Next time someone tries to tell you that on Election Day the fix is always in, that voters can’t make a difference, that the bosses always get their way, be ready with your retort: In the 2002 primary election, Cook County voters spoke with enough thunder to shock both the entrenched leadership and the reform candidates who have begun to replace them.
Tuesday’s results do not guarantee that fresh winds will blow through the musty halls of Cook County government. But the outcome can only be read as a bold and blunt repudiation of Board President John Stroger, Finance Chairman John Daley and their huge armies of patronage workers. That once-strong alliance is losing its grip.
This time, the voters won and the bosses lost.
This time, candidates who have pledged to reform one of the worst-run local governments in Illinois stand a real chance of seizing a majority of the 17 seats on the County Board.
Tuesday night, Stroger and Daley had to endure their nightmares even before their heads hit their respective pillows:
Several of their ol’ reliable votes on the board, including Ted Lechowicz, Al Carr and Calvin Sutker, were thrown out on their keisters.
Stroger and Daley’s worst nightmare, reform leader Michael Quigley, was re-elected in a landslide, despite efforts to push him aside. And Quigley now has two new and strong allies, Forrest Claypool and Larry Suffredin. All three are Democrats who should win easily in November. So should incumbent Democrat Earlean Collins, who won big Tuesday–and who says she won’t forget Stroger’s veiled threat to have her defeated. She should become a fourth vote for reform.
A fifth, Republican incumbent Carl Hansen, turned back two challengers. GOP incumbents Peter Silvestri and Gregg Goslin will be favorites to win in November. If they do, and if all of these candidates vote the courage of their convictions, that’s a minimum of seven reform votes.
Can two more votes emerge to give the reformers a majority over Stroger, Daley and their dwindling loyalists?
Maybe so. Tony Peraica, a Republican running in a GOP west suburban district, appears to be a threat to the Stroger-Daley status quo. Bosses and reformers alike will be watching to see whether primary winners Joan Patricia Murphy and Elizabeth Ann Doody Gorman align themselves with the old guard, or will emerge as independent voices committed to undoing decades of damage in Cook County government.
With control of the board at stake, Murphy and Gorman won’t be able to dodge the only question that matters: If elected in November, will they join with Stroger and Daley, or with Quigley, Suffredin and Claypool? There’s no middle ground–and the candidate who now tries to find it will immediately be suspect.
What happened Tuesday is only a beginning. But it is a powerful beginning. What’s undeniable is that voters have begun taking back Cook County. “People got the point that county government matters,” Quigley said Tuesday night. “They saw business as usual as a disaster. Where they could make a difference, they did.”
This time, the county bosses met what they rarely meet: defeat. On to November.
