



Has the political demise of Cook County State's Atty. Jack O'Malley been prematurely exaggerated?

Ever since the politically ambitious Republican first brought the sexual-misconduct and obstruction of justice case against U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds last year, there has been a media drumbeat that O'Malley was way out on a limb and that lead prosecutor Andrea Zopp was sawing it off.

A co-worker approached me in the newsroom and declared that the case-and O'Malley's career along with it-was headed down the tubes. A tabloid pundit who has reason to resent prosecutors suggested the case might backfire even if Reynolds is convicted. A black defense lawyer/TV analyst predicted that O'Malley will feel a backlash from African-American voters because of the Reynolds prosecution.

These armchair experts have it figured out, and the case hasn't even gone to the jury.

So, while the media has a habit of jumping to conclusions, I'm willing to await the verdict and see how the politics play out. I'm skeptical that this case will be O'Malley's undoing, regardless of the outcome, for several reasons.

First, there is the controversy over whether the case against Reynolds represents a wrongful prosecution.

Much has been made of the fact that the alleged statutory rape by Reynolds of a sexually precocious 16-year-old Beverly Heard was a consensual act; that it is a crime often committed in our society but seldom prosecuted; and that the case squandered law enforcement resources that should be applied toward more serious crimes.

Well, if that is the standard, then let's never charge another alderman, congressman or school board chairman with income tax evasion. Tell the police to stop handing out tickets if they can't nail every traffic scofflaw. And don't expel kids from school for cheating.

Prosecutors get paid to prosecute. By the time this trial winds up, most people will believe that they know what happened between Reynolds and Heard. Moreover, the question of wrongful prosecution in the Jeanine Nicarico murder case haunts the career of former DuPage County State's Atty. Jim Ryan, but it didn't prevent him from getting elected Illinois attorney general last year.

Second, there is the contention that a monolithic black vote will coalesce against O'Malley when he runs for re-election next year as payback for his persecution of a prominent black.

This assumes that Reynolds, a Democrat who represents the South Side and south suburbs, is a leader and a role model in the African-American community. He is neither, and trial testimony has made it graphically clear why not. Reynolds might be a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar, but there won't be any preachers standing up in pulpits this Sunday urging young men to be like Mel.

Reynolds wasn't a favorite of the black political establishment. Many on the South Side aren't unhappy to see Reynolds get his comeuppance, and they are more interested in who will replace him as the 2nd District representative than who is state's attorney.

It's true that O'Malley got a whopping 31.5 percent of the vote in 19 majority-black wards in 1992, three times what a GOP candidate typically receives. But O'Malley could have ceded all those votes to his opponent and still would have been re-elected in a landslide.

That is to say, if O'Malley gave every one of his votes from those 19 wards to sound-alike Democratic challenger Patrick O'Connor, the 40th Ward alderman, the Republican would have won with 56 percent of the countywide vote instead of the 62 percent he received.

Which brings me to the final, and most compelling, reason to be cautious in forecasting O'Malley's political demise.

Jack O'Malley runs under a GOP label, but he has been the Democratic organization candidate for state's attorney since he first ran in 1990. And in Cook County, that is more meaningful than uninformed speculation about the outcome of a sensational trial.

Unless Mayor Richard Daley and the 30 or so Democratic ward bosses-blacks as well as whites-who supported O'Malley in the past decide to dump him for someone else, the Republican will be a solid bet for re-election next year.

Since a Reynolds verdict hasn't been rendered and O'Malley's Democratic challenger is unknown, all we have is history to help predict the future. The record shows that Daley et al. instructed their Democratic precinct captains to push Republican O'Malley.

Daley's ancestral home, the 11th Ward, gave O'Malley 49 percent of its vote in 1992. Thirteen other reliable Machine wards on the Southwest and Northwest Sides combined to give O'Malley 63 percent of their total vote.

The key wards and O'Malley's share of their vote were: the 13th Ward of Illinois House Democratic Leader Michael Madigan, 61 percent; the 14th Ward of Chicago City Council Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke, 54 percent; the 19th Ward of Cook County Assessor Thomas Hynes, 66 percent; the 23rd Ward of U.S. Rep. William Lipinski, 63 percent; the 33rd Ward of Ald. Richard Mell, 57 percent; and the 45th Ward of Cook County Democratic Chairman Thomas Lyons, 69 percent.

O'Malley carried 23 out of 50 city wards, including O'Connor's (52 percent), and swept the six North Side lakefront wards with two-thirds of their total vote. He won 49 percent of the vote in Democratic Chicago.

In the Republican suburbs, which now cast as many ballots as the city, O'Malley iced the cake with 74 percent of the vote.

The Reynolds saga could cost O'Malley, but probably only if the Chicago Democratic organization abandons him.

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