Thursday, October 05, 2006

More food for Dems' thought

Getting wise to scandals (sent off by Peraica campaign)

... Federal prosecutors are no longer playing along with the perverse joke that illicit patronage hiring and contracting are "just politics." FBI agents are unraveling scandals that stretch from the Capitol in Springfield to the Cook County Building to the adjacent Chicago City Hall.

And those probes may be having effects:

A few weeks ago, Democratic insiders were sure that Todd Stroger, their candidate for the presidency of the Cook County Board, could ride out the serial deceits that had put him on the ballot. Now some of those insiders are worried. Their polling shows that many Democrats have stubbornly negative opinions of Stroger.

The surmise: Those Democrats, thousands of whom voted for board member Forrest Claypool in their party's primary [as in Oak Park], want a steely reformer--the only option left is Republican Tony Peraica--who'll work with the feds to clean up Cook County. What's more, those Democrats are still angry at party bosses who repeatedly told them lies about former Board President John Stroger's medical prognosis in order to steer the previously pliable Todd Stroger onto the ticket. ... [on mark!]  [Italics and color added]

-– Editorial, Chicago Tribune, October 5, 2006

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more. As a former employee of Cook County I have been waiting for someone to begin a real investigation of the hiring practices of Cook County for a long time. I could tell some real stories.

As for Peraica, if I still lived in Cook County I would vote for him over Todd Stroger. Stroger doesn't know diddly-squat about Cook County programs.