July 26, 2006
"HUMPTY DUMPTY" STROGER'S POLITCIAL EMPIRE IN DANGER

ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART

Some fairy tales have happy endings. But the saga of the "Stroger Succession" -- the replacement of ailing Cook County Board President John Stroger by his son Todd Stroger -- may end like Humpty Dumpty, not like Cinderella. Instead of Todd Stroger getting the golden slipper, the Stroger political empire may tumble off the wall.

Voters, in particular those in Chicago and Cook County, expect their politicians to connive, conspire and collude to advance themselves, their allies and their family. But the Stroger switcheroo has engendered a gag reflex, and if voters decide to upchuck in November and elect Republican Tony Peraica as board president, there will be a trickle-down effect in the South Side black-majority, middle class 7th and 8th wards.

It has been said, only partly in jest, that the 8th Ward has more employees on the Cook County Forest Preserve District, Juvenile Court and health services payroll than County Hospital has bedpans.

The 8th Ward (Avalon Park, Gately Park), just south of Hyde Park, runs roughly from 73rd Street to 103rd Street, between Cottage Grove Avenue and Yates Boulevard. Among the ward's 66,000 residents and 36,654 registered voters, at least 800 have county jobs, and another 400 have city jobs. On any given election day, the Democratic organization can field an army of 3,000 workers.

John Stroger, age 77, suffered a stroke prior to the March primary and has since been incapacitated. The extent of that incapacity is unknown. The elder Stroger has been a county commissioner since 1970, the board president since 1994 and the 8th Ward Democratic committeeman since 1968. The younger Stroger, age 38, has been the 8th Ward alderman since 2001, and he was the area's state representative from 1993 to 2001.

For several decades, Stroger's control of the ward was embarrassingly tenuous. He tried  to oust independent Alderman William Cousins and failed. He ran for U.S. representative in 1980 and lost the primary to Harold Washington. In 1983, alone against the burgeoning black tide for Washington, Stroger backed his longtime ally, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Daley, for mayor in the Democratic primary. Daley got a mere 1,325 votes (5 percent of the total) in the ward, to Washington's 23,946 votes (86 percent). Cousins got a judgeship in 1976, and a Stroger ally has since been alderman.

Stroger heeded the 1983 wake-up call and tempered his public support for white mayoral candidates. In the 1989 Democratic mayoral primary in the ward, Gene Sawyer beat Daley 21,508-724, and in the election, Tim Evans beat Daley 24,026-1,445. Danny Davis beat Daley 12,465-1,872 in the 1991 primary, and Gene Pincham beat Daley 9,514-3,011 in the election. Joe Gardner beat Daley 10,785-3,571 in the 1995 primary, and Roland Burris beat Daley 14,491-3,043 in the election. By 1999 Stroger was out of the closet and publicly for Daley. Bobby Rush, a longtime Stroger enemy, beat Daley by just 9,144-7,319 in the ward that year, and in 2003 Daley carried the ward 7,896-3,582 against Paul Jakes.

In the March primary for County Board president, when Stroger was opposed by Forrest Claypool, Stroger won his ward 12,765-1,620. Stroger's longevity, coupled with his extensive political patronage, made him the 8th Ward's undisputed boss. Against Peraica, Todd Stroger will carry his ward with at least 90 percent of the vote.

John Stroger resigned his nominations for board president and county commissioner in the 4th District and as ward committeeman in early July. A meeting of county Democrats chose his son as the new nominee for board president and named him ward committeeman, while the Democratic committeemen from the 4th District, which encompasses all or part of the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th and 20th wards, picked Alderman Bill Beavers (7th) as the new nominee for county commissioner.

To the politically uninitiated, the Stroger-Beavers tag team is befuddling. Why not pick Todd Stroger for both spots? If he becomes president, he won't have a vote in board deliberations, where a sizable minority of the 17 commissioners are consistently anti-Stroger.

Here's the answer: Stroger's job, if he is elected, will be to present a pleasant black "face" of county government and to mumble platitudes about cutting spending. In actuality, he will preserve and protect his ward's jobs and those of the Daley machine's allies and generally do what County Board Finance Committee chairman John Daley, the mayor's brother, tells him to do. That's how it was under John Stroger.

Beavers' job is to interact with the other black commissioners and keep a majority of them sufficiently contented so that they will not undermine Stroger or try to strip away the plethora of county jobs in the 7th and 8th wards. Beavers, age 71, is in the sunset of his career, but he can perform a valuable service by protecting Stroger. In 4 years Beavers can retire and Stroger can take his seat as commissioner.

Beavers, the 7th Ward's alderman since 1983, the Democratic committeeman since 1984 and a 21-year Chicago police officer, has no Republican foe for the 4th District commissioner's slot, but there is a question whether he can hand off his aldermanic seat to his daughter, Darcel Beavers, who has been his chief of staff for over a decade.

After being sworn in as a commissioner in early December, Beavers will resign as alderman and Daley will appoint his daughter to the seat. But the Beavers' switcheroo must be ratified by the voters in the ward next February. Current indications are that Sandy Jackson, the wife of U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2), who is an outspoken Daley critic and a possible 2007 mayoral contender, will run, and despite Beavers' control over nearly 600 county and 250 city jobs, Beavers would likely lose to Jackson.

 Todd Stroger is now the 8th Ward Democratic committeeman, and he will serve through 2008. But local knives are being sharpened.

If Stroger loses to Peraica, he will remain the ward's alderman, and he will be up for re-election in 2007. He certainly will face a Jackson-backed challenger, which likely will be businessman Odell Reed. State Representative Marlow Colvin (D-33), age 42, a longtime 8th Ward precinct captain who took Todd Stroger's legislative seat in 2001, also could make a move to oust Stroger as alderman.

If, however, Stroger is elected board president, expect Colvin to be the Stroger organization's 2007 aldermanic candidate.

Todd Stroger won his first full term as alderman in 2003 with 69 percent of the vote, getting 8,763 votes. In 1999 the late Alderman Lorraine Dixon, a Stroger ally, won election with 68 percent of the vote, getting 18,819 votes. Dixon won with 9,292 votes (65.3 percent) in 1995 and with 9,001 votes (62 percent) in 1991. In 1987 Stroger ally Keith Caldwell beat incumbent Marian Humes, who was under indictment for taking bribes, 14,753-6,031 (57 percent). In 1983 Humes, then Stroger's ally, won with 76.4 percent of the vote, getting 17,421 votes, and in 1979 she won her first full term with 66 percent of the vote, getting 8,082 votes.

That came after Cousins beat the Stroger machine for the third time in 1975, getting 52 percent of the vote. He got 63.4 percent of the vote in 1971, and he won his first term in 1967, narrowly topping machine-backed Leslie Bland. Interestingly, in 1963 Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks, ran as a Republican against Alderman James Condon, who was Stroger's mentor, and got 17.9 percent of the vote.

The Stroger machine is capable of cranking out at least 9,000 votes in every primary, and that will continue as long as Todd Stroger is board president. But if he's not, and if Colvin runs and splits the organization, then an anti-Daley independent could win the aldermanic spot.

7th Ward: Just east of the 8th Ward, running from 73rd Street to 101st Street, west of Torrence Avenue, in the area known as South Chicago, the ward is an industrial area with iron and steel plants, forges, food processors and grain elevators. It had a white Republican alderman, Nick Bohling, from 1943 to 1971. The ward is now about 60 percent black and 35 percent Hispanic.

Beavers beat Ray Castro, an ally of Ed Vrdolyak, by 8,488-7,288 (53.8 percent) in the 1983 runoff, buoyed by a huge Washington wave. He ousted Castro as Democratic committeeman in 1984 by 2,980-2,143, and he was re-elected alderman in 1987 with 58 percent of the vote, in 1991 with 54 percent, in 1995 with 56.3 percent and in 1999 with 65 percent, and in 2003 he was unopposed. Beavers is the chairman of the City Council Budget Committee and a loyal Daley supporter.

Observers already are comparing the expected Sandy Jackson-versus-Darcel Beavers clash to the 1995 primary in which Jesse Jackson Jr. won the vacant U.S. House seat. Jackson upset the favored Emil Jones, an "Old Guard" Democrat who now is the Illinois Senate president, by 30,017-24,097.

This scenario may arise again in 2007, with the Jacksons positioning themselves as reformers and the Beavers defending the established order. Everything depends on whether Stroger beats Peraica. If he does, the Stroger-Beavers machine will have the precinct troops to win. If Peraica wins, Beavers will be an irrelevant commissioner with control of few jobs.