| ||
Elections in Illinois |
---|
![]() |
The 1924 Cicero, Illinois, municipal elections were elections held in 1924 to select municipal officers in Cicero, Illinois. The elections were notable for the gang-related violence which took place.
The 1924 Cicero municipal elections were of special interest to the Chicago Outfit, as they sought to protect their base of operations both from reformist politicians and from rival gangs. [1] [2]
Incumbent Republican mayor Joseph Z. Klenha and his administration were corrupt, and, before 1924, had run Cicero with little political opposition. [1] Klenha had a bipartisan machine that had run Cicero for three consecutive terms. [3] However, in 1924, the Democratic Party decided it would mount a serious challenge to Klenha in Cicero and run its own slate of candidates. [1] [3]
In 1923 Chicago elected reformist William Emmett Dever as mayor. [2] This led mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone to move the Chicago Outfit's base outside of Chicago's city limits and into the suburban city of Cicero. [2] The gang solidified their power over the suburb's political structure by ousting Republican political boss Eddie Vogel from power. [1]
The Chicago Outfit controlled the rum-running operation supplying Cicero's saloons. [1] Rival gangs, seeking to usurp the Chicago Outfit's local Cicero monopoly, aligned themselves with the Democrats. [1]
The Chicago Tribune declared that the elections were, "marked by shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, and other outlawry unsurpassed in any previous Cook County political contest." [4]
The Chicago Outfit obliged to a request from Klenha for assistance in securing his reelection. [1] In return for securing his reelection, they would be granted an effective immunity from the law in Cicero. [3]
Al Capone brought in more than 200 men from his gang and its allies. [3] He also brought in his own brothers Frank Capone and Ralph Capone, and his cousin Charles Fischetti. [3]
On March 31, the eve of the election, the first person struck was Democratic nominee for town clerk William K. Pflaum, whose campaign offices were ransacked. [3] Pflaum had his face beaten and his wife was thrown against a wall. [3]
To protect the Chicago Outfit's political control of Cicero, the Chicago Outfit unleashed a wave of terror on Cicero on the day of the April 1 election. They sent South Side gang members to the polling booths with submachine guns and sawed-off shotguns to make sure that local residents "voted right". Uncooperative voters were assaulted and blocked from voting. [3] [1] [4] [5] Cooperative voters were allowed by them to illegally cast multiple ballots. [3]
Frank Capone led an attack on an opponent's campaign headquarters, ransacking his office and assaulting several campaign workers. [5]
An election official named Joseph Price was beaten, then held gagged and bound. [3]
Rudolph Hurt, [3] the Democratic challenger for mayor, saw his campaign headquarters shot-up. [4]
The Democratic challenger for City Clerk was pistol-whipped in front of his wife, his children, and many supporters. [4]
Cars filled with gunmen roamed the town's streets. [1]
A Cicero police officer was disarmed and terribly battered. [1] [3]
Some voters were shot or cut to death. [2] [3]
Polling places were raided and ballots were forcibly ripped from the hands of voters by thugs. [1]
Campaigners for both parties were beaten by roaming groups of "sluggers" in the streets. [4] A Democratic worker named Stanley Stenkievitch was kidnapped, blindfolded, and brought to a Chicago basement where he was held as a captive until after the Cicero polls closed. [1] [4] Up to twenty men were similarly kidnapped, driven to a basement of a plumbing store in Chicago and chained to pipes and posts. [4] One Democratic campaign worker name Michael Gavin was shot in both legs and detained with eight other Democratic campaign workers in the basement of a mob-owned hotel in Chicago, only to be released when Election Day was over. [3] [5]
By the afternoon, election officials had sent out requests for help bringing order to Cicero. A Cook County judge named Edmund K. Jarecki deputized seventy Chicago police officers, five squads from the detective's bureau, and nine squads of motorized police to bring order to Cicero. [4] [3]
At one point Frank Capone, Al Capone, Dave Hedlin, and Charles Fischetti were spotted by a squad car carrying uniformed police and detectives who leapt out of their car with their firearms drawn. [1] [2] [3] Frank Capone began firing at them, and in the ensuing gunfight they shot and killed Frank Capone in the street. [2] [1] [3] Hedlin was wounded, Fischetti fled and later surrendered, while Al Capone escaped. [1] [3]
![]() | |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
|
Incumbent mayor Klenha was the Chicago Outfit's favored candidate. [6] Klenha was challenged by Democrat Rudolph Hurt. [3] Klenha won reelection.
The Chicago Outfit succeeded in securing a favorable result in the municipal elections. [1] Cicero would remain under their control and remained their headquarters until after Al Capone was sent to prison in 1931 for tax evasion. [1]
Klenha's Republican machine remained in power until the 1932 Cicero municipal elections, in which they were eviscerated by what the Chicago Tribune dubbed, "an outpouring of Democratic votes such as had never been approached in the town before." [4]
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
Vincent Drucci, also known as "The Schemer", was an American mobster during Chicago's Prohibition era who was a member of the North Side Gang, Al Capone's best known rivals. A friend of Dean O'Banion, Drucci succeeded him by becoming co-leader. He is the only American organized crime boss to have been killed by a policeman.
William Emmett Dever was the mayor of Chicago from 1923 to 1927. He had previously served as a judge and before that an alderman. As an alderman and judge he would work to become the Democratic candidate for mayor for over two decades.
Frank Ralph Nitto, known as Frank Nitti, was an Italian-American organized crime figure based in Chicago. The first cousin and bodyguard of Al Capone, Nitti was in charge of all money flowing through the operation. Nitti later succeeded Capone as acting boss of the Chicago Outfit.
The Chicago Outfit is an Italian-American organized crime syndicate or crime family based in Chicago, Illinois, that originated in the city's South Side in 1910. It is part of the larger Italian-American Mafia.
Chicago, Illinois, has a long history of organized crime and was famously home to the American mafia figure Al Capone. This article contains a list of major events related to organized crime.
Roger Touhy was an Irish American mob boss and prohibition-era bootlegger from Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. He is best remembered for having been framed for the 1933 faked kidnapping of gangster John "Jake the Barber" Factor, a brother of cosmetics manufacturer Max Factor Sr. Despite numerous appeals and at least one court ruling freeing him, Touhy spent 26 years in prison. Touhy was released in November 1959, and murdered by the Chicago Outfit less than a month later.
The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was an Irish-Polish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also known as the Chicago Outfit, the crime syndicate of Italian-Americans Johnny Torrio and Al Capone.
Salvatore "Frank" Capone was an Italian-American mobster who participated in the attempted takeover of Cicero, Illinois by the Chicago Outfit. He worked in the businesses with his brothers Al Capone and Ralph Capone.
Franklin Rio also known as "Frank Rio" and "Frank Cline" was a member of Al Capone's Chicago-based criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit. He was also an alleged gunman in the famous 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Rocco Fischetti, also known as "Rocky" and "Ralph Fisher", was a Chicago mobster with the Chicago Outfit criminal organization who ran many illegal gambling operations. Fischetti also accompanied singer Frank Sinatra on two trips to Havana, Cuba.
Jeremiah J. Horan was an organized crime figure and President of the Building Service Employees International Union from 1927 until his death in 1937. Although praised by newspapers for reducing the level of overt violence and graft which plagued the union under his predecessor, William Quesse, Horan nonetheless still engaged in bribery, extortion, physical intimidation, and other crimes, and permitted George Scalise to enter and rise within the organization. Horan established the kickback scheme whereby Scalise would eventually loot the union treasury of millions of dollars in member dues.
Charles Dean O'Banion was an American mobster who was the main rival of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone during the brutal Chicago bootlegging wars of the 1920s. The newspapers of his day made him better known as Dion O'Banion, although he never went by that first name. He led the North Side Gang until 1924, when he was shot and killed, reportedly by Frankie Yale, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi.
The Chicago mayoral election of 2007 saw incumbent mayor Richard M. Daley win a landslide victory, garnering a 51-point margin of victory.
The 1927 Chicago mayoral election was held on April 5, 1927. Democratic incumbent William Emmett Dever was defeated by Republican candidate William Hale Thompson, who had served as mayor from 1915 to 1923. Former health commissioner John Dill Robertson, who had been allied with the ex-mayor, broke with Thompson to run on his own and received more than five percent of the vote. It remains as of 2019 the last Chicago mayoral election not won by a Democrat.
The 1931 Chicago mayoral election was held to elect the Mayor of Chicago. Former Cook County Board of Commissioners President Anton Cermak defeated incumbent mayor William Hale Thompson by a 17-point margin of victory.
The Chicago mayoral election of 1975 was held on April 1, 1975. Democratic Party incumbent Richard J. Daley was elected to a record sixth term as mayor by a landslide 59% margin over Republican nominee John J. Hoellen Jr. Only one other individual has since matched Daley's feat of winning six Chicago mayoral elections. This was the first Chicago mayoral election since the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
The 1955 Chicago mayoral election saw Democrat Richard J. Daley win election to his first term as mayor by a ten-point margin over Republican Robert E. Merriam. This was the narrowest margin of victory of any of Daley's mayoral races.
The Cook County, Illinois, general election was held on November 3, 2020. Elections were held for Clerk of the Circuit Court, State's Attorney, Cook County Board of Review district 1, three seats on the Water Reclamation District Board, and judgeships on the Circuit Court of Cook County.