From the moment he launched his campaign for Cook County Board president a year ago, Green Party candidate Tom Tresser knew what he needed to win: he needed Todd Stroger for an opponent.
Unfortunately for Tresser, Stroger got hammered in February’s Democratic primary, finishing last in a field of four. The Democratic nominee, and overwhelming favorite in the November 2 election, is Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle, who carries little of Stroger’s baggage. During her four terms representing a ward straddling Hyde Park and Kenwood, Preckwinkle’s emerged as what passes for a good-government alderman, unafraid to vote against Mayor Daley, as she did last year on the parking meter leasing deal.
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Now Tresser and the Republican candidate—former suburban state senator Roger Keats—are trying to find their way in the post-Stroger era of county politics. To paraphrase Nixon, they don’t have Stroger to kick around anymore.
But in 2008 he rounded up ten of the 17 commissioners to vote to raise the tax by 1 percent. He said the county desperately needed the money, but his board opponents argued that he should cut the fat from the budget before raising taxes. Over the next year commissioners tried three times to rescind the tax increase, but they could never summon the 14 votes needed to overturn Stroger’s veto.
As Quigley points out, part of the reason voters knew so much about Stroger’s tax hike was the noisy opposition of board members like himself. (Some actually noticed when they had to pay it, but plenty probably didn’t, as suggested by an August Reader story about all the restaurants continuing to charge the full percent after it was halved.) In contrast, Mayor Daley has slipped his property tax hikes through the City Council by getting the aldermen to quietly and routinely create tax increment financing districts—over 160 of ’em.
Quigley adds, “All the elected officials try to go around the president. Some of them will make deals with the commissioners: ‘Leave my budget alone and I’ll give you some jobs,’” meaning jobs the commissioners can fill with people of their choice. “That happens all the time.”
Don’t be surprised if the winner, once comfortably in office, backtracks and retains some of the sales tax, figuring that he or she’s got another four years before facing the voters again.
