Distracting from Daley

In the 1975 Democratic Mayoral primary, we were campaigning in the 50th ward for Ald. Bill Singer, who was running against Mayor Richard J. Daley.

To try to distract precinct captains who were campaigning for Daley, we leafletted their blocks with information about Charlotte Dolins, who was running for Alderman against the incumbent, Bernard Stone.

We thought many of them cared a lot about Stone. Passing out info about Dolins, even though she had no chance to win, might make them think she had an active campaign organization (she didn’t) and they’d want to do more for Stone.

It was our hope they’d spend more time talking to voters about the Aldermanic election instead of the Mayoral election.

Maybe our tactic worked - a little bit. Stone won by a huge margin, as we expected, and Singer almost carried the ward.