Believer: My Forty Years in Politics

by David Axelrod

Ben Lewis, won a special election in 1958, the handpicked designee of the ward’s real power: a Democratic boss named Erwin “Izzy” Horwitz. In 1963, Lewis was shot to death in his ward office. His bodyguard, George Collins, who said he had gone out for a smoke when Lewis was murdered, succeeded him as alderman and later rose to Congress. When Collins, in turn, perished in a plane crash in 1972, his grieving widow, Cardiss, visited Mayor Daley to propose herself as her husband’s replacement. As the legend goes, Daley gently explained to Mrs. Collins that he had another candidate in mind. “Mr. Mayor,” she purportedly replied, “did I mention that George kept a diary?” Whatever occurred in that meeting, Mrs. Collins emerged as the mayor’s choice. Cardiss Collins went on to serve two decades in Congress. The Ben Lewis murder was never solved.