It's never dull behind the scenes in Cook County politics

It's never dull behind the scenes in Cook County politics
BY CAROL MARIN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
September 20, 2006
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times



Ald. Todd Stroger, the anointed candidate of the un-reformers, is in a mad dash to reinvent himself before the Nov. 7 election for County Board president. And Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley has just signed on as Stroger's unlikeliest ally.

If you had peeked into Quigley's office Tuesday over at the County Building, or looked on the floor of Tuesday's County Board meeting, you might have noticed that someone who is always there was missing. That someone is Quigley's longtime chief of staff, Jennifer Koehler.

Koehler, 36, has been given a two-month leave of absence from her $78,000 job with Quigley to become the deputy campaign manager for Stroger.

With Quigley's blessing? "Yes," said Koehler by phone from her new office at the Stroger for President headquarters at 35th and King Drive.

Would this be the same Mike Quigley who, beginning with his election in 1998, was the loneliest commissioner on the whole board? The guy crying for reform from a back bench? The lone vote for the longest time on cutting the bloated budget and confronting the endless corruption?

Yes indeed. It's the same Mike Quigley who took one for the team, squashing his own ambitions to run for County Board president this year so that fellow Commissioner Forrest Claypool could go head to head with incumbent President John Stroger. We all know the sorry storyline from there, don't we?

Stroger, felled by a massive stroke, won the March Democratic primary anyway, fueled in part by the giant patronage army that clogs the county payroll, many hailing from his home 8th Ward, where his son is currently the alderman.

Leaving nothing to chance for the general election, with the help of young Todd Stroger, voters were kept thoroughly in the dark this summer about his dad's prospects for recovery until the last possible moment that Claypool could have re-filed as an independent candidate for the November election. The deadline passed and Democratic Party ward bosses then did what they do so well. With secret handshakes, winks and nods, they made sure the son inherited his father's place on the ballot to face off against the Republican candidate, County Commissioner Tony Peraica.

In the jaded, anything-goes state of Illinois, we call that democracy in action.

It's left so-called "reform" Democrats like Claypool and Quigley on the horns of a dilemma. Mugged by their own party, what do they do? Take out an order of protection or go back for more abuse?

Claypool, for his part, at first said he didn't plan on voting at all. Not for Stroger or Peraica. For that he got smacked on Monday by a Daily Southtown editorial accusing him of being a sore loser, and worse, someone who once said "vote for me" but now says voting doesn't matter. Claypool told me Tuesday he is sending the paper a letter of apology, saying he will in fact vote, though not specifying for whom.

Quigley is traveling quite a different road. By lending Stroger his chief of staff, Quigley says he is taking the candidate at his word that "he is going to move the county in a different direction." Rather than just endorse Stroger, which Quigley readily admits would look "ridiculous," he has instead sent him "the best and brightest" of his staff, "one of the chief architects" of Quigley's reform agenda. Stroger, he says, has already adopted their proposal to install a new inspector general at the county, one with more independence and power.

Koehler, an attorney and a longtime activist for the National Organization for Women, argues that the social issues, including full access to abortion and family planning at county hospitals as well as a widening of gay and lesbian rights, are the kinds of things that separate Stroger's "progressive" agenda from the more conservative Peraica.

"Todd," said Koehler Tuesday, "is committed that things are fair for working minorities, for gays and lesbians and for women."

Peraica, who has promised to enforce "the law of the land," including Roe vs. Wade, is personally opposed to abortion and did not vote for a domestic partnership registry. But he argues these are not major crises looming before the county, that corruption and taxes are the crucial issues of the day.

I want to hear both these guys talk about all of this, in detail, and can't wait for the debates.

But for the moment, forgive me, I'm still struggling with the transformation of Todd Stroger from rubber stamp-political-progeny to forward-thinking-progressive. This might be a better "Extreme Makeover" show than any I've seen on TV.

Even Quigley, who claims to "see a glimmer in Todd," admits this election, for him, is a "grim choice . . . yes, it's sad that in a community of 5 million people, we've gotten to a point where it's Todd and Tony's wedding."