UPDATE at 9:45 p.m. <\/strong><\/p>\n Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was gracious tonight in his concession speech after a\u00a0quick and overwhelming defeat, pledging\u00a0to work with Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, who\u00a0won the Democratic nomination for his office.<\/p>\n Only about\u00a0three dozen supporters, campaign staff and county aides were still at Stroger’s election night headquarters\u00a0when he took the stage\u00a0around 9:30 p.m.<\/p>\n "I am not giving up on the county," Stroger said, his wife and son at his side. "I am going to work with the Democratic nominee." UPDATED at 9:08 p.m. by Robert Becker and Kristen Mack<\/strong><\/p>\n Ald. Toni Preckwinkle overwhelmed incumbent Todd Stroger and two other challengers to capture the Democratic nomination for Cook County Board president tonight.<\/p>\n "This victory belongs to the people of Cook County," Preckwinkle said. She said hopes of county residents have often been tempered by cynicism, "but not this time."<\/p>\n "Their message is clear. Now is the time to repeal the Stroger sales tax," Preckwinkle said. "Now is the time to end patronage. Now is the time to cut waste while preserving health care, human services, public safety and our forest preserves."<\/p>\n With 85 percent of precincts reporting unofficial results, Preckwinkle had 50 percent, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O\u2019Brien had 23 percent, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown had 14 percent and Stroger had 13 percent.<\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n UPDATED AT 8:55 p.m. by Robert Becker and Kristen Mack<\/strong><\/p>\n Ald. Toni Preckwinkle was preparing to declare victory in the Democratic primary for Cook County Board president tonight after roaring out to an insurmountable 2-to-1 lead over\u00a0her closest rival.<\/p>\n That rival,\u00a0Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O\u2019Brien,\u00a0called\u00a0Preckwinkle before 9 p.m. to concede.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can’t win everything," O’Brien said in an interview. "We tried our best, we worked hard and had a great campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Brien said he\u00a0still doent know what went wrong. \u201cBut the number don\u2019t lie. We\u2019ll move on.\u201d<\/p>\n The live band got increasingly loud as the mood at Preckwinkle’s election night party turned from cautious to celebratory. A top campaign aide said the candidate was preparing to give her victory speech. UPDATED AT 8:30 p.m. by Robert Becker and Hal Dardick<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle was holding a 2-to-1 lead over her closest rival in the Democratic primary for Cook County Board president and\u00a0incumbent\u00a0Todd Stroger was facing an overwhelming rejection from voters with most of the ballots\u00a0counted tonight.<\/p>\n With 70 percent of precincts reporting unofficial results, Preckwinkle had 48 percent, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O\u2019Brien had 23 percent, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown had 15 percent and Stroger had 14 percent.<\/p>\n Preckwinkle was crushing her opponents in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs.<\/p>\n At Stroger’s election night party room at the W Hotel, about two dozen supporters amd campaign operatives sat and stood talking. The media corps, about a dozen in number, and their equipment, took up about as much space.<\/p>\n Two medium-sized flat-screen televisions were blank, and the mood, despite the pop music playing in the background, was equally subdued.<\/p>\n Stroger, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. Aides said he and his wife awaited returns in a suite.<\/p>\n A small crowd of Preckwinkle supporters began gathering at the Chicago Mart Holiday Inn around 8 pm. A live six-piece band performed soul classics, while well-wishers watched returns come in on a big screen.<\/p>\n <\/br>UPDATED AT 8:05 p.m. by Robert Becker and Hal Dardick<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong>Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle jumped out to a strong\u00a0early lead in the Democratic primary for Cook County Board president tonight,\u00a0with incumbent President Todd Stroger lagging at the back of the four-candidate field.<\/p>\n With 52 percent of precincts reporting, Preckwinkle had 47 percent,\u00a0\u00a0Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O\u2019Brien had\u00a022 percent, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown had 15 percent and Stroger also had 15 percent.<\/p>\n Much of the Chicago vote has already been counted, a bad sign for\u00a0Stroger.<\/p>\n Posted by Robert Becker and Hal Dardick<\/em> at 7:25 p.m. That was in a lower turnout contest in which political workers played a key role. But it also was in a race with straight-party voting at a time when political machines were more powerful.<\/p>\n Preckwinkle\u2019s ads started airing later than O\u2019Brien, but they were frequent in the final two weeks of the contest as she benefitted from major campaign donations, including $150,000 from the local branch of the Service Employees International Union. <\/p>\n Her ads projected a positive, outgoing image of the former school teacher and city planner, whose persona had been characterized as that of a schoolmarm.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n While O\u2019Brien had many regular Democrats, particularly on the city\u2019s Northwest and Southwest Sides, backing him, Preckwinkle was supported by more independent aldermen. The Tribune poll also showed that her appeal was growing among suburban Democrats. Preckwinkle, 62, boasted that she was an independent, progressive Democrat who, in addition to her backing for the independent health board, urged exploring alternatives to incarcerating non-violent offenders and stressed her ability to work with others.<\/p>\n Questions of Preckwinkle\u2019s onetime political relationship with convicted political fixer Antoin \u201cTony\u201d Rezko never gained traction. Preckwinkle said Rezko, who was building affordable housing in the 4th Ward, stopped making campaign contributions to her around 2000 after she told him to fix emerging problems at some of his properties. COUNTY ASSESSOR<\/strong><\/p>\n Democrats also got to nominate a new county assessor, an important but low-profile office that sets the value of property for tax purposes. UPDATE at 9:45 p.m. Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was gracious tonight in his concession speech after a\u00a0quick and overwhelming defeat, pledging\u00a0to work with Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, who\u00a0won the Democratic nomination for his office. Only about\u00a0three dozen supporters, campaign staff and county aides were still at Stroger’s election night headquarters\u00a0when he took the stage\u00a0around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/br>Voters who braved light snow to vote in the Democratic primaries for Cook County Board president today were weighing in on the controversial tenure of incumbent Todd Stroger as much as the qualifications of his three challengers.
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<\/br>Chosen by regular Democratic powers four years ago to replace his ailing father John in the general election, Stroger found himself under near-constant fire for his combative style, a controversial penny-on-the-dollar sales-tax increase and troubled patronage hiring decisions.
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<\/br>By the time campaign season rolled around late last year, most Democrats had abandoned him and declared themselves neutral – or thrown their support to one of his three challengers: Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O\u2019Brien.
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<\/br>All three Stroger challengers pledged to roll back the remaining portion of the tax increase, after a restive County Board last year cut the increase in half, with O\u2019Brien pledging to do it immediately and the other two candidates over time. Stroger stood by the tax, saying it was needed to prevent decimation of the county\u2019s vast public health system.
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<\/br>Critics said that just wasn\u2019t accurate and pointed to a new independent health board that made a significant cut in the system\u2019s reliance on local taxes. Only Preckwinkle made an unconditional pledge to keep that board in place.
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<\/br>The challengers also took aim at Stroger\u2019s hiring decisions, most notably his selection of troubled steakhouse busboy Tony Cole, who was quickly promoted to an executive post paying $61,000 a year before Stroger fired him. Stroger also ousted his own cousin, the county\u2019s chief financial officer, who had twice bailed him out of jail.
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<\/br>The challengers also have pledged to remove politics from the hiring process, in each case saying a bloated patronage payroll increases the cost of government.
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<\/br>Also taking aim at that so-called hidden corruption tax, and the sales-tax increase, were the two Republicans vying to take on the Democratic nominee in the November general election. They are former state senator Roger Keats and Chicago Police Lt. John Garrido.
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<\/br>Running unopposed on the Green Party ticket was Tom Tresser, best known for his opposition to the failed effort to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago and the proposal to site the Chicago Children\u2019s Museum in Grant Park.
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<\/br>In recent weeks, a Tribune poll found Preckwinkle had a 12 percentage point lead over Brown, her closest Democratic rival, while Stroger had dropped to last. In a remarkable turn for an incumbent from a once-powerful political organization, Stroger had trouble raising campaign cash and was never able to purchase TV ad time.
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<\/br>O\u2019Brien hit the airwaves early and often and was relying on the political organizations of regular Democrats to turn out the vote.
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<\/br>Last weekend, O\u2019Brien exhorted those troops to remember the 1996 general election, when former State\u2019s Atty. Richard Devine beat the Republican incumbent, Jack O\u2019Malley, despite O\u2019Malley\u2019s high poll numbers.
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<\/br>Stroger, a 47-year-old former Chicago alderman and state legislator, was left with only the backing of his most loyal friends and County Board allies. Even Commissioner Jerry Butler, a Stroger policy backer, was supporting Preckwinkle.
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<\/br>So Stroger hit forums in an effort to get out his message that the government he leads was in excellent fiscal shape. He also assailed the media for coverage he said was biased.
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<\/br>\u201cYou\u2019ve seen what the media outlets say about the county, but the truth about the county is that it\u2019s run very well,\u201d Stroger said Sunday during a campaign stop.
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<\/br>Faced with a public outcry over the increase, which pushed Chicago\u2019s sales tax to the highest levels in the nation, the coalition of County Board members who had supported the measure collapsed. The board voted three times to roll back or repeal the measure, leading to a series of Stroger vetoes.
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<\/br>Eventually, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, head of the state\u2019s Democratic party, let his legislative minions in search of political cover heading into election season, reduce the extraordinary number of votes needed to override a board president\u2019s veto. That allowed the halving of the tax increase.
<\/br>Brown tried to project an image of a proven, highly educated leader, but the controversy surrounding her campaign only grew.
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<\/br>In the closing weeks, she confronted a spate of stories recounting the clerk\u2019s history of accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and gifts from employees. Only days before the election, Brown had to combat reports that employees had to pay $2 or $3 to wear jeans on designated days.
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<\/br>Brown said all the jeans day money went to charities for employee-appreciation events. But she did not document all of the jeans-days proceeds when she responded.
<\/br>Brown, 56, oversees more than 2,100 employees in an office that spends $131 million a year to keep the records of one of the world\u2019s largest unified court systems. She pointed to her ongoing efforts to digitize the office and promised to bring new technologies and modern accounting practices to county government.
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<\/br>O\u2019Brien, 53, boasted of his experience in overseeing the district and its $1.7 billion annual budget, which included rebating taxes and reducing the district\u2019s payroll. But opponents criticized him for raising the district\u2019s property tax levy by more than 30 percent during the last decade. They also raised questions about his work for an environmental consulting company that represented companies doing business with the district.
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<\/br>COUNTY BOARD SEATS<\/strong>
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<\/br>Stroger\u2019s political allies on the County Board also faced fallout from the unpopular sales-tax increase and hiring controversies.
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<\/br>In one of the most competitive races, longtime Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno was challenged by Jesus Garcia, a former alderman and state senator.
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<\/br>Garcia accused Moreno of \u201cunconditional support for the Stroger administration\u201d and using his government post for \u201cpersonal gain,\u201d in part a reference to Moreno\u2019s sister and brother also being on the county payroll. Moreno said Stroger\u2019s \u201cissues are my issues. … I\u2019m in it for the constituents of my district.\u201d
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<\/br>Also facing strong challenges in their South Side and south suburban districts were Commissioners William Beavers, who has publicly defended political patronage, and Deborah Sims, the board\u2019s most outspoken defender of the sales-tax increase.
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<\/br>Beavers faced Elgie Sims Jr., an attorney and former aide to retired state Senate President Emil Jones. Sims is supported by U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and several state lawmakers, including Rep. Marlow Colvin, a longtime friend and backer of Stroger\u2019s.
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<\/br>Deborah Sims faced a challenge from Sheila Chalmers-Currin, a retired marketing executive who was elected a Matteson trustee last year. Sims defended her strong support for the penny-on-a-dollar sales-tax increase by noting there are three county health clinics in her district.
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<\/br>The three-candidate field includes county Democratic chairman Joseph Berrios, former county judge Ray Figueroa and former alderman Robert Shaw.
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<\/br>The contest has focused on Berrios because of his party post and his alliance with state House Speaker Michael Madigan. is the presumed favorite in the race to replace Assessor James Houlihan, who is retiring this year at the end of his third full term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"