- Jim Prisching/AP Photo
- Ernie Banks had a brief brush with Chicago politics.
To read the outpouring of heart-felt grief over the passing of the great Ernie Banks, you might be surprised to learn that, when given a chance, voters in the Eighth Ward wouldn’t elect him alderman.
The Eighth Ward was centered in and around the Chatham neighborhood—Banks lived at 8159 S. Rhodes—which was then starting to change from white to black.
But by the time, Banks had returned to Chicago from vacation, he’d already been double crossed. As another faction of the local Republicans had lined up to support a guy named Gerald Gibbons.
Tribune gossip columnist Herb Lyon wisecracked, “Ernie Banks can’t lose in his race for alderman, if he can just get all the Cubs coaches to vote for him.”
This is the same Ben Lewis who—just a few months later—was found in handcuffs, dead on the floor of his west-side ward office, killed gangland style, with three bullets to the head.
He opened a campaign headquarters at 79th and Cottage Grove. And came up with a snappy slogan: “Put a slugger in City Hall.”
