Gay issues come to the fore in county board race

Gay issues come to the fore in county board race
By Gary Barlow
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
October 4, 2006

“Guns, gays and abortion” have apparently vaulted to the top of the issues list in the race for Cook County board president, and a look at the March primary results explains why.

Those results show that the hotly contested election could hinge on which candidate gays and other voters in the North Side’s independent-minded lakefront neighborhoods support. They also explain why gays have been in the middle of heated exchanges between candidates Tony Peraica and Todd Stroger in recent debates before the City Club of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board.

“Make no mistake,” Stroger said at the City Club debate Sept. 25. “If Tony Peraica is elected president, there will be more guns on the street, criminals will have easier access to assault weapons, women will not have a right to choose, gays and lesbians will have fewer rights and homeowners are going to pay higher taxes.”

Stroger’s broadside included claims that Peraica is “a radical George Bush Republican on the far-right fringe, the Alan Keyes side of the party.”

In turning to that theme, Stroger and his advisors no doubt have a nervous eye on the March Democratic primary returns, when Stroger’s father, longtime incumbent Board President John Stroger, who had to bow out of the general election because of illness, narrowly defeated another reform candidate, Cook County Comm. Forrest Claypool.

Even though Peraica is a Republican and Claypool is a Democrat, they’re both reformers on the county board who’ve frequently agreed on issues and often locked horns with former President Stroger. While he lost the election to the elder Stroger in March, Claypool beat him by huge margins in the North Side’s vote-rich and heavily gay lakefront neighborhoods, where voters signaled that they, like Claypool and Peraica, are fed up with what they perceive as a bloated, wasteful and corrupt county government.

In the 44th Ward, home to Lakeview’s gay business district, Claypool won an astounding 82.5 percent of the primary vote. In the 47th Ward, represented for the past decade by the state’s only openly gay legislator, Claypool piled up an even higher 86 percent of the vote. His totals in the other North Side wards that are home to large numbers of gays and lesbians were also impressive—ranging from two-thirds to three-fourths of the vote.

Following county Democratic ward bosses’ controversial decision to install Todd Stroger as a replacement candidate for his father, those same North Side voters are also likely to have taken Claypool’s refusal to endorse Todd Stroger as a tacit, albeit unspoken, endorsement of Peraica.

“I have very real concerns about whether Todd Stroger is going to be the type of president that I think my supporters, and the type of people who want change and reform, want in Cook County,” Claypool said in announcing his decision not to back Stroger.

For Peraica, who in the past has spoken out against abortion and gay rights, a look at Claypool’s vote tallies on the North Side may be behind his apparent decision to downplay and even alter his past stands on social issues.

In the recent debates, Peraica sounded nothing like the opponent of gay rights and abortion rights he’s been known to be in the past.

“I am in favor of treating everyone equally,” Peraica said. “I am a live-and-let-live person who believes that you should respect all life, all human beings in particular. No one should be discriminated against in our democratic society, regardless of their race, color, ethnicity or sexual orientation. I would firmly advocate for equal protection under the law.”

Peraica also said he’d do nothing to rescind county ordinances that extend rights and benefits to gays and lesbians, pointing, for example, to the county’s domestic partners policies.

“I would not move to change the current policy of the county government to provide health benefits to the same-sex partners of county employees,” Peraica said. “I think that should continue.”

He shrugged off criticism of his vote against a county board resolution to welcome the Gay Games to Chicago, saying he thought they were divisive, and sounded a decidedly liberal note on abortion, a subject that could affect policies at the county’s hospitals and clinics.

“I would not discontinue abortions as I’ve stated numerous times to numerous reporters,” Peraica said. “The law of the land allows abortion and I would abide by that law. ÉI don’t think we should go back to the days when abortions were performed illegally in an unsafe environment.”

Stroger’s broadsides on social issues, Peraica said, don’t speak to what he calls the real differences between the two candidates.

“This race is not about guns, gays or abortions,” Peraica said. “Our views on abortion are identical. This is about trying to divert attention away from bloated payrolls, inefficient government, high levels of taxation and corruption.”

With a month to go before the election, gays and others on the North Side may get a much closer look at the candidates, Neither man has ever spent much time in the gay community—Stroger’s represented the 8th Ward on the city’s far South Side and Peraica’s district centers on the Southwest Side—but that could be changing. Democratic operatives have started scheduling a few appearances for Stroger in Lakeview and Peraica recently made a stop in Wrigleyville.

If the race stays close, as expected, both men are likely to up those North Side campaign stops.