…before it’s too late.” After the election, 19th Ward Alderman Michael F. Sheahan was part of the "Vrdolyak 29" (a group of aldermen opposing Washington) during the Council Wars, and threatened to switch to the Republican Party himself. Ed Vrdolyak would run for mayor in 1987 under the Illinois Solidarity Party banner (long story) and received 74.1% of Ward 19’s votes against Harold Washington. However, after Washington died in office in 1987, Richard M. Daley won 82.6% of the vote for mayor in the 19th, flipping it back to the Democratic side.
In recent years, Mt. Greenwood has continued to be the center of racially-charged protests. In 2016, Joshua Beal of Indianapolis was shot by off-duty police officers in the Mt. Greenwood. Since then, the neighborhood has become the target of protests by Black Lives Matter and other organizations, mainly because, as was mentioned before, Mt. Greenwood is synonymous with being the home of many of Chicago’s police.
And now we’ve come full circle.
In both of these articles (about the “John Hughes suburbs” and Mt. Greenwood), I’ve tried to point out why Democrats are both gaining and losing votes. Traditional Democratic voters, whose primary focus has been on working-class issues, are leaving while more affluent white voters, usually seeking a socially-liberal but economically-moderate or conservative party, are flocking to the Democrats. It might take a while to see how this plays out, but Chicago is the perfect case study to see the divergence of voters with in Democratic Party.
Something I am curious about is how does Mt. Greenwood compare to another Irish Catholic neighborhood that of Bridgeport which was long the Daley family's stronghold? Bridgeport is of course closer to the Loop and the Daley's of both generations I think would be fair say were and are NOT Bernie Sanders supporters or even adjacent to Bernie. I think the second generation of Daley's were close to both Clinton and Obama.