Dick Weldon Simpson (born 1940) is an American professor, author, politician, activist, political consultant, and filmmaker who formerly served as a Chicago alderman from 1971 through 1979. From 1967 until 2022, Simpson was a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and served as the head of the university's political science department from 2006 until 2012.
Simpson is considered to be a progressive. During his time on the Chicago City Council, he was an independent associated with the lakefront liberals. In 1992 and 1994, he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a challenger to incumbent congressman Dan Rostenkowski in the Democratic Party primary for Illinois's 5th congressional district. Simpson has worked as a staffer on political campaigns, and has also worked as a government advisor. Simpson has written an extensive amount of published material on the subject of government and politics.
Early life Simpson was born in 1940 in Houston, Texas, and grew up as the only child in a middle class household. Simpson participated in the civil rights movement. His activism included being part of a 1960 'stand-in" protest . In 1963, he graduated from the University of Texas. He thereafter attended Indiana University, where he received his PhD. During his studies at Indiana University, he spent some time in Sierra Leone, where he conducted research for his doctoral dissertation. While in Africa, he wrote to his adviser specifically requesting for his assistance in finding a job that would place Simpson in a large city with racial conflict. Simpson desired to live in such a city in order to have the opportunity to contribute to the progressive political transformation of a city.
Early career Simpson began teaching as a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1967. He also quickly began working as a political operative in Illinois. During the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, he initially worked as Eugene McCarthy's campaign manager for Illinois's 9th congressional district. He was promoted to work as the manager of McCarthy's Illinois statewide campaign operation, a role that he held up through the 1968 Democratic National Convention (which took place in Chicago). Simpson participated in the protests that were held in Chicago during the convention.
In 1969, Simpson managed the successful 44th Ward aldermanic campaign of William Singer, a reform-minded and liberal-leaning independent alderman. Singer, a 29-year-old political newcomer, won an upset victory over a candidate supported by the political machine of the city's Democratic Party. Singer's victory was by a very narrow 427 votes in the runoff election against an opponent backed by the Democratic Party organization. Singer's election was seen as ushering in an era of prominence for the city's lakefront liberal voting bloc. Simpson also cofounded the Independent Precinct Organization, and served as the organization's executive director.
Aldermanic career Simpson served two terms as a Chicago alderman for the 44th Ward, from 1971 through 1979. Simpson has (both during and subsequent to his city council tenure) been considered to be a progressive.
Election campaigns Simpson was first elected to the city council in 1971 in an open race. Incumbent 44th ward alderman William Singer was redistricted into the 43rd ward. In the redistricting that took place before the 1971 election, the 44th ward was redrawn to include less of the heavily Jewish and politically independent lakefront, and to include more of the heavily Democratic areas to the west, making it a harder district for Simpson to win as an independent than it had been for Singer to win as an independent. Nevertheless, Simpson defeated the city's Democratic machine to win election to the 44th Ward seat, defeating James B. Kargman. Kragman had the support of the city's Democratic Party organization, as well as the endorsements of some prominent Democratic politicians, such as Adlai Stevenson III and Sidney R. Yates. Kargman was the son of a politically-connected Cook County Circuit Court judge. Simpson was supported by lakefront liberal voters. He ran on a platform that advocated for community control of municipal programs such as urban renewal. Community groups of the 44th ward were in the midst of a dispute with the city over urban renewal at the time of the election. The third candidate originally on the ballot in the 1971 race, Laura C. Keith, withdrew weeks before the election and endorsed Simpson.
Simpson was reelected alderman in 1975, again defeating an opponent supported by the city's Democratic Party organization, Edward Marsalek. Weeks ahead of the election, a third candidate, Wesley Pucinski (the brother of then-41st ward alderman Roman Pucinski) withdrew from the race and endorsed Marsalek. The Committee for an Effective City Council, a group founded to support the election of "independent" candidates to the Chicago City Council, endorsed him and twelve other aldermanic candidates (including fellow incumbents William Cousins, Anna Langford, and John Hoellen) on the same day that Pucinksi withdrew.
Tenure As an alderman, Simpson remained a political independent. He was among a handful of liberal alderman on the Chicago City Council. He was an advocate of political reform. He was supported by the lakefront liberals. Throughout his tenure, Simpson remained a professor in political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
During his time on the City Council, Simpson was a critic of Richard J. Daley. After he was elected alderman in February 1971, alderman-elect Simpson endorsed Daley's Republican-nominated opponent Richard Friedman in the 1971 Chicago mayoral election (for which the general election was held in April). Despite being nominated by the Republican Party, Friedman was politically a political-reform minded independent Democrat with roots in the Better Government Association, and was similarly endorsed by Jesse Jackson. Daley and Simpson first directly butted heads early into Simpson's tenure as an alderman, when, on July 27, 1971, he questioned Daley's proposed appointment of Thomas Keane Jr, son of Daley's City Council floor leader, alderman Thomas E. Keane, to the city's Zoning Board of Appeals. He questioned the conflict of appointing Keane Jr., vice-president of Arthur Rubloff & Co., one of the city's largest real estate firms. There were other instances where heated arguments erupted between Simpson and Daley. In once instance, Simpson angered Daley so severely that Daley attempted to have the City Council's sergeant at arms force Simpson back into his seat.
Simpson became the leader of the minority bloc of independents on the Chicago City Council. As such, he came into conflict with Michael Bilandic, first during Bilandic's stint as Daley's floor leader on the City Council, and later when Bilandic took office as mayor after Daley's death in office. Simpson and fellow independent alderman Martin J. Oberman were the only two aldermen to vote against the resolution appointing Bilandic to hold the mayoralty on an (initially) interim basis after Daley's death. Like with Daley, he frequently stood in strong opposition to Bilandic during Bilandic's mayoralty.
Being in the minority opposition to mayors Daley and Bilandic, Simpson's proposed legislation were usually defeated. In some instances, the ideas he proposed in legislation were taken by alderman who were aligned with the majority supporting Daley, who then proposed the same ideas in pieces of legislation without Simpson's name attached. One of the few pieces of legislation Simpson managed to pass as an alderman was an ordinance which would prevent banks and insurance companies that do business with the city from practicing redlining. The resolution, which Simpson had feared would have little chance of passing, was passed on June 26, 1974, in a unanimous 44–0 vote after it was amended by Daley-aligned alderman Paul Wigoda. Another piece of legislation that Simpson saw passed was a November 1977 resolution calling for an investigation into figures used the previous summer to justify an 11.7% fare increase to the city's taxis. This came after former city commissioner Jane Byrne alleged a city hall "conspiracy" to raise the rates of taxis. The resolution creating this investigation, proposed by Simpson and fellow independent aldermen Ross Lathrop and Martin J. Oberman, was passed unanimously by the council. The investigation was later ended by a Chicago City Council vote of 40–3 in April 1978 to accept the investigative committee's majority report over the minority report written by Simpson, Lathrop, and Oberman as investigative committee members. While few wholesale pieces of legislation authored by Simpson were passed, Simpson saw occasional success in making amendments to legislation.
Early into his tenure, Simpson and his staff ran an investigation into the practices of the controversial Lincoln Towing Service, which had been a campaign issue during the 1971 aldermanic election. Folk Singer Steve Goodman visited Simpson's office to review documents from this investigation as reference material while writing "Lincoln Park Pirates", a song about the towing company's practices. The council debated taking action against the towing company.
In March 1977, Simpson and fellow aldermen Dennis H. Block, Ross Lathrop, Martin Oberman proposed a piece of legislation that would have established community zoning boards in each of the 50 wards of the city. Simpson established a "ward assembly" for the 44th Ward. This was a form of direct democracy within the ward, which was dismantled after the Democratic machine later regained control of the 44th Ward seat. It was one of Simpson's 1971 campaign promises that he would establish such an assembly if elected alderman. Similarly, some other independent candidates that year had made similar campaign pledges.
In 1978, Milton Rakove, a professor of political science at University of Illinois at Chicago, characterized Simpson's approach to being an alderman as, "an academic idealist at loose in the arena of politics, who cannot and will not make the compromises a true politician must make." Decades after Simpson left the council, journalist and news editor Bruce Dold remarked,
Retirement from the City Council Simpson opted against seeking reelection in 1979. He endorsed independent candidate Bruce Young, the director of the Jane Addams Center at Hull House, to succeed him. Young pledged, as a candidate, to support existing legislation and ordinances that Simpson had proposed on issues such as redlining, the creation of a code hearing bureau, starting an independent audit of the city's finances, and the establishment of a commission on governmental integrity. Young's opponent was John McCaffrey, who had the backing of the city's Democratic Party. Young won the election, but resigned soon after taking office, citing "personal reasons".
Post-aldermanic career Following his retirement from the Chicago City Council, Simpson has continued to remain involved in Chicago's political discourse. Bruce Dold has remarked that Simpson, "has remained a trusted [political] critic for decades." Among his activities, he has worked as a political consultant, written about politics, run for United States Congress, and taught politics as an educator. In 2015, Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader observed that Simpson has remained a political outsider and continues to assail corruption in Chicago's politics.
Professor and political scientist