Stroger dynasty ends as Cook president

Even after finishing last in a four-person primary race to defend his office, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was unapologetic in defeat.

"We ran a very good race," he said in his unconciliatory concession speech.

Yet the numbers suggested otherwise.

Chicago Hyde Park Alderman Toni Preckwinkle won and won big, by almost 150,000 votes over her closest competitor, with Stroger almost exactly 200,000 votes behind. In final, unofficial results, she had 49.1 percent of the vote, Stroger 13.6 percent, with Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien and Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown in between at 22.9 and 14.3 percent.

Stroger insisted nonetheless his administration had done its job.

"They've been three very good years," he said.

Yet, after entering office with a $500 million deficit and successfully confronting that with budget cuts, the last two years were marked by endless strife over his 1 percentage point hike in the county sales tax, which more than doubled the county's take from 0.75 to 1.75 percent.

True, it kept the county in the black and allowed it to maintain services, but at a cost of raising the overall Chicago sales tax to 10.25 percent, highest in the nation for a major metropolitan area. While Stroger's backers on the county board never tired of pointing out that the county's share made up less than one-fifth of the overall sales tax, and that the increase was but a penny on the dollar, it proved to be a public-relations nightmare, exacerbated when he felt compelled to veto three attempts to roll it back.

Finally, after the General Assembly got involved, lowering the threshold needed for an override to a more conventional three-fifths majority, the board trimmed the increase in half late last year in a move to take effect in July.

By that point, however, the 2010 Cook County presidential race had turned into a tax referendum, with no shortage of challengers. All three of Stroger's Democratic opponents and both Republicans on the other side pledged to roll back the entire increase.

Stroger never backed down from insisting the tax was necessary, and he didn't in his concession speech.

"We have done a good job to maintain county services," he said, adding, "Sometimes your message doesn't get out, and sometimes people don't really see what's at stake.

"People don't understand the role the county plays in their lives," he said, pointing to public health and public safety. "I understand the work that's done, and how people are helped and saved every day."

Yet, if Stroger never managed to convey that in a telling way to the electorate, it only illustrated that he wasn't the politician his father, John Stroger, had been in occupying the same president's seat for three terms.

Stroger fought to protect and maintain the Health and Hospital System his father built up, but he never seemed comfortable with his political mantle, not after his father's candidacy was propped up by black religious leaders when he suffered a severe stroke a week before the Democratic Primary four years ago, and not after Democratic committeemen chose him to fill the spot on the ballot in the general election that fall.

Stroger managed to beat Riverside Republican Commissioner Tony Peraica in that race, but beyond that, he didn't display the political skills to survive and thrive.

In this race, according to campaign documents, Stroger had $500,000 on hand at the end of the year in two bank certificates of deposit, yet he never spent money on TV ads the way his opponents Preckwinkle and O'Brien did. His campaign explained that he was keeping funds on hand for the general election, but it seemed more likely he was keeping it on hand for a later run for a different office.

When someone during his concession speech shouted out, "Todd for mayor!" his only response was, "Thank you for that sentiment."

Stroger maintained that the county was in fine shape and that if he had a problem it was one of message. Yet in the end, he also couldn't help raising the specter of racism, saying, "At some time, we have to realize that every time an African-American male is being fought, and tried to be cooled down, we have to look at it, we have to take a hard look at it."

Yet Preckwinkle dismissed the racial angle out of hand, which might be one reason why her campaign resonated with voters in the city and the suburbs.

"We ran a campaign across the county, and I was supported across the county," she said. "I'm going to treat everybody in the county the same. I'm going to work for people all across the county, and that means in the suburbs as well as the city."