Ann Kohler reports
It's a black monday, as far as Chicago's Hispanic community is concerned - one week to the day that their heroine, one-time rising political star and City Treasurer Miriam Santos, was removed from office by a federal jury's verdict.
State and local pols have gathered at a Humboldt Park taco haven for a prayer service and rally in Santos' honor, offering her condolences and support. But the deposed treasurer is nowhere to be found.
In fact, the usually feisty Santos has yet to make a peep since she was convicted May 3 on charges of extortion and bribery for illegal fundraising efforts. So her political brethren has decided to speak on her behalf.
At first, the TV cameras make them cautious. They say that supporting Santos is not synonymous with bucking the machine - even though that's exactly what she did for more than a decade.
But then, State Rep. Edgar Lopez (D-Chicago), broaches the subject that's been on everyone's mind since Santos' indictment in January.
"It's very ironic that Miriam was convicted in such a short time. Why is it that the top Hispanic Puerto Rican gets indicted and convicted within a few months?" he asks.
"Daley," heckles a table of Santos devotees.
And in one word, they've summed up the culmination of Santos' often public disagreement with Mayor Richard M. Daley and intimated a revenge that few before have dared to name. They've sowed the seeds of a conspiracy theory by explaining how such a promising career as Santos' can come to such an untimely end: When Daley needs to rid himself of the politically mutinous, he, like his father before him, wields a Machiavellian sword. And does them in. Of course, City Hall has a different interpretation. "The U.S. Attorney brought the indictment, and she was convicted by a jury. That has nothing to do with this office," says Daley spokesman John Camper. "In fact, the mayor expressed sadness at the time she was convicted."
Perhaps Daley was a bit misty. What's easy to forget is that, at one time, he and Santos were the closest of allies. In 1989, a newly elected Daley brought her on board, first as part of his transition team, and then appointing her treasurer.
But within that first year, things quickly began to crumble, and the quarreling between Daley and his protŽgŽ began. Santos took Daley to task, publicly, after his then-aide, now CTA president, Frank Kruesi, pressured her to hire Daley operative James Stack as a deputy treasurer. She said Stack wasn't qualified, cried patronage and fired him. Stack was later investigated for supervising an admitted ghost payroller in 1987. The public firing didn't sit well with Daley, especially considering Santos' increasing popularity, and the gap between them continued to grow.
In 1991, their breakup was sealed when Santos exposed Daley for trying to remove her from city pension boards when she asked the Illinois Legislature to intervene. From then on they were enemies, and for years after that, she was the voice of Daley opposition, the source reporters would call when they needed to fill in the blank with an anti-Daley quote.
The Daleys have never taken well to opponents - or potential challengers. And the historical mechanism for keeping contenders down, as detailed by Mike Royko's book "Boss," was simple - always to remove or discredit anyone before they rise too high.
"It seems that anybody who has a fight with Daley ends up convicted of something," wrote Tribune columnist and Royko successor John Kass the day after the verdict.
Like the table of hecklers, Kass is one of the few who'll say it out loud. He has covered City Hall for as long as anyone can remember and is quick to note that revenge, Daley style, is frequently served cold, years after it is expected.
Of course, Santos' lawyers didn't miss the chance to use her image as the people's machine-buster of choice to gain credibility with the federal jury.
"She doesn't put up with any nonsense or any people who aren't doing their job," defense attorney Chris Gair argued during opening statements in late April. Throughout her brisk, three-week trial, he harped on that point.
"She's sick and tired of slick politicians... She's not slick."
To a degree, this rabble-rousing persona smells like schtick. Gair continually portrayed her as a self-styled politician, spinning the tale of a young Santos fighting her way through rough neighborhoods with nothing but a metal lunchbox as a weapon.
Santos' background does suggest a kind of up-by-the-bootstraps mentality. She was raised in Gary, Ind., and worked at factory jobs to get through college. The daughter of Puerto Rican transplants, she earned a political science degree from DePaul University, graduated law school there and later snagged an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. She did legal work and lobbying for several community groups, worked on Democratic stalwart Adlai Stevenson III's failed gubernatorial campaign, served as a Cook County assistant state's attorney under Daley and was a top litigator for Illinois Bell.
Then came the appointment to the treasurer's office, where she oversaw an average yearly investment of $2.5 billion in city revenues.
Considered the next big thing in the Illinois Democratic Party, she even flirted with the idea of replacing Paul Simon in the U.S. Senate when he retired and in 1995 was rumored to be considering a mayoral run. In her three successful re-election bids for treasurer, she campaigned on the conceit that she was independent of Daley.
But by September of last year, during her doomed campaign against incumbent Attorney General Jim Ryan, it all began to crumble. One afternoon, two FBI agents knocked on her office door with the news that they were investigating her for campaigning on city time and for threatening to cut off financial contracts from firms that did business with her office but failed to contribute. And although she maintained her innocence throughout the investigation and the trial, that day in September eventually would mean the end of her career as she knew it.
But Eddie Taylor was not so quick to judge.
A preacher and master's student in evangelism, the jury foreman in Santos' trial was the last holdout for acquittal. Once persuaded, the lone believer in Santos' innocence was forced to read the guilty verdict.
"He was the last one to change his mind, and he was even the foreman," recalls fellow juror Clay Quinn of his colleague's experience. Taylor will not talk about the trial now that it is over. But Quinn, who works for a clipping service, says most of the jury agreed on one thing: "We all thought the people in her office had it in for her," he says of the nine treasurer's employees the prosecution called to testify against Santos.
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.