Thought you’d heard the last of former U.S. Atty. Fred Foreman?
Wrong.
True, the Republican departed official public life two years ago when he left the prosecutor’s office, replaced by President Clinton with a Democrat.
But Foreman is all over the political landscape these days, especially as the November election approaches. This week, Foreman got on board the re-election campaign of Secretary of State George Ryan.
Foreman said his role is that of a strategist, for want of an official title.
Foreman’s name already is well-known around the state. He has been active in state politics as a lobbyist for the Fox Riverboat Partnership, a group of investors who want to put a casino in northwest Lake County.
But now the guy once called “Mr. Lake County” by a fellow politician is remaking his image statewide, this time as a behind-the-scenes player in the political game.
Besides helping Ryan, Foreman said he’s giving Gov. Jim Edgar advice on crime issues.
“I’m helping friends out,” Foreman said.
Foreman insisted that that’s as far as his political ambitions go now.
“Everybody keeps speculating that I’m going to jump back in,” he said, “but right now it’s nice to be just Citizen Foreman.”
Not to put too fine a point on it: Chief Judge John Goshgarian of Lake County Circuit Court wants to remind everybody just how hard they’re working over there at the Waukegan courthouse.
Goshgarian recently won a months-long battle with the Lake County Board to consolidate all branch courts into one, thereby making more efficient use of his judges.
Now comes a study-distributed by Goshgarian upon its receipt-that says his 19th Judicial Circuit handled the second-largest number of cases of any circuit during 1992, the year studied in a report to the Illinois Supreme Court.
The average caseload, Goshgarian pointed out, was 6,516 filings per judge-nearly 1,500 more than the state average.
