Stroger didn't forget suburbs

Politically, John H. Stroger Jr. didn't have to care about the Northwest suburbs of the county he ran for 12 years.

In fact, many voters in that area of Cook County didn't seem to care much for him, according to election tallies.

Yet, that didn't stop Stroger, who was often seen as a stalwart of machine politics, from bringing some projects and taxpayer dollars to the region.

Ironically, it was Stroger's skill in horse trading and backroom deals -- practices often criticized by suburban Republicans rallying against county waste -- that ensured the county's Northwest region wasn't totally shut out.

"He was very good about working with members of the board to bring projects into their districts," said Cook County Commissioner Gregg Goslin, a Glenview Republican. "Most people don't know about that."

Stroger can be credited for bringing the Northwest suburbs their only county-funded medical clinic, providing a large grant to build the Palatine Senior Center, protecting the forest preserves and privatizing the county's golf courses.

"Some of his programs did benefit the suburbs," noted Dick Simpson, political science professor for the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former Chicago alderman. "But he was generally a champion of the inner city and what the county could do there."

As the county's first black president, Stroger unabashedly focused resources toward the poor and inner-city black wards, a goal perhaps best highlighted by the county hospital named after him on Chicago's West Side.

But when politicians in the Northwest suburbs could persuade him there were poor people in need of services elsewhere, he would act.

"His heart was for the working people and the poor people," said Ron Buch, Northwest Community Hospital's health and community outreach director, who worked with Stroger to land the county's Vista Health Center in Palatine in 2000.

"When we demonstrated to him that we did have a number of poor people, he heard that message," Buch said. "We were also able to talk about the sense of suburban dollars going into the county and not coming back. He heard that message, too."

The clinic now handles about 12,000 visits a year from mostly low-income suburbanites.

Stroger was concerned about his perception in the suburbs, even though his heart may have been with his roots in Chicago.

In 1998, he secured $350,000 in county funds to help set up the Palatine Senior Center. Republican David Regner, who was Palatine Township supervisor at the time, said Stroger knew he needed to improve his image in the suburbs.

"(The senior center) was probably half (public relations) and half a worthwhile project for him," Regner said.

For suburban voters, Stroger's efforts didn't seem to get him far. In his 2002 run against a poorly funded Republican candidate, Stroger got 44 percent of the vote in northwest Cook County compared to 82 percent of the vote in Chicago.

Chicago's vote totals have always overwhelmed any amount of support the suburbs could swing to a competitor. In the 2002 race, Stroger won enough votes in just his own 8th Ward, 20,441, to cover those he lost in the Northwest suburbs, 19,875.

Many times, such tallies didn't matter to Stroger, said former county Commissioner Carl Hansen, a Mount Prospect Republican. If it was good public policy, then Stroger could sometimes be convinced to support a suburban project, he said.

"He loved his political work, and he loved his public service work," Hansen said. "And they were like a hand to a glove as far as he was concerned. They went together."