Pineapple Primary

Underlying the violent campaign was the lucrative Prohibition-era bootlegging trade, a corrupt city government, politicians with ties to organized crime, and a deep-seated and bitter political rivalry between several of the Illinois Republican candidates.

[2] The Pineapple Primary took place in 1928, during the administration of the notoriously corrupt Chicago Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson, a Republican.

Following exposure of several scandals tied to his political organization, Thompson sat out the 1923 contest, with the result that reformer William E. Dever, a Democrat, was elected mayor.

[3] After four years away from City Hall, Thompson cast his hat into the ring for the 1927 mayoral campaign, capitalizing on public displeasure with the zealous enforcement of the Prohibition laws under Dever.

The always-bombastic Thompson campaigned for a wide open town, at one time hinting that he'd reopen illegal saloons closed by Dever's police.

[6] Thompson and Deneen had been rivals for control of the Illinois Republican Party, and the bad blood between the two politicians dated at least as far back as the 1904 state convention.

The Deneen faction charged that Thompson and Crowe had done little to combat crime, observing that none of the bombings had led to a conviction, and none of the shotgun or machine gun murders during the months prior to the election had been solved.

Some out-of-town papers were less sanguine; The Washington Post lamented that the primary was fundamentally a choice between "which particular gang [was] going to harvest the $100 million a year of graft" flowing from liquor bootlegging and gambling.

Under the same court decision, some 3,000 persons drawn from the ranks of the local bar association and other civic organizations were deputized as pollwatchers, and were empowered to compel a policeman to arrest anyone involved in vote fraud.

[8] On March 21, Giuseppe "Diamond Joe" Esposito was shot and killed on the street near his home at 800 S. Oakley Blvd.

Deneen was not home at the time of the blast, having departed for Washington, D.C. by train earlier in the day after attending Esposito's funeral.

"[14] State's Attorney Crowe responded that he was satisfied that the "bombings were done by Deneen forces, and done mainly to discredit Mayor Thompson and myself.

[17] He was an Afro Caribbean attorney from St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands who was running on a reform platform.