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Edward Michael Burke seemed to have found an ideal way to get rich: combine a decadeslong job as alderman of the safely gerrymandered 14th Ward with opening a private law practice catering especially to local government contractors and aldermanic supplicants.
There was no need for a specific quid pro quo to reel in the business: How could becoming a Burke Inc. client possibly hurt you when you needed the chair of the City Council’s Committee on Finance’s blessing on your zoning variance, or restaurant expansion, or whatever else required kissing the aldermanic ring? Why go anywhere else?
But then, as a jury found Thursday as it convicted Burke of 13 of 14 counts at his federal corruption trial, Burke seemingly got careless and greedy. Perhaps both those weaknesses came with age.
The relationship between favors asked and favors given turned more explicit and, when the feds starting listening in to an array of colorful similes and metaphors for old-fashioned shakedowns, Burke found himself baited and hooked.
Like the fictional gangster Tony Soprano, whose fever dream famously featured giant fishes, Burke’s love of “tuna” had him wriggling and, on Thursday, filleted by a jury of his peers.
The moral lesson? Graft will reveal itself, for one. For the broader city, Burke’s fall from grace served as a reminder that allowing public officials to operate businesses in close proximity to their public service has always meant risking an unholy mixing of the two. For decades, cozy terms such as “the Chicago Way” or “old school” or “we don’t want nobody nobody sent” all served as cover for such sins. No more.
Of course, there was the relative triviality of the graft: Burke did not make millions in international arms smuggling. He shook down fast-food operators, hardware store owners, apartment developers. But in the cold eyes of those anonymous federal investigators in gray suits, as distinct from Burke’s fur-lined overcoats and brown fedoras, a federal crime is a federal crime. Whether it takes place on K Street or in the 14th Ward.
In many ways, Burke always was hiding himself in plain sight. By looking like a Chicago gangster waving at the crime tour bus, he seemingly wanted both to deflect and admit the truth. The way I go about my business, he long signaled by sartorial implication, is the way Chicago always has gone about its business. What problem could you possibly have with that? People do favors for one another. The wielding of power is part of the life force of a great American city.
Thursday’s verdict, then, was certainly a consequence of the defendant’s Shakespearean level of hubris but maybe also reflective of a subconscious wish to be caught.
What other figure Chicago has so dressed the part of his eventual conviction?
Chicago Tribune Opinion
Only a callous soul could not feel some sympathyfor Burke, who is almost 80 years old and has seen the times change without changing himself. He now faces years of incarceration instead of yet more loquacious tributes at Irish American extravaganzas, sitting at the head of long tables, his ruddy chin reflected in his effervescent green tie. Now, all the good he did in his life will be obscured by this painful denouement.
Burke’s confident audacity offered years of rich entertainment and even, back in the day, a kind of pleasurable if amoral confirmation that this city was distinct and took care of its own.
As Roxie Hart sang in “Chicago,” “You can like the life you’re living, you can live the life you like.” And so Ed Burke did for decades in that very city. He hardly was alone.
But the crimes had victims, the machine rusted and new wielders of power looked askance.
Of course, there always were those who had not played ball with Burke, or felt his wrath, or to whom it was suggested that they would be better served personally by joining an opposing team. Many of those people decided instead to wait for the inevitable. And on Thursday, to no one’s surprise, it arrived.
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