When Jesse Jackson Jr. brought his campaign against Mayor Daley to the far northwest side, Frank Coconate stood beside him. Speaking to a cheering crowd of almost 200 in a VFW hall at Canfield and Higgins in Park Ridge, the congressman did what he’s been doing for the last several weeks–he ripped into corruption at City Hall and lambasted the heavy-handed tactics used against city workers who dare to speak up.
Coconate, 47, is a product of the same system of patronage and machine politics against which he’s now rebelling. His father, Gabriel, worked for Streets and Sanitation more than 40 years. His great-uncles Buff and Johnny, his second cousin Tony, his brothers Louis and Gabe, and his cousin Louie were all city workers loyal to former alderman and City Council boss Thomas Keane. “It’s not that we were big shots who knew Keane–we didn’t,” he explains. “My dad was a returning veteran from World War II. He needed a job. He went to Keane’s organization. He got the job. He stayed loyal. We knocked on doors. He got us jobs. We knocked on doors. Get it? That’s how the system worked.”
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He also worked the precincts. “You go up to houses, you knock on doors, you say, ‘Hi, what do you need?’ I never stole votes. My father always told me, ‘Don’t ever touch ballots ’cause you’ll go to jail.’ You didn’t even have to do that really. In those days if you picked up their garbage, [voters] were thankful.”
Over the years he learned the ropes. Ask no questions, buy tickets to fund-raisers, avoid reporters. “We were told reporters were fucking jagoffs. ‘You don’t talk to no press–they’re liberal. They’re looking for trouble.’”
So in 1998 he ran for state representative on his own. “After watching half these nitwits get elected, I figure I can do this–some of these guys are morons,” says Coconate. “I said, ‘I’m going to give it a try.’” But not only was he running in the Democratic primary without Daley’s endorsement, he was campaigning against the mayor’s plan to expand O’Hare. He got clobbered.
In articles, in Mark Brown columns, and on TV, he described Chicago as a wasteland of corruption, cronyism, arrogance, and greed. He positioned himself as the friend of honest city workers. Last year he held a Halloween rally and invited workers who didn’t want to be identified to come in masks. About 150 people showed up. In November he led about 25 people in a rally in front of Millennium Park’s extravagant new Cloud Gate. If Chicago was too poor to give its workers raises, he knew what to do: “Sell the Bean!”
Coconate says he never claimed the photos of 48th Street were photos of Kostner and never claimed to have reported to Jardine on April 28. He’s appealed his dismissal to the city’s new Personnel Board–which is appointed by Daley–and he can appeal the board’s ruling to the circuit court. He says the city’s allegations are simply meant to intimidate other workers.
