Chicago has been a political convention town time and time again since 1860: NPR

Chicago hosts thousands of Democratic Party delegates who gathered to ceremoniously nominate Kamala Harris for president at their party's convention.

The conventions provide a rare quadrennial glimpse into the partisan political process, and their role has changed over the decades. With Harris taking over the presidential ballot from Joe Biden at nine o'clock, it's a chance for Americans to witness a little more what the conventions used to select presidential candidates were like before the primaries became the deciding factor.

“It used to be done in smoke-filled rooms by elites only,” says Nicole Hemmer, a presidential historian at Vanderbilt University. “The powerful party leaders had to meet in the same place to decide who the candidate was.”

A disproportionate amount of this precedent-setting presidential history has occurred in Chicago. This month's Democratic National Committee meeting is the 26th time Chicago has hosted the major party's presidential nominating convention.

Lincoln's miracle

More than a decade before the Great Fire that put Chicago on the map, Chicago was little more than a trading post on the edge of the western frontier, far from the coastal political establishment. However, Republican delegates traveled to the city in 1860 to find a candidate for president, beginning a tradition of presidential nominating conventions in Chicago that would continue for the next sixteen decades.

“The Republican National Committee chose Chicago because they thought it was neutral ground,” said Ed Acorn, author of “Lincoln's Miracle,” about the 1860 convention.

“No serious presidential candidate has come from Illinois.”

This provided fertile ground for political turmoil. A little-known local politician named Abraham Lincoln threw his name into the presidential nomination ring.

Despite his reputation as “Honest Abe,” Acorn says his campaign surrogates used some heavy-handed tactics to get the underdog Lincoln ahead of party favorite William Seward. After all, Lincoln's side believed that only it could win the impending Civil War.

The Lincoln campaign printed counterfeit tickets to the convention and even planted actors to play Lincoln supporters, according to Acorn. This helped push Lincoln to the top of the ballot despite the odds.

Smoke filled rooms

Interestingly, if the modern primary system had prevailed, I think Seward would have won the nomination. He had institutional support, and he had money. “He could have done a multi-state effort,” Ashorn said.

“But in those days, it was a smoke-filled room. And look what they came up with? They came up with the greatest president since George Washington,” Ashorn said.

In the sixty years following Lincoln's nomination, Chicago became a favorite convention venue, drafting two-term candidates George B. McClellan, William Jennings Bryan, and Grover Cleveland.

By 1920, Republicans had a good lay of the land in Chicago, with their preferred hotel rooms booked well in advance. With the majority of American men being heavy smokers, the “smoke room” became a literal place where delegates could find a unanimous candidate.

An intrepid young reporter named Raymond Clapper of the United Press knew this, so he camped out in the halls of the Blackstone Hotel late at night to get the scoop on who would be nominated.

Around midnight, Kansas Sen. Charles Clapper emerged from Room 915, Clapper reported, cigar smoke swirling around his bald head.

“Well, they're going to go to Senator (Warren G.) Harding,” Curtis told Clapper. “They can all agree on it.”

In the article that morning, Clapper is credited with coining the phrase “smoke-filled room” as a term now firmly established in political discourse.

chicago machine

By 1940, the Chicago Conference had once again rewritten American political traditions. Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly, a staunch Democrat, opined that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should run for an unprecedented third term.

Kelly made a name for himself as the chief engineer of the city's sewer system, leveraging clean water and an army of loyal Irish workers to make his way in politics, both locally and nationally. He created a system of government that the city still refers to as “machine politics.”

When that year's convention came to Chicago, Kelly's sewer workers packed the stands at Chicago Stadium, says local historian John Schmidt.

“The sanitation commissioner had a connection downstairs where he was chanting, 'We want Roosevelt, we want Roosevelt,' and of course, all the people in the stands chanted, 'We want Roosevelt, we want Roosevelt,'” says Schmidt, whose grandfather was among those chanting Labor slogans. Sanitation.

“Roosevelt was very popular, but this whole spontaneous demonstration was clearly staged,” Schmidt added.

The machine's shenanigans continued into the 1960s, when Mayor Richard J. Daley, known as the “Chicago President,” hosted the Republican convention in 1960. After Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, they accused Daley of widespread voter fraud to skew the election in favor of Democrats. john f. Kennedy in the general election.

The turbulent era of the conference

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was a turning point. After the recent assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, many Americans began to feel disenfranchised by closed political systems. When Democrats came to Chicago in 1968 to find a candidate to replace Kennedy, young activists blamed machine politics for perpetuating the Vietnam War.

“We were forced to make our voices heard…and the cops in Chicago were forced to do something to stop us,” says Judy Jumbo, an organizer with the World Youth Party and one of the organizers of the mass protest movement.

The “Yippies,” as they were known, even fielded their own presidential candidate, a pig they called “Pegasus.”

“We used humor and sarcasm… (to criticize) the power structure, but the cops beat people,” Jumbo says.

Mayor Daley was so embarrassed about the protests outside that he mobilized the National Guard to arrest hundreds of activists. He infamously ordered the Chicago Police Department to “shoot to kill” anyone they might consider a “potential homicide.”

Democrats felt the chaos on the field, too. One prominent delegate even compared Dalí's administration to the Gestapo, the Nazi German secret police.

Many historians point to the 1968 convention as a driving force for moving the presidential nomination process away from closed meetings and to the ballot box. Almost every state party now uses primary or caucus voting to determine its preferred candidate.

“So the nominating conventions became a sort of coronation ceremony,” Hemmer says.

This will also be the case for Kamala Harris, who has already been nominated in the virtual roll call on July 30. Although Joe Biden won the primary, he endorsed Harris and his committed delegates weeks before the convention.

A new era of agreements

After 1968, it took decades for another conference to come to Chicago. In 1996, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mayor Daley's first son, hosted the Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton for a second term. In an attempt to rehabilitate the city's image, that year's convention was held without incident.

Now, as Chicago hosts the 26th major party presidential convention, delegates are meeting at the United Center to discuss proposals to pick Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for the Democratic ballot chair.

Although agreements have become more transparent and democratic over the decades, some groups are still willing to have their voices represented. A group called the Poor People's Army was given a permit on a legal technicality to march to the doors of the United Center.

“This is a show of force, an irreversible step away from the Democratic Party machine,” says Andy Wells, a local organizer for the group.

The organizers of the 2024 conference believe that the interest of external groups in the agreement is evidence of a strong electoral process.

“Kamala Harris stands for more freedom, not less, for Americans, so we're going to make sure people have the ability to express themselves,” says Alex Hornbrook, executive director of the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee.