Blacks and one Latino served as alderman. Gerrymandering had prevented the Black and Latino majorities from electing candidates from their own communities. Washington's supporters and allies waged an unprecedented and successful battle over redistricting. Their broad, multiracial coalition then used grassroots organizing techniques that resulted in electoral wins. Those victories brought an end to the Council Wars that had paralyzed Chicago's city council since Washington was elected. Several prominent Democrats, led by Party Chairman Edward Vrdolyak, defected to the Republican Party. George Dunne, who had aligned himself with Harold Washington during the Council Wars period, was re-elected to the party chairmanship after Vrydolyak resigned following his defeat by Washington in the 1987 Mayoral election. Washington's death in the fall of 1987, a half-year into his second term, fractured the Washington political coalition. No subsequent African-American candidate was able to unify the West and South Side African-American communities or mobilize the same degree of support among white liberals as well as Washington had. In 2008, Vrdolyak, former Democratic Committeeman from Chicago's 10th Ward, Chicago alderman, and former Cook County Democratic Party Chairman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud related to the sale of property by the Chicago Medical School. Under Tom Lyons Dunne did not seek re-election to the party chairmanship in 1990, amidst a scandal in which he admitted having sex with female county employees who alleged they were pressured into providing sexual favors to him. Following Dunne's departure, Thomas G. Lyons was elected chairman of the party and would serve in that capacity for 17 years. He had also been the 45th Ward committeeman and was a lawmaker, lawyer and lobbyist. After the March, 2000 County elections, Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune editorial page editor R. Bruce Dold wrote in an op-ed, Nobody wants to be the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, the job once held by Richard J. Daley, the job that made George Dunne a powerful man. Nobody wants it because the Democratic Party of Cook County has become nothing more than a distraction for the one Democrat who counts, Mayor Richard M. Daley. ... The Democrats, though, they had a thing of beauty, a big, genuine, political machine. But then it became a victim of Jane Byrne. And then it became a victim of Harold Washington. And now it's a victim of indifference. Richard M. Daley's political operation was largely separate