Rolon would assign gang members fluent in English and Spanish to do door-to-door work. They'd canvass the neighborhood to see how many residents supported their candidate. Those residents were counted as "plus votes." On Election Day, his crew of gang members--a dozen per precinct--would descend on buildings with the most plus votes and urge the residents to go to the polls. If an elderly or disabled person needed a ride, it would be arranged.

Rolon paid his workers $75 to $100 for the day and made them dress respectably in white oxford shirts and ties. "Larry Hoover liked that," Rolon said of the imprisoned Gangster Disciples chairman. "The Gangster Disciples started passing out shirts and ties to their guys on the South Side."

Not that Rolon's workers always behaved respectably. They weren't above such minor dirty tricks as tearing down opposing candidates' signs. That work was often left to "shorties"--very young gang members who wouldn't be missed if they were picked up by the police.

"I learned it from the mob," Rolon said of politics, "and then I used it for the Spanish aldermen. . . . In gang neighborhoods, a precinct guy's got to be connected to the gangs or have a gang member or leader working under him. That's the only way you're going to win your precinct in a hotly contested gang neighborhood. If the gangs don't work for you, they work against you."