Pineapple Primary - The Competing Factions

The Competing Factions

Chicago Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson was the leader of one faction of the state Republican Party. Leading the opposition to the Thompson camp was former Governor and incumbent U. S. Senator Charles Deneen.Thompson and Deneen had been rivals for control of the Illinois Republican Party, and the bad blood between the two politicians dated at least as far back as the 1904 state convention.

Neither Thompson nor Deneen themselves were standing for election to their respective offices during the 1928 campaign. Deneen's faction was considered less corrupt than the Thompson faction, but Thompson's faction had the advantage of his Cook County political organization. At the time of the campaign, Thompson's machine controlled every office in the city, county, and state governments except for one municipal clerkship and the office of Secretary of State, the latter seat held by Emmerson.

In addition to these principal contests, there was a fight for ward committeeman positions in each of Chicago's 50 wards. Though nominally an insignificant position, a ward committeeman actually was an important cog in the Chicago machine, since they had direct control over privileges doled out to their ward. These privileges included patronage jobs in the city government. A ward committeemen could, with the support of a pliable state's attorney, seek to have their foes arrested or friends released, or could intervene in court proceedings to protect their interests. It is for this reason that the State's Attorney for Cook County was considered a critical seat by the Thompson political machine as well as by subsequent Chicago machines; the state's attorney controlled criminal prosecutions within Cook County. Thompson threatened to resign if Crowe lost the state's attorney. "I don't have to stand this abuse," Thompson quipped. Most of Chicago's newspapers, however, urged for Crowe's defeat, one news account describing his office as "the overlordship of Chicago crime and vice."

The Deneen faction charged that Thompson and Crowe had done little to combat crime, observing that none of the bombings had led to a conviction, and none of the shotgun or machine gun murders during the months prior to the election had been solved. Deneen's forces proclaimed that, if elected, they would improve conditions in Chicago. Small, Thompson, and Crowe, accused the Deneen faction of exaggerating the amount of crime, and accused their opponents of setting bombs in their own homes, and for sending Federal prohibition agents to Chicago to discredit Thompson.

Most of Chicago's newspapers supported the reformers in the Deneen faction. Some out-of-town papers were less sanguine; the Washington Post lamented that the primary was fundamentally a choice between "which particular gang going to harvest the $100 million a year of graft" flowing from liquor bootlegging and gambling.

The Democrats had few primary contests during the 1928 election, and contented themselves with a few jabs at the Republicans. They were generally considered to have little to lose, given the enmity and strife taking place in the Republican campaign.