He arrived in Chicago as part of an idealistic new generation of college-educated journalists only to find a City Hall newsroom still characterized by Chicago-style graft and the ethnic and racial slurs that today would be unimaginable
He leaves 50 years later, at a time when the business he loves has been so “emptied”, his future is uncertain.
Mike Flannery, Fox-32 Chicago’s political editor and host of his weekly interview show, “Flannery Fired Up” is finally calling it a career. His last day at work will be June 30.
Now 72, Flannery simply says it’s time to slow down and smell the roses. His immediate plan is to travel with his wife — to Ireland and other places neither of them have seen — and visit the grandchildren who live more than 1,000 miles away.
After that, she’ll review the offers she’s already received to serve on Chicago nonprofit boards and decide which, if any, she’ll accept.
“I’m not just going to sit around reading and twiddling my thumbs. I’m going to do something,” said Flannery, who jumped from newspapers to television in 1980, lured by a 50 percent pay rise that, at the time, he increased his annual salary to $38,000.
“In a way, I hate to leave. But I’m very excited. … It’s been 50 years. Ten mayors. Eight governors. Half a century is long enough. … It seems like a good time.”
Fox 32 News political editor Mike Flannery, (second from left) moderated a panel discussion in March during the Chicago mayoral campaign with candidates Brandon Johnson (left) and Paul Vallas (right). Flannery’s Fox 32 colleagues Anita Blanton (center) and Scott Schneider are also in attendance.
In a wide-ranging interview, Flannery reflected on his long and distinguished career that began on June 18, 1973, when he started at the Sun-Times after graduating from Georgetown University.
Flannery is the son of a World War II veteran. Her father spent two years in a VA hospital recovering from internal injuries he suffered while serving in Guam and died while Flannery was still in high school.
Her father’s early death created “financial difficulties”, but scholarships made it possible for Flannery to attend Catholic high school and the expensive Georgetown University in her hometown of Washington DC.
At Georgetown, two professors assigned “Boss,” the 1971 book by Mike Royko, a longtime columnist for the Chicago Daily News, Sun-Times and Tribune. It told the story of the era of the all-powerful Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
“I was hooked. I was like, ‘Wow. I want to go to Chicago,'” Flannery recalled.
It wasn’t long before the well-educated, wide-eyed D.C. kid whose Catholic pride had been inflated during John F. Kennedy’s presidential run lost his idealism. It came at a time when “racial epithets were part of the daily conversation” in City Hall press rooms as well as the former police headquarters at 11th and State streets.
Mike Flannery (back) behind Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Richard Stone, City Hall reporter for WIND-AM (560), is at left.
“There were these kind of casual ethnic references to Italians and Poles. There were also some terms for Irish and Jews and blacks and Hispanics. That was just in the air. Today things are very different,” he said. Flannery said.
As intolerable as those ethnic and racial slurs were, Flannery said he was equally “shocked” by what he called the “ugly bass” in the City Hall press room at the time. Gifts, including cash and cases of liquor, would be offered to beat reporters and some would accept them, especially during the Christmas holidays.
That was in 1974, when Flannery was filling in for Harry Golden Jr., who covered City Hall for the Sun-Times.
“Harry drew the line on all these things. Harry looked down on our colleagues who accepted these cash offers. I admired Harry for that,” Flannery recalled.
“Harry once told me a story that one of the other reporters came up to him. … They were covering a meeting of the Zone Committee. And that reporter came up to him and said, ‘Harry, how much would the mind if you agree not to report on one of the items on today’s agenda?” And Harry said, “It can’t be done. Let’s end this conversation right now. I will cover this meeting’”.
Declining to name names, Flannery said there was a Sun-Times reporter in those days who “routinely fixed parking and traffic tickets.” He or she would call then-Chief Traffic Court Judge Richard LeFevour, who later went to prison during the infamous judicial corruption investigation known as “Operation Greylord.”
“Maybe there needs to be an accounting of how the media got involved in some of these things that ended up being exposed to the public and being so ugly,” Flannery said.
Mike Flannery in the WBBM (Channel 2) newsroom, more than a few years ago.
“I remember going out to dinner one night with one of my colleagues who had drunk too much. I was driving … Our wives were in the car. They stop him in the Drive. And the officer comes over and this reporter says, “Officer, is there any way to pay the fine now?”
The ever-present theme of political corruption resurfaced when Flannery began recalling the 22-year tenure of Chicago’s longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley. For everything Daley did and the legacy he left behind, there was the dark cloud of political corruption and contractual cronyism that permeated the Daley administration and culminated in the Hired Truck scandals, city hiring and the hiring of minorities.
“I think it was the environment he grew up in. That kind of stuff was in the air and in the water,” Flannery said of Daley, whose son got a city sewer contract while his head of patronage and the commissioner of streets and sanitation were finally. convicted of rigging city procurement to benefit armies of pro-Daley political workers.
Flannery called it Daley’s “blind spot.”
Most of the Chicago mayors he has covered, especially the “one-term” ones, had their own blind spots.
Former Mayor Michael Bilandic’s was exposed during the blizzard of 1979. As the storm continued, the CTA was shut down, enraged voters told to park in school lots still buried in the snow and its mayor refused.
“My most lasting memory is Bilandic telling colleagues, telling friends, as he was clearly in political trouble, ‘Hey, when I go out to meet people, they say nice things,'” Flannery recalled.
“He didn’t see it coming, upset Jane Byrne. … And Byrne didn’t see what was coming from Harold Washington.
Byrne’s downfall was her husband, Jay McMullen, a former Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times reporter. It allowed McMullen to “talk her into making a deal with the guys she’d been up against.” Namely, City Council members Fred Roti, Edward Vrdolyak and the recently retired and indicted Edward Burke.
Washington, Flannery said, once told him, “I wouldn’t be in the mayor’s office” if it weren’t for the deals Byrne made.
Mike Flannery with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in 1999, during Illinois Governor George Ryan’s trip to Cuba.
The next mayor of Chicago was Lori Lightfoot. His blind spot, according to Flannery, was the hubris to misinterpret his big win over Cook County Board Chair Toni Preckwinkle in April 2019.
“I didn’t recognize how hurt Toni Preckwinkle had been by the Ed Burke scandal. It was ridiculous,” Flannery said.
“A friend of mine was at an event that Lightfoot organized in California, a fundraiser, and she told me about Lightfoot’s almost hilarious version of his first-term victory. He misread that electorate and what was that vote. And I think it crippled her.”
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s weakness, Flannery said, was his inability to empathize with the people of Chicago. If he had that ability, he would have known that the video of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald had to be released no matter what the city’s policy was.
That’s even if you believe, and many people don’t, that Emanuel didn’t deliberately keep the tape secret until he was safely re-elected.
Flannery had nothing but praise for Emanuel, who used his enormous political capital to tackle some of Chicago’s most intractable issues during his two terms as mayor.
“I will tell you this: the business community misses him. I think Brandon Johnson could benefit from talking to him. I hope they’ve talked, especially with this new committee that Mayor Johnson has created to try to find $800 million in taxes that the business community would go with,” Flannery said.
“Rahm understood that cities are on the brink. It’s not just Chicago. It’s all over the country … and in some other parts of the world as well. We have to grow. The economy has to grow. That’s what creates tax revenue. Rahm just got it in his bones and he was great at it.”
