Robert Shaw (Illinois politician)

Shaw and his brother learned politics from working in the 24th Ward Regular Democratic organization run by Arthur X. Elrod on the city's west side.

He got his start at seventeen as a local ward captain.

Robert Shaw (July 31, 1937 – July 22, 2021) was an American politician.

Shaw and his identical twin brother, William, were born on July 31, 1937, in Fulton, Arkansas, His father was Eustace Shaw.

Shaw is black.

and grew up for a number of his early years in nearby Hope, Arkansas.

In Hope, he was neighbors with future U.S. president Bill Clinton.

He and his family next moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1952, Shaw's family relocated to Chicago, Illinois, settling on the city's West Side.

Shaw studied liberal arts at Kennedy–King College.

He also worked as a ward captain for Benjamin F. Lewis, prior to Lewis' 1963 murder.

He worked on Lewis' successful campaign for the Chicago City Council.

Shaw and his twin brother became involved in the African American civil rights movement.

In 1969, Shaw moved to the South Side of Chicago, settling in the Roseland neighborhood.

They believed it to be the best location to establish an African American-led Democratic Party organization.

In the late-1970s, he moved to the city's 9th Ward, on the South Side.

From 1975 through 1978, Shaw was employed as an affirmative action and workers compensation executive at the Illinois Department of Labor.

Shaw served two tenures as the alderman from Chicago's ninth ward.

In 1975, Shaw ran his first campaign for the Chicago City Council, unsuccessfully challenging incumbent 9th Ward Alexander Adduci.

He served as a City of Chicago Alderman in the 9th ward for four terms, first in 1979 through 1983 and again from 1987 until 1998.

Shaw was elected to the Chicago City Council in 1979, this time defeating Adducci.

During the campaign, Adducci filed a lawsuit, accusing supporters of Shaw's campaign of forging a letter that made Adducci (who was white) appear racist.

In 1979, the Illinois Board of Elections investigated allegations that Shaw had violated the state's Campaign Disclosure Act during his aldermanic campaign.

Shaw rose to prominence as a main African American community ally of Mayor Jane Byrne.

He received criticism from Black independents when he voted in favor of Byrne's redistricting map for the city's wards, which a federal court would subsequently rule as being unfair to African Americans and Latinos.

When Black protesters showed up at the City Council chamber to protest Byrne's firing of Black members of the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Housing Authority Board, Shaw called for the removal of the protesters and stood in support of Byrne and Chicago Housing Authority chairman Charles Swibel.

A January 1981 article by F. Richard Ciccone of the Chicago Tribune described Shaw as "no stranger to city council controversy, though only a freshman alderman".

In 1981, Shaw introduced legislation that would have stripped the city's personnel code by drastically increasing the number of patronage hires, taking 15,000 civil service jobs away from having job security and merit-based testing as a hiring practice.

He partnered with Edward Vrdolyak on this legislation.

He would tell the media, "I asked my friends, Ed Vrdolyak and Fred Roti to help me out, and they did".

Shaw also credited City Council floor leader Wilson Frost with assisting in redrafting the proposal on the City Council floor.

The legislation was overwhelmingly approved in a city council vote.

Shaw and Wilson Frost both argued that eliminating the personnel code, and its testing requirements, would be beneficial to Black job applicants.

The legislation was ultimately vetoed by mayor Byrne, after facing strong opposition from Chicagoans (a Chicago Tribune poll found 76% of Chicagoans opposed removing the personnel code).

In its obituary for Shaw, the Chicago Crusader credited him with supporting hundreds of ordinances in his two stints as an alderman that had the impact of providing more opportunities for black-owned businesses to do business with the city government.

However, their influence dissipated greatly in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, with Jesse Jackson Jr.. largely beating them out to become the new kingmaker at the time.

Both Shaw and his twin brother were controversial figures.

Shaw also served as commissioner on the Cook County Board of Review from 1998 until 2004.

For more than a quarter century, Shaw and his identical twin brother William were dominant political "kingmakers" of Chicago's southern suburbs and its far South Side.

After losing reelection to the Cook County Board of Review in 2004, Shaw became a perennial candidate.