VISIONS OF BERNIE EPTON (1983)

You could slate Attila the Hun or Yuri Andropov as a Democrat and he’d win this election…
—Marty Oberman, Alderman, 43rd Ward (February, 1983)

Epton Before It’s Too Late
—Epton Campaign Slogan

I say to you Mr. Epton: Do you want this job so badly? Are you so singularly minded that you would try to destroy a character?
—Harold Washington (March, 1983)

This town is beset by a wretched plague.
—Leanita McClain, Chicago Tribune (March, 1983)

He comes to me sometimes in my awake dreams, shouting, Shut up, shut up, shut up…

Election night, 1983. Maybe it was exhaustion. Or maybe the campaign had, finally, driven him as bonkers as some Washington partisans accused him of having been all along. On paper, the man was a living miracle. He won 48.6 percent of the vote as a Republican running in Chicago. Of course it wouldn’t have happened if the Democratic nominee hadn’t been you know who. A vote for Bernie Epton was a vote for survival, plain and simple.

Do you want Chicago to become the next Detroit? Cleveland needs a run for its money? St. Louis? I was a punk kid in November of ’83 watching it all on television, but even I knew that Epton was a wild-eyed Republican from another planet. And a Jew no less.

Not to put too fine a point on it but Mother said we were Democrats before we were Jews. And, really, was the world ready for another Jewish savior? Especially one so funny looking? Hard to see Bernie Epton in the role. Epton’s lopsized eggy head one more thing he didn’t want exposed to the world along with his sealed psychiatric records.

But that night in Chicago he was a hangnail from being Mayor. Channel Two kept going back and forth from Harold Washington’s raucous victory party to Epton’s bizarre concession. It was hard then not to see Epton as some kind of weird looking white sacrifice. Shut up, shut up, shut up, he shouted at his supporters. They were cheering him on and Bernie couldn’t take it anymore.

He wanted to talk. He wanted to say something profound. His great-great uncle was a rabbi from Shershov. He had wisdom to dispense. I’m an intellectual, a lakefront liberal Jew for God’s sake. I never meant for it to get so out of hand. I’m only a human being. Who wouldn’t have been seduced by the possibility? God grants you how many chances at immortality? And if there’s somebody somewhere who holds a title more noble than His Honor Mayor of the City of Chicago we never heard of him in Illinois. I didn’t play the race card, other people snatched it out of my hand and laid it down for me. Blame a man for going along for the ride for the good of the city? Win first, heal later. Wasn’t that the plan? If the people in the streets have to call Harold Washington a child molester to stop him from getting elected than they’ve got to call him a child molester. Cicero called Cataline a lot worse in the name of for the good of the Republic. Cicero said he murdered his own son to marry his wife, that he had sex with donkeys, all kinds of unspeakable things. That’s politics.

Now wait, Bernie says to me from beyond the grave. Hold it right there, partner. Buggering donkeys? Anyway, I said tax cheat, I never said child molester. I deplored child molester. Get your facts straight. And I always said, This election is not about colors. If I thought for one moment that this election was about colors, I wouldn’t be standing before you today… My fellow Chicagoans, I will lead you from the desert to the city of hope, to the golden city of your dreams…”

And Newsweek shouted to the country, to the world:

WHAT’S GOING ON IN CHICAGO?

Tax cheat? Child molester? What’s the difference? A con’s a con. Go get ‘em Jew Boy. Italians for Eptonini. Irish for MacEpton. Poles for Eptonizinski. Mexicans for Bernie Cruz (Huh? Nevermind, just go and vote for the white guy.) Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

And I think of you now, delusions thumping down on your head like wet March snow. Jesus or Moses? You weren’t even a very good Judas. You’re a footnote, Bernie. You’ll never be part of the story that gets told and told. The story is Richie and Jane Byrne and how Harold Washington made them both look like the machine hacks they were. It was Harold who had the class, the elocution, the ideas. It was Harold who kept sending the reporters to their dictionaries. Mayor Contretemps. Mayor Hoisted By Your Own Petard. You, Bernie, were Mayor Almost. Mayor Not Quite. Mayor Already Forgotten.

But let’s be honest. Who’s remembered?

And so today that’s all I’m doing. I’m only trying to remember you. And myself. I used to watch TV upside down, my head hanging off the couch, my feet on the wall. I’m an upside down kid and it isn’t the winner I want to watch, it’s not Harold with his salt and pepper hair and his Let’s All Come Together for Chicago grin, it’s you, Bernie. You. On election night, the loser’s party always interests me more, the spirit of chin up, all those dumb balloons hanging up there dreaming of release, of that slow victorious float to the floor. And is there anything so beautifully democratic as a concession speech, even when the conceder’s having a meltdown? Shut up, Shut up. Shut up. I know what you were trying to say, Bernie. That your heart was broken and not only because you lost. The world’s an ugly, ruthless place, you wanted to say. That there isn’t nearly enough love.

Love, you want to sermonize into the microphone, in front of the cameras, in front of the city, Love—

But how to explain this? Who’d believe it? I believe you, Mayor Regrets. Mayor Too Little Too Late. Mayor Tomorrow Tomorrow The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow. Mayor Gimme Another Chance. Amen, Bernie. You and me both. In this, you speak for us all. In this, they should put your name on a plaque somewhere. And so I say, sleep well, Bernie. Your bones in Oakwood Cemetery, 1035 Sixty-seventh Street, in the Jewish section, across the road from Harold’s mausoleum.