Page 4-Tuesday, April 8 1980-The Michigan Daily Chicago's love affair with Byrne has soured I CHICAGO-It was a tempestuous affair-a woman in love with a city, its people enamored of her, their expectations peaked by fresh promises. When Jane Margaret Byrne won the mayoral. election on April 3, 1979, the city cheered her like a champion. Cabbies spotting her on the street honked their horns. People stopped to shake her hand. "Be assured," she said on Inauguration Day, "that I did not become the mayor of Chicago to preside over its decline." But a year later, the love affair has soured and decline is what many people sense in Chicago. The 82 per cent mandate Bryne brought to City Hall has crumbled. Public opinion polls indicate widespread disenchan- tment with the mayor. To be sure, Byrne, a tough-talking, poker- faced 45-year-old Irishwoman, still has suppor- ters who regard her as a decisive, gutsy leader. . "The mayoi is an extremely quick study. I found her to be a very decisive woman," said School Board President Catherine Rohter. BUT CRITICS of Byrne-dubbed "Mayor Bossy" by a newspaper columnist-call her a deceitful, mercurial, and precipitous leader who has created chaos in the nation's second- largestcity. , The mayor "talks first and thinks later," says Louis Masotti, a Northwestern University professor who headed her transition team. "She's got an ego a mile long and two miles thick." In her first year as mayor, strikes in Chicago closed schools, shut down public transpor- tation, and left the city with only bare-bones fire protection. Chicago's once-strong credit rating has tum- bled and the Democratic Party organization-the famed machine that worked so dependably in the decades when the late Mayor Richard Daley was at the controls-has broken down. Daley, Byrne's political mentor, built a reputation for running a stable city. But stability has disappeared since Byrne pulled a stunning political upset by beating former Mayor Michael Bilandic and an army of patronage workers in last year's Democratic primary. And some blame Byrne. "DALEY WAS A classic bureaucrat," said Milton Rakove, a political science professor at the University of Illinois' Chicage campus. "Jane's not a good bureaucrat. Daley ran the politics like a politician. He ran the city like a mayor. Jane runs the city like a politician, not like a mayor.", Moving into the mayor's office was heady stuff for Byrne, who had been fired as the city's consumer sales commissioner after accusing Bilandic of "greasing" the way for a taxi fare increase. She immediately found herself facing a By Sharon Cohen tangle of labor, fiscal, and political problems. It is how Byrne has addressed those problems, and how she may have exacerbated them, that has kicked up so much controversy in her still- young administration. Byrne had campaigned on a promise to give firefighters a written contract, a change from the long-standing agreements that relied on handshakes. ONE TOP CITY labor leader, who asked not to be identified, said that promise changed the tenor of contract negotiations. Talks bogged down, and firefighters struck. "She (the mayor) has fomented labor unrest," independent Alderman Martin Ober- man charged angrily. "There's no reason on earth why that strike had to take place," said Masotti. The city, Masotti said, wanted the mayor to display "some signs of class and finesse" in her dealings with the firefighters. Instead, he said, she "confronted them." The mayor doesn't cajole or persuade, said Masotti. "It is all pound, pound, pound, punch, punch, punch, hit, hit, hit." But Byrne's tough demeanor during the strike also earned her points. Indeed, some city officials said her confrontation tactics with the unions are essential if Chicago is to survive. Alderman Roman Pucinski said Byrne deserves credit for instilling a sense of fiscal responsibility lacking in previous ad- ministrations. , "IF SHE HADN'T moved decisively and for- cefully . . . this city would have been bankrupt," Pucinski said. "She was able to stem the tide of economic disaster swept under the rug by Daley and Bilandic. You've got to give her a double A-plus for that." Many of Byrne's scraps have stemmed from political quarrels. Perhaps the most notewor* thy was when the mayor, who got into politics as a volunteer in John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential race, endorsed the presidential bid of Sen. Edward F. Kennedy. The endorsement came just two weeks after Byrne seemed to endorse President Carter in front of 12,000 guests at Chicago's biggest-ever political fund-raising dinner. "It wasn't what she did," said Rakove. "It was the way she did it. Nobody likes to see the president of the United States humiliated." Other supporters-turned-critics, like Ober- man, say Byrne has failed to keep campaign promises-such as her pledge to establish budget reforms, revitalize neighborhoods, and end patronage abuses. Another early supporter, Renault Robinson, president of the Afro-American, Patrolmen's League, says she has failed to meet her promise to appoint blacks to city commissions. "As much as I fought with Daley over the years, he was more responsive to the black community that she is," said Robinson. "A least under Daley you knew what to exW pect ... We don't know what to do with Jane Byrne." Sharon Cohen is Associated Press. a writer for the Jane Byrne U ___ s f r 4 vol. XC, No. 149 News Phone: 764-0552 edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Our answers to the MSA candidate questionnaire Feiffer 'J-oSUREx TillWOT T Ih1 5'E.- ARE Yw2 so-i- W 2-0 ' A S o(k) 10$ W(OO uWERX owk YQU. 0 LOU %L pqur t7 q Et71 LO6 SEW1-FPIT4'U6, 66L-F A0RBE$, SELF £OAnh 1 6G ANJ YOVU 5--- W'Ak) TO1- MA~t ' ME CHAP. E VG I. 1 ®r~atlA)9 5f$ C4iA 3 B~ nyv IROl Cl AS STUDENTS vote today and to- A1 morrow for a new Michigan Student Assembly (MSA), the time is ripe to change the Assembly's focus and philosophy. By voting for candidates who promise to provide a new direction for MSA, students can trans form their government into an effective, grassroots organization. Because more'than 120 students are running in the MSA election, it would have been impossible for the Daily to have spoken with each candidate individually. And because it would be irresponsible to endorse any candidates without first talking to them in person, we have decided not to support any individuals. Instead, we have provided each candidate with a questionnaire, the results of which are printed on the facing page. Although the questions do knot allow respondents to detail or expand their beliefs, each question was chosen for its pertinence, and the+ answers provide a quick profile of each candidate's opinions. If we were completing the questionnaire, we would answer in the following manner. Perhaps the task for which the Assembly is best suited is advising and educating students. By sponsoring and organizing programs that directly affect the everyday lives of individuals on this campus, MSA can make itself ,visible and viable. For this reason,