Edward McClelland is author of Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President and How to Speak Midwestern.

In the words of one of his staunchest political allies, Edward M. Burke is “an alderman among aldermen.” One of the last of the Southwest Side Irish political bosses who ruled Chicago for most of the 20th century, Burke is the longest-serving alderman in the history of the City Council, and chairman of its most powerful committee, Finance. Burke joined the council in 1969, at the age of 25, winning a special election to replace his recently deceased father, Joseph P. Burke, who had been elected 14th Ward alderman in 1953. It’s a Chicago political dynasty second only to the Daleys in influence and durability, and, like the Daley dynasty, it’s a family business. Every ward boss needs a guy in Springfield, so in 1990, Burke got his younger brother, Dan, elected to the Illinois state legislature. Burke also chairs the Cook County Democratic Party’s Judicial Slating Committee, which enabled him to place his wife, Anne, on the state Supreme Court, where she has sat since 2006.

Burke is, in short, a big deal in Chicago politics, with impeccable Democratic Party bona fides—but he suddenly finds himself facing an unexpected headache: his affiliation with Donald Trump.


Burke and his wife live in a three-story compound the Chicago Sun-Times once called a “palace.” Burke didn’t build that house with his $109,994-a-year City Council salary. He built it with the profits from his law firm, Klafter & Burke, which specializes in winning property tax breaks for wealthy developers. While it may be lucrative, Burke’s legal business is now damaging his family’s political fortunes. Until recently, one of his clients was 401 North Wabash Venture, LLC, more commonly known as the Trump International Hotel & Tower. Burke began representing the future president’s 92-story condominium and hotel on the Chicago River in 2006, and over the past decade, he has saved the real estate baron $14.1 million in property taxes.

Burke won tax reductions for Trump by persuading the Cook County assessor and/or the Board of Review that the building’s failure to find tenants for its retail space made it less valuable than the assessor’s original estimate. “[W]e believe that this vacant unused space, at this time, adds no value of the fee simple market value of the property,” argued a report filed with a 2012 tax objection. Burke has also saved money for owners of the building’s 480-plus condos, whose property taxes fell accordingly.

When Burke’s tax objections were denied, he took Trump’s case to court. Burke’s firm filed six lawsuits against the Cook County treasurer, alleging that the Trump Tower’s assessment “is not based upon the fair market value of the property and is excessive, and is illegal in that the property is being assessed disproportionally higher than similar property.”

When the relationship between Burke and Trump began, Trump was just a New York blowhard who hosted "The Apprentice." But Burke continued to represent Trump, even after Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign announcement calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals and rapists; even after he turned Chicago into a political punching bag, calling the liberal city’s murder rate “totally out of control” and threatening to send in the National Guard. In fact, Burke’s most recent suit was filed on May 31, 2017, four months after Trump was sworn in as president. So far, one suit has been dismissed, while the rest are still pending in Cook County Circuit Court.

“It was a strict business deal,” said Dick Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who served with Burke on the City Council in the 1970s. But that’s not how many voters in his district see it.

Back in the 1950s, when the Burkes came to power, the Southwest Side was populated by Irish, Poles and Lithuanians, some of whose families had been drawn there by now-closed Union Stockyards made famous in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. In recent years, though, its closely spaced multifamily brick houses have filled up with Mexican immigrants who have opened taquerias and found jobs in steel processing plants. The neighborhood is now 70 percent Latino, and the community was electrified politically by the 2015 mayoral race, when Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff.

Trump’s name is poison in Chicago, where he received 12 percent of the vote, his worst showing in any of the nation’s 15 largest cities, and which he continues to disparage as a failed city rife with murder and illegal immigration. The president is especially reviled by Mexican-Americans, whom he has scapegoated as murderers, gang members and rapists threatening the lives of his native-born base.

Emboldened by their success in citywide politics, and angered by their alderman’s relationship with Trump, Mexican-Americans saw an opportunity to finally seize power from the Irish who still control politics in their neighborhoods. In the March primary, they united behind a 26-year-old high school guidance counselor who defeated state Rep. Dan Burke—and now some of them are talking about taking down the venerable alderman himself.



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The question now is, will Ed Burke’s business dealings with Trump threaten his half-century hold on his ward, on the City Council and on the local Democratic Party? Although he has aspired to higher office—congressman, state’s attorney, mayor—the 74-year-old Burke has never made it out of the council chambers, so he has focused his political energies on amassing unprecedented political power there. Burke’s campaign war chest exceeds $10 million—many times the capitalization of any other alderman. That money tends to find its way to places that matter: His campaign fund, Friends of Edward M. Burke, loaned then-Gov. Pat Quinn $200,000 for his 2010 election campaign, and donated another $52,000. Coincidentally or not, Quinn named Burke’s daughter, Jennifer, to a six-figure job on the Illinois Pollution Control Board.

Real estate developer Donald Trump speaks with Burke after a press conference at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago on September 24, 2008. | Amanda Rivkin/AFP/Getty Images

Although today they have nothing in common politically, Burke once practiced the brand of white-backlash politics that now define Trump’s political persona. During the Council Wars of the 1980s, 29 of the council’s 50 aldermen blocked the legislation and appointments of Harold Washington, the city’s first African-American mayor. As a leader of “The 29,” who were almost all white, Burke took control of the Finance Committee. According to Chicago Politics: Ward by Ward, by David K. Fremon, he also “assumed the role of vocal point man for anti-Washington attacks. By most accounts, he relished it. Burke attacked the Washington transition team’s report of racial bias in the city (while firing seven black members of his committee).”

As a result of a death threat he received in 1986, Burke was assigned police bodyguards, who still follow him around, decades after Council Wars ended. Invariably dressed in a pinstriped suit with coordinated tie and pocket square, he delivers lengthy speeches on the council floor, quoting Winston Churchill, Horace Greeley or the proverbial Wise Man. (“As a wise man once said ...”) His lavish office is the lair of a Hibernian grandee, its walls covered with political cartoons lampooning Burke, its china saucers monogrammed with his initials: EMB. Burke is an amateur historian, so visitors are often sent home with a copy of Inside the Wigwam, a book he co-wrote about Chicago’s political conventions. “With Best Wishes on the occasion of your visit to Chicago’s historic City Hall,” he signs it.

Despite his power over the City Council, Burke has taken heat for his relationship with Trump from at least one colleague. Fellow Alderman Ameya Pawar scolded Burke on the council floor, telling him to “[s]top representing Donald Trump and his interests. You are representing a racist and a bigot and a demagogue who wants the tax cut to further defund the institutions … we all represent. There are times like this when chasing the dollar—chasing every last dollar—[is not right]. We have a moral responsibility to think about the city first.” (Burke has never spoken publicly about his work for Trump. His spokesman, Donal Quinlan, did not return a phone call requesting comment for this article.)

But the real threat to Burke’s hold on power is coming from his own backyard, where the area’s ballooning Latino population is looking for champions of its own. Such as Aaron Ortiz—a 26-year-old guidance counselor at a high school on the Southwest Side of Chicago and son of Mexican immigrants whose father still drives a forklift.

In spite of his youth, and his lack of money, Ortiz entered this March’s Democratic primary against Dan Burke. He thought he had two things in his favor. One was the fact that Chuy Garcia would also be on the ballot, as a candidate for Congress. Garcia’s 2015 run for mayor—he gave incumbent Emanuel a real scare—“gave a lot of Latino leaders in the community, like myself, a sense of hope,” said Ortiz, who consulted with Garcia before entering the race and posed with him for campaign flyers. “It is possible to go up against elected officials with big money.” The other was the Burke family’s business relationship with Trump.

To exploit the Trump issue, Ortiz put together a mailer showing a smiling Ed Burke and Donald Trump posing together at a 2015 City Club of Chicago luncheon, and listing details of Burke's work for the president. As a result of Trump’s tax breaks, the mailer pointed out, “[h]omeowners in the district pay an extra $150,000 in property taxes.” When Ortiz knocked on doors in the district, and heard voters complaining about Trump, he brought up the real estate connection. “Que verguenza!,” they would reply. “How shameful!” Although he was outspent 3 to 1, Ortiz won the March 20 primary by 700 votes.

“I think [Trump] was a huge issue,” Ortiz told me. “When I would explain we were giving tax breaks to these individuals, people were upset that he’s representing a largely Latino community, and he’s representing someone who has disparaged Latinos. A lot of people have justified that he’s an attorney, that’s his side gig. You’ve got to be someone who represents your community.”

The Burke brothers profit.... while you pay the bill pic.twitter.com/mkdYnEUhPS — Aarón Ortíz (@ortizstaterep) February 16, 2018

Ever since Garcia’s run for mayor, Chicago’s Mexican-Americans have experienced a surge in political empowerment. Garcia himself won the Democratic primary in the Latino-majority 4th Congressional District, which has been represented since 1992 by Puerto Rican Luis Gutiérrez, who is retiring. Michael Zalewski, a Polish-American alderman who represents a Latino-majority ward on the Southwest Side, recently resigned his seat and is expected to be replaced by state Rep. Silvana Tabares. It’s been a coming of age for a community that makes up the largest portion of the Southwest Side’s population, but has lagged in attaining political power because its members were either not citizens or were too young to vote.

“We’ve been striving for political empowerment of Latinos for several decades,” Garcia told me, but it was Trump’s election that provided the breakthrough. The area was already ripe for ethnic turnover, from the legacy Irish to the rising Mexicans, when Burke gave his opponents a weapon with which to attack his family’s dynasty.

“Donald Trump began his campaign attacking Mexicans as criminals,” Garcia said. “And then Alderman Burke is his lawyer in seeking reductions of property taxes in Trump Tower. He provided a motivation for people to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”



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Losing his brother’s legislative seat finally convinced Burke that working for Trump was a political liability. In May, he filed letters with the Cook County Circuit Court and the Illinois State Property Tax Appeal Board, informing them that Klafter & Burke is no longer representing Trump, due to “irreconcilable differences.”

Dumping Trump, however, will not be enough to wipe the president’s muck off the alderman’s pinstriped suits. Expect Burke’s political opponents to continue using the Trump attacks that were so successful against his brother.

“Too little, too late,” is Garcia’s response to the legal divorce. “If there had been a reflection by the alderman about what he was doing, it could have begun with an apology for representing [Trump]; he already took his money.” Dropping Trump as a client after his brother’s defeat and before his own potential reelection campaign “makes it look like it’s simply a political calculation,” Garcia said.

Cook County Board Commissioner Jesús "Chuy" García speaks with reporters on November 28, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

But while Burke’s relationship with a politician reviled by Chicagoans cost his brother a seat in the legislature, it might not be enough to unseat The Man himself. Dan Burke is a Springfield backbencher who the Chicago Tribune called “burned out” in its endorsement of Ortiz. Ed Burke is master of the City Council. Even Burke’s critics concede he’s an excellent alderman: “He delivers garbage cans, he trims trees,” said Alderman Ricardo Munoz, a Garcia ally. “Eighty percent of an alderman’s job is housekeeping.” He was instrumental in bringing the ward a $20 million-plus charter high school that opened just last year. It would take a powerful candidate, and a powerful campaign, to persuade 14th Ward voters to give up that kind of clout.

Still, some of Burke’s constituents would love to see him turned out of office. In May, Southwest Side activist Jose Torrez confronted Burke about his relationship with Trump when the alderman addressed a meeting of the Archer Heights Civic Association, a 14th Ward neighborhood organization.

“One of my questions is regarding immigration,” Torrez told Burke. “A lot of new community members, my neighbors moving in are Latinos, they’re Spanish-speaking, and one of the biggest questions they have is, ‘How welcoming are you in Archer Heights toward immigrants?’ The biggest reservation they have is with your client, Donald Trump. The question is, ‘Are you willing to cut your relationship with him?’”

Burke ignored Torrez’s question. Instead, he talked about his sponsorship of Chicago’s Matricula Consular ordinance, which made Mexican Consulate ID cards a legal form of identification in the city. When the ordinance was passed, in 2002, the Federation for American Immigration Reform claimed it would help undocumented Mexicans evade the nation’s immigration laws. He also drew on his Irish roots to claim a shared immigrant culture.

“Historically, Chicago has a record of being welcoming,” Burke said. “As a matter of fact, many people don’t know that Chicago, going back to the 1850s, took a position against the Fugitive Slave Act, where Chicago officials mandated that law enforcement officials could not cooperate with U.S. marshals who would be tracking down fugitive slaves. So Chicago’s ‘sanctuary city’ status today—which has been affirmed by the federal courts—is a welcoming concept that’s gone back many years. Almost all of us are children or grandchildren of immigrants and should recognize the importance of welcoming immigrants, who add so much to our commonweal.”

Burke’s supporters note that in 2015, when Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner sought to turn away Syrian refugees, the alderman argued that their placement should be the federal government’s decision, and he sponsored a resolution reaffirming Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city and “refuge for refugees from around the world.” It’s hard to imagine rhetoric more hostile to the anti-immigrant posturing that defines Trump’s political persona. For that reason, say Burke’s supporters, attempts to use his business dealings to tie him to Trump’s immigration policies are an unfair attack on an alderman who has adapted to his changing ward by becoming a staunch supporter of Mexican-American aspirations. Burke supports Latinos, they say; he just doesn’t support the brand of left-wing Latino politics represented by Garcia and his followers.

Garcia’s run for mayor, and his expected move to Congress, have made him both the most prominent Latino and the most prominent progressive politician in Chicago. His new profile has given him an opportunity to wreak a measure of revenge on Burke, whom he considers an antagonist to both communities. The grudge between the two men dates all the way back to the Council Wars: Garcia was elected to the City Council in 1986, as an ally of Harold Washington. A few years later, Garcia moved to the state Senate, but Burke helped put him out of that job by backing a police officer who belonged to the Hispanic Democratic Organization, a cog in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s political machine.

“Chuy Garcia represents reform politics, and Burke represents the old machine politics, although he understands 21st-century life,” said Dick Simpson.

Garcia and Burke were even on opposite sides of the 2016 Democratic primary. Garcia backed Bernie Sanders, who had endorsed him for mayor; Burke’s African-American adopted son, Travis, was a Hillary Clinton delegate at the Democratic National Convention. (As the 14th Ward Democratic Committeeman, the ward’s party chairman, it was Burke’s task to get out the vote for Clinton, by listing her name atop the palm cards his precinct captains handed to voters outside the polls. In this, he succeeded: Clinton carried the 14th ward, 79-16.)

Burke does have supporters in the Mexican-American community. The most loyal among them is Gery Chico, a Southwest Side native Burke hired to work for his Finance Committee in 1983. Chico went on to a distinguished career that included serving as chief of staff to Daley and president of the Chicago Board of Education.

“I think this is about a way of politics that is far more left of center and wants to see its way of thinking dominate the process,” Chico told me. “There are some people, maybe the Bernie Sanders wing, who want to make it look like people like Ed Burke are in the way.”

Burke has promoted the careers of numerous mainstream Mexican-American politicians, including Chico himself, who was the first Latino to run for statewide office when he campaigned for U.S. Senate in 2004, and who had Burke’s endorsement for mayor in 2011. (Chico lost those races to Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.) Illinois comptroller Susana Mendoza, the first Mexican-American to hold statewide office, got started in politics by running for state representative on the Southwest Side, with Burke’s support. Burke has also slated several Latino judges who serve on the Cook County courts. As the ward has changed, so has its alderman: Burke offers constituent services in Spanish and has even learned to speak the language himself—although some of his Latino colleagues on the City Council say they wish he wouldn’t. (At first, Burke tried to escape demographic destiny by moving his ward west to follow the path of white flight, but he ran out of city.)

“I’ve never heard Ed Burke say anything nice about Trump,” Chico said. “I think he was shocked by Donald Trump’s comments. I think it is wrong to associate Burke today with Trump.”

On the neighborhood level, where aldermanic races are won and lost, Burke has won the goodwill of his Mexican-American constituents through small acts such as raising money to keep a Catholic school open. When Southwest Side resident Maria Vega heard that the archdiocese planned to close her daughter’s school, Pope John Paul II, she contacted Burke, who “assured me that he would do everything in his power to ensure the school didn’t close.” The well-connected Burke reached out to wealthy donors, chaired a fundraising dinner, obtained a car to raffle off, and met with then-Archbishop Francis Cardinal George. Today, the school educates 185 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, most of them Latino.

Burke has run unopposed in 10 of his past 11 elections, but progressives emboldened by his brother’s defeat are talking about fielding an opponent against him in next February’s aldermanic election.

“If I were a betting man, I would say there’s enough interest now that the confidence of the community would be instilled,” Garcia said. “I’ve been called by people who are interested in running, but it’s too early to say. Clearly, he has lost touch, if he had it, with the community. The audacity of being Trump’s lawyer, attacking the largely Mexican-American constituents of his ward. He put his interest in collecting attorney’s fees ahead of the people he represents.”

Burke has not yet announced for reelection, but when City Hall reporters asked whether he would run for a 13th term, he told them “Why would you wonder?” and pointed out that his brother won the 14th Ward — albeit by only 145 votes.

“I expect him to get a challenge,” said Simpson, but that challenge will succeed “only if a very substantial candidate runs against him. The fact that it would be Latino would help. He’s been there so long and has done so many favors for constituents and has done so much to provide services in the ward. He’s in a pretty powerful position in the City Council, so the argument about city services is pretty strong.”

Whoever runs against Burke will publicize his association with Trump on campaign mailers, Simpson predicted, but now, “Burke will be able to answer.”

When Burke does decide to retire, he will almost certainly be replaced by a Latino. And that, ultimately, may be the significance of Aaron Ortiz’s defeat of Dan Burke. Latinos have become the dominant ethnic group on the Southwest Side, the traditional seat of Irish power in Chicago, and finally constitute enough voting-age citizens to start claiming the elective offices. In fact, Latinos may become to 21st century Chicago politics what the Irish were to the 20th: masters of the city. In the ward remap after the next census, they stand to gain City Council seats at the expense of both whites and blacks, whose populations are dwindling on the South Side. Garcia’s 44 percent showing against Emanuel proved that a Latino can compete for a citywide office. Last year, Latinos surpassed African-Americans as the city’s second-largest ethnic group, 29.7 percent to 29.3 percent, and are closing in on non-Hispanic whites, who are at 32.6 percent. Garcia’s run for Congress means there won’t be a Latino candidate for mayor next year, but he sees a Latino mayor coming “probably within the next eight years, maybe the next four years,” as the Latino voting population increases. “The breakthrough in 2015 is we showed the city that Latinos have a voice.”

Trump has helped speed that process along. His anti-immigrant rhetoric has inspired Latinos to get involved in politics, and his Chicago real estate interests provided a campaign issue that helped them defeat a once-invincible Irish political machine. The white identity politics that have been so successful for Trump on a national level contributed to the defeat of a white candidate at the local level — a result that would surely horrify the president.

“Without Trump,” said Ortiz of his 700-vote victory, “it would have been a lot closer.”