1979 election Months after being fired as head of the consumer affairs department, Byrne challenged Bilandic in the 1979 Democratic mayoral primary, the real contest in the heavily Democratic Chicago. Officially announcing her mayoral campaign in August 1977, Byrne partnered with Chicago journalist and political consultant Don Rose, who served as her campaign manager. At first, political observers believed she had little chance of winning. A memorandum inside the Bilandic campaign said it should portray her as "a shrill, charging, vindictive person—and nothing makes a woman look worse". Nevertheless, the January
Chicago Blizzard of 1979 paralyzed the city and caused Bilandic to be seen as an ineffective leader. Bilandic's ineffective leadership caused
Jesse Jackson to endorse Byrne. Even many Republican voters voted in the Democratic primary to help beat Bilandic. Infuriated voters on the
North Side and
Northwest Side retaliated against Bilandic for the Democratic Party's slating of only
South Side candidates for the mayor, clerk, and treasurer (the outgoing city clerk, John C. Marcin, was from the Northwest Side). These four factors combined to give Byrne a 51% to 49% victory over Bilandic in the primary. Byrne outperformed Bilandic in more than half of wards. She performed particularly strongly in Black-majority wards, which she swept. While Byrne had run against the Democratic political machine's candidate (Bilandic) in the primary, and her win over him harmed the machine's reputation for electoral strength, she had not run on any promise of eliminating the machine once mayor.
The New York Times noted shortly after her primary election victory of Bilandic,
Tenure Leadership and general politics listing Byrne as the city's mayor Byrne made inclusive moves as mayor such as shepherding the hiring of the city's first
African-American and female school superintendent
Ruth B. Love, and she was the first mayor to recognize the
gay community. Byrne helped to make Chicago more welcoming to the gay community. Byrne began to collaborate with aldermen
Edward M. Burke and
Edward Vrdolyak, whom, during her 1979 campaign, she had denounced as an "evil cabal". , photographed circa 1981 Byrne and the Cook County Democratic Party endorsed Senator
Ted Kennedy for president in the
1980 Democratic presidential primaries, but incumbent President
Jimmy Carter won the Illinois Democratic Primary and even carried Cook County and the city of Chicago. Byrne's endorsement of Kennedy was later considered detrimental because of her controversial tenure, and Kennedy's loss in the city was a key moment in the
1980 Democratic Party presidential primaries because of Chicago's role in delivering his brother
John F. Kennedy the
1960 Democratic presidential nomination. When Byrne and Kennedy walked in the annual
Saint Patrick's Day parade they were sometimes booed by hecklers. Simultaneously, Byrne and the Cook County Democratic Party's candidate in
the 1980 election for
Cook County State's Attorney (chief local prosecutor), 14th Ward Alderman
Edward M. Burke, lost in the Democratic primary to Richard M. Daley, and Daley then unseated GOP incumbent Bernard Carey in the general election. The
Chicago Sun Times reported that Byrne's enemies publicly mocked her as "that crazy broad" and "that skinny
bitch" and worse.
Appointments and personnel In her first year in office, significant instances of turnover in prominent city positions led critics to accuse Byrne of running a "revolving door administration". Days after her inauguration, O'Grady resigned. She appointed
Samuel Nolan interim superintendent in his place, Nolan was the first African American to serve as head of the
Chicago Police Department. In January 1980,
Richard J. Brzeczek took office as permanent superintendent, having been appointed by Byrne.
Arts During her campaign for mayor, Byrne promised to provide strong support to the
performing arts. Byrne also allowed Chicago to be used as a filming location, pushing for such movies as
The Blues Brothers to be shot in Chicago. In her 2004 memoir, Byrne reflected on her decision to move into Cabrini–Green: "How could I put Cabrini on a bigger map? ... Suddenly I knew—I could move in there." Hours after Byrne moved into the housing project, police raided the building and arrested eleven street gang members who they had learned through informants were planning to have a shootout in the mayor's building later that evening. Byrne described her first night at Cabrini-Green as "lovely" and "very quiet". She stayed at Cabrini-Green for three weeks to bring attention to the housing project's crime and infrastructure problems. Her stay there ended on April 18, 1981, following an Easter celebration at the project which drew protests and demonstrators who claimed Byrne's move to the project was just a publicity stunt.
Finances One of the crises that Byrne faced in her first year as mayor was a major shortage of funds in both the
municipal government and by the
Chicago Board of Education (the city's school board). This arose due to questionable past borrowing practices, and necessitated both budget cuts and further borrowing to resolve.
Handgun ordinance In January 1982, Byrne proposed a controversial ordinance effectively banning new handgun registration. The ordinance was created to put a freeze on the number of legally owned
handguns in Chicago and to require owners of handguns to re-register them annually. The ordinance was approved by a 6–1 vote in February 1982. The ordinance was struck down by the Supreme Court in the 2010 case
McDonald v. City of Chicago.
Hosting of special events Byrne also used special events, such as
ChicagoFest, to revitalize
Navy Pier and the downtown
Chicago Theatre. ChicagoFest had first been held the year prior to her election. One of Byrne's first efforts as mayor had been an attempt to cancel future editions of the event. But, after facing complaints from citizens and unions, Byrne allowed the festival to continue as an annual event, and formally renamed it "Mayor Jane M. Byrne's ChicagoFest". Festivals inaugurated during her tenure included
Taste of Chicago. In 1980, Byrne announced that the city would host a
Championship Auto Racing Teams "Indy Car" automobile race at
Grant Park on the 4th of July weekend of the following year. However, after facing criticism, Byrne quickly canceled these plans.
Labor In her first year in office, she faced strikes by labor unions as the city's transit workers, public school teachers, and firefighters all went on strike.
Transportation There had been plans under Daley and Bilandic to demolish
the Loop elevated rail and replace it with a subway. Byrne appointed a commission that ultimately recommended that the Loop should be retained along with modernization. In 1981, Byrne disbanded the
Chicago Transit Authority's dedicated security force, transferring its duties instead to the
Chicago Police Department.
Other matters In November 1981, the Chicago City Council approved a new
redistricting map for the city's aldermanic wards which was drawn by Byrne's administration. The
U.S. Court of Appeals would find, in 1984, that the map was in violation of the federal
Voting Rights Act of 1965. On November 11, 1981,
Dan Goodwin, who had successfully climbed the
Sears Tower the previous spring, battled for his life on the side of the
John Hancock Center. William Blair, Chicago's fire commissioner, had ordered the
Chicago Fire Department to stop Goodwin by directing a full-power fire hose at him and by using fire axes to break window glass in Goodwin's path. Mayor Byrne rushed to the scene and ordered the fire department to stand down. Then, through a smashed out a 38th floor window, Byrne told Goodwin, who was hanging from the building's side a floor below, that though she did not agree with his climbing of the John Hancock Center, she certainly opposed the fire department knocking him to the ground below. Byrne then allowed Goodwin to continue his climb unimpeded to the top. Byrne also initiated the idea for creating a unified lakefront museum campus, which was implemented subsequent to her tenure as
Museum Campus, as well as the idea of renovating
Navy Pier, also implemented subsequent to her tenure. Compared to the 1979 mayoral election in which Byrne received 59.3% of the African-American vote, Byrne had lost half of that vote. Byrne was defeated in the 1983 Democratic primary for mayor by
Harold Washington, also an anti-machine politician and African-American congressman; the younger Daley ran a close third. Washington won the Democratic primary with just 36% of the vote; Byrne had 33%. Washington went on to win the general election. When the survey was limited only to mayors that were in office post-1960, the results saw Byrne ranked the fourth-worst. ==Later career==