Globe-trotting, grand-standing U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-4) is not well-liked by his Washington, D.C. colleagues.

            One insider political joke is that, of the nation’s 435 congressional districts, only Gutierrez’s Hispanic-majority 4th, located in Chicago and adjacent suburbs, has its own foreign policy. Some snicker that Gutierrez is not a congressman, but instead the Supreme Commissar of the Socialist People’s Republic of the 4th District.

            Another joke is that Gutierrez isn’t sure whether he wants to be president of the independent nation of Puerto Rico (or, if that is not feasible, then governor of the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico), or mayor of Chicago. Gutierrez spent considerable time during 2001 engaged in civil disobedience demonstrations against continued U.S. Navy exercises on and shelling of Vieques, an island off Puerto Rico’s coast. Gutierrez was arrested, sentenced to three hours in jail, and came back to Chicago as a Puerto Rican hero.

            What is not a joke, however, is Gutierrez’s ever-growing political clout in Chicago. Gutierrez, age 48, is of Puerto Rican descent, and is a strong ally of Mayor Rich Daley. His very impressive victory in the March, 2002 primary makes him the most powerful Hispanic politician in the city – Chicago’s numero uno.

            The 4th District, an irregular, horseshoe-shaped monstrosity designed in 1991 to cobble together all of Chicago’s Hispanic communities, has been represented by Gutierrez since 1992. It had a 2000 population of 625,941, of which 70 percent were of Hispanic origin. According to the 2000 census, 321,949 residents of the district were of Mexican descent, 68,722 were of Puerto Rican descent, and the remaining 47,488 were Hispanics of Central or South American descent. Non-citizens were counted in the census. Of the remaining 30 percent, blacks comprised eight percent, and whites 22 percent. The 4th District takes in all or part of 18 Chicago wards and three suburban townships.

            Gutierrez’s preoccupation with Vieques, where his parents live, coupled with his quixotic crusade to reform U.S. immigration policy; his support for clemency for convicted terrorists who were members of FALN, a group using bombing and violence to secure independence for Puerto Rico; his opposition to federalizing airport security (which, he said, would result in fewer non-citizen Hispanics being hired as security personnel); his endorsement of Bill Bradley for president in 2000; and his amazingly low property taxes on both his Chicago residence and his Coco Beach, Puerto Rico, vacation home, led attorney Marty Castro to think that Gutierrez was vulnerable, and to mount a 2002 primary challenge. Castro, who is Mexican-American, also presumed that those of Mexican ancestry would vote for him over the Puerto Rico-obsessed Gutierrez.

            Castro raised nearly $400,000, and ran a brutally negative campaign. His ads highlighted that he was the “proud son and grandson of Mexican immigrants,” and accused Gutierrez of being a “terrorist sympathizer” because of the FALN situation; he ridiculed Gutierrez for “passing only one bill” during his ten years in Congress (which renamed a local post office after baseball star Roberto Clemente), and he berated Gutierrez for being more concerned with fighting the U.S. Navy than with fighting street gangs, and for voting against military pay raises.

            At meetings and debates, Castro’s supporters would appear and chant “pay your taxes,” in reference to Gutierrez’s much-publicized property tax problem. In 1995, after moving into a new Bucktown home worth $240,000, Gutierrez’s annual taxes were only $275. The county assessor never changed the lot from vacant to improved, and Gutierrez kept paying the $275. When this story surfaced in 1998, Gutierrez claimed that it was the assessor’s fault, and paid the corrected back taxes. Gutierrez’s foes, or course, charged that he used his clout to keep his taxes low. It was déjà vu all over in 2002, when it was revealed that Gutierrez’s $130,000 vacation home in Puerto Rico, which he bought in 1998 and rents out, had property taxes of just $160 per year, because somebody filed a homestead exemption. Gutierrez doesn’t live there, wasn’t entitled to it, and claimed that he didn’t file it. Authorities in Puerto Rico admitted that there was a “clerical error” somewhere, and Gutierrez paid the back taxes.

            But all this negativity, quite stunningly, came to naught. Castro didn’t just lose. He was annihilated in the March 19 primary, finishing with a paltry 11,997 votes (21.4 percent), to Gutierrez’s 38,302 (68.2 percent) and John Holowinski’s 5,836 (10.4 percent). Castro tried to engender ethnic rivalries, and frame the contest as one between a “Mexican-American” and a “Puerto Rican,” and he failed dismally. Not only did Gutierrez win every ward and township, but he also ran up huge margins in the South Side Mexican-American wards, where Castro expected to be strong.

            Of the wards detailed in the adjoining vote chart, the 26th, 31st and 35th are located on the Near North Side (encompassing the Wicker Park, Humboldt Park and Logan Square areas), and are predominantly Puerto Rican. Gutierrez is the former 26th Ward alderman and Democratic committeeman. Gutierrez won those three wards by a hefty 13,831-3,585 over Castro, a majority of nearly 4-1. In the Hispanic-majority precincts of the 33rd Ward, Gutierrez won by 3-1. Only in the Wicker Park 32nd Ward, which has had an influx of white voters, did Castro even come close.

            But on the South Side, where Mexicans are concentrated in the Little Village, Bridgeport, Brighton Park, South Lawndale, Pilsen, McKinley Park, and New City areas, plus in suburban Cicero, Castro lost almost as abysmally as he did on the North Side. Of course, many Mexican-Americans are not citizens, and cannot vote, unlike Puerto Ricans. Yet, in the four South Side wards with the largest Mexican-American populations – the 12th, 14th, 22nd and 25th – Gutierrez topped Castro by 10,562-3,081, a margin of better than 3-1. Even in Cicero, Gutierrez won by better than 6-1.

            So what happened?  Holowinski tried to appeal to non-Hispanic voters, and went nowhere. Because of low Hispanic registration, especially among Mexican-Americans, roughly 40 percent of all registered voters are white. But those voters opted for neither Holowinski nor Castro. Hispanic turnout was unusually high for a non-presidential year primary. In 2000, Gutierrez won the primary 35,593-7,663 over Joseph Pagan; in 1998, Gutierrez was unopposed, and got 32,349 votes; in 1996, Gutierrez had three foes (including Holowinski), and got 27,140 votes (70.8 percent). So the trendline is that Gutierrez, despite his crusades, arrest, and tax problems, is becoming increasingly popular among all Hispanics, and even among whites. There is no great Mexican-versus-Puerto Rican divide, and that  augers well for any future Hispanic Chicago mayoral candidate.

            Gutierrez takes care of political business, and he is Daley’s most powerful Hispanic ally; he also remains close to Victor Reyes, the mayor’s top Hispanic political operative. While Castro spent money and hurled invective, Reyes made sure that his army of precinct-working Hispanic city workers pushed hard for Gutierrez, to great effect. Gutierrez, after a decade in Congress, and an endless stream of media stories and newspaper headlines, is so known and so entrenched as to be unbeatable in the 4th District. But how much longer will he stay put?

            Gutierrez’s Washington colleagues would love to get rid of him, but that will only occur if he wins higher office, such as Chicago’s mayoralty. Daley is sure to run again in 2003, so that means Gutierrez has to wait until 2002, at the earliest. Daley’s surprisingly early disclosure of his 2003 slate, including current city Treasurer Judy Rice for city clerk, and current city transportation commissioner Miguel d’Escoto for treasurer, could jeopardize Gutierrez’s spot as the sole Hispanic on the mayoral track.

            If elected, d’Escoto, whose parents were born in Nicaragua, and who is also very close to Reyes, could be the Daley-backed Hispanic mayoral candidate in the future.

            (Next week: A look at the 2003 city races, and an analysis of the outcome of the 2002 Metropolitan Water Reclamation District primary.)