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Jane Margaret Byrne (née Burke; May 24, 1933 – November 14, 2014) was an American politician who was the 50th Mayor of Chicago from April 16, 1979 to April 29, 1983. She was the first and only female mayor of Chicago, the second largest city in the United States at the time, and the largest U.S. city to have had a female mayor as of 2014. Byrne first entered politics to volunteer in John F. Kennedy's campaign for president in 1960. During that campaign she first met Mayor Richard J. Daley. In 1968, Daley appointed her head of Chicago's consumer affairs department. Byrne held that post until she was fired by Mayor Michael Bilandic in 1977. She challenged Bilandic in the 1979 Democratic mayoral primary, the real contest in this heavily Democratic city. At first, political observers believed her to have little chance of winning. A memorandum inside the Bilandic campaign said it should portray her as, “a shrill, charging, vindictive person — and nothing makes a woman look worse.” However, a series of major snowstorms in January paralyzed the city and caused Bilandic to be seen as an ineffective leader. Jesse Jackson endorsed Byrne. Many Republican voters voted in the Democratic primary to beat Bilandic and the "Machine". Infuriated voters in the North Side and Northwest Side retaliated against Bilandic for the Democratic Party's slating of only South Side candidates for the mayor, clerk, and treasurer (the outgoing city clerk, John C. Marcin, was from the Northwest Side). These four factors combined to give Byrne a razor-thin 51% to 49% victory over Bilandic in the primary.〔(Analysis of Byrne's election as Mayor ), ChicagoTribune.com; accessed November 16, 2014.〕 She then won the general election with 82% of the vote, still the largest margin in a Chicago mayoral election. ==Mayor of Chicago (1979–1983)== Byrne positioned herself as a reformer in her first campaign. She made inclusive moves as mayor, such as hiring the first African-American and woman school superintendent Ruth B. Love, and she was the first mayor to recognize the gay community. In March 1981, she moved into the crime-ridden Cabrini–Green Homes housing project for a 3-week period to bring attention and resources to its high crime rate. In her first three months in office, she faced strikes by labor unions as the city’s transit workers, public school teachers and firefighters all went on strike. She effectively banned handgun possession for guns unregistered or purchased after the enactment of an ordinance instituting a two-year re-registration program. Byrne used special events, such as ChicagoFest, to revitalize Navy Pier and the downtown Chicago Theatre. She endorsed Senator Edward Kennedy for president in 1980, but could not stop President Jimmy Carter from winning the Illinois Democratic Primary. However, her attempt to block the election of Richard M. Daley, the son of her late mentor, to the prominent position of Cook County States' Attorney (chief local prosecutor) in 1980 failed as Daley defeated Byrne's candidate, 14th Ward Alderman Edward M. Burke in the Democratic Primary and GOP incumbent Bernard Carey in the general election. In 1982, she supported the Cook County Democratic Party's replacement of its chairman, County Board President George Dunne, with her city-council ally, Alderman Edward Vrdolyak. The ''Chicago Sun Times'' reported that her enemies publicly mocked her as “that crazy broad” and “that skinny bitch” and worse. On November 11, 1981, Dan Goodwin, who had successfully climbed the Sears Tower, battled for his life on the side of the John Hancock Center. William Blair, Chicago's fire commissioner, had ordered the Chicago Fire Department to stop Goodwin by directing a full power fire hose at him and by using fire axes to break window glass in Goodwin's path. Mayor Byrne rushed to the scene and ordered the fire department to stand down. Then, through a smashed out 38th floor window, she told Goodwin, who was hanging from the building's side a floor below, that though she did not agree with his climbing of the John Hancock Center, she certainly opposed the fire department knocking him to the ground below. Byrne then allowed Goodwin to continue to the top. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jane Byrne」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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