"Give 'Em Hell, Janey!"

"A little spitfire," her second husband calls her. "Little Ms. Sourpuss" is how Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Mike Royko describes her. Either way, Jane Byrne's fierce and feisty campaigning appealed to disgruntled Chicagoans, who often welcomed the underdog mayoral candidate with cries of "Give 'em hell, Janey!"

One of six children of a vice president of Chicago's Inland Steel Co., Byrne attended Barat College in suburban Lake Forest, then married a Marine Corps pilot. A 1959 crash left her widowed with an 18-month-old daughter, and she plunged into politics. Her first hero was Jack Kennedy. She became secretary-treasurer of his Chicago Citizens Committee, and she worked so hard that even Mayor Daley heard about her. He became her second hero.

Daley took Byrne into city hall, at first giving her a minor poverty program post. But when he made her part of his cabinet as commissioner of consumer sales in 1968, she found a natural niche. Even in a city noted for its corruption, she was outraged by evidence of wrongdoing. She scolded butchers who peddled poor meat as high-grade cuts and auto repairmen who faked car ailments. But sometimes she went too far. In 1976, when she complained about the "disheveled appearance" of the city's cabbies and ordered them to wear uniforms, they just laughed. She quietly rescinded the order.

As Byrne gained popularity, Daley appointed her a national Democratic committeewoman. When her mentor suffered a stroke in 1974, she loyally lashed out at those "little men of greed" and "political vultures" who seemed too eager to succeed him. Daley recovered and rewarded Byrne by making her his co-chairman of the powerful Cook County Democratic central committee. She had no illusion of really sharing power with Daley and knew he was mainly meeting national Democratic pressure to upgrade the role of women. But those "little men" at city hall resented her and when Daley died in late 1976, they knocked her off the central committee.

Once her victory was assured on election night, Jane Byrne did a most uncharacteristic thing: she smiled. Next day, she did something even wilder: she spent six hours at an Elizabeth Arden salon. Around Chicago's city hall, glum party workers warned each other that life would never be quite the same.

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