Corruption In Illinois Didn't Start With Chicago, But Chicago Started With Fraud
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A new book about Illinois politics shows its not-so-proud tradition of corruption dates back further than you might have guessed.
Maybe it's in the DNA of Chicago and Illinois. University of Illinois at Chicago political science professor and former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson said corruption in the Land of Lincoln can be found even further back in history than the city of Chicago.
"Part of its back when we were a territory, and they were selling twice the Illinois and Michigan Canal," he said. "For Chicago, it gets its start with the first election in Chicago."
In 1833, the first elections ever held in Chicago also were rife with fraud, according to Simpson.
"They met in a tavern, of course. Where else would they meet? And in the first vote of whether or not we should be a town, we voted 12-1 to do so, but two of the voters were ineligible," he said. "When we voted to elect the first town council, there were 29 votes, but there weren't 29 people living in Chicago, so we started Chicago with two fraudulent elections."
Simpson and freelance writer Thomas Gradel have published a new book called "Corrupt Illinois: Patronage, Cronyism, and Criminality," which is the subject of this weekend's "At Issue" program, airing Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9FM.
