The most misunderstood man in Cook County politics.
That’s what Todd Stroger, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, says he is. And he blames big media in Chicago.
The daily press, Stroger said during an interview Thursday with Wednesday Journal, relies on his critics on the county board for news and analysis, reporting incorrect information. That, in turn, has distorted his tenure in the public eye – a crucial twist with the race for county board president starting to heat up.
“There’s plenty of people who feel I’m doing a good job, and then there’s plenty of people who read the newspapers and don’t know what’s going on in the county, because they don’t report what the county does,” Stroger said about Chicago’s dailies. “When we have a story about what is happening with the county dollar today, we can’t get that in the paper so people don’t know what’s going on.”
The county board, once a relatively sleepy bureaucracy, has transformed into what Stroger himself called “show time.” His critics on the board of commissioners have decried Stroger’s successful push for a 1 percent increase in the county share of local sales taxes, condemned his hiring decisions and questioned his leadership.
Many of those critics – whom Stroger called “obstacles” – are leaving the board or else want to be gone. They’re just using county government as a platform for advancement, he said.
“Commissioner Quigley, he ran for Congress and won. Commissioner Claypool, he ran for the presidency and lost but now he’s gone,” Stroger said. “Commissioner Sufferdin ran for state’s attorney and lost. Commissioner Peraica ran for everything and lost. Those are your vocal commissioners. The first train they found, they tried to get on, and get out of here.
“It’s just politics.”
Stroger was elected to his current position three years ago, beating Republican candidate Tony Peraica. He was slated for the seat after his father, John Stroger, the incumbent board president, suffered a stroke. The elder Stroger was first elected president in 1994; he died in 2008.
The 46-year-old Stroger had served in the Illinois House and as alderman of Chicago’s 8th Ward, his family’s historic power base. He worked in banking and is a graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans. He’s married, with a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old at home.
In spite of the slings and arrows, Stroger believes his record stands on its own. Payroll, measured by headcount, is down 10 percent since 2007, he said. New technologies, implemented over time, will improve efficiencies. County government is not staring down the staggering deficits as many governments, including Chicago’s, are.
“We went through that already. We made our corrections. We’re not going to have that problem. And we’re not like the state,” he said, referring to approval of programs without identifying money to pay for them.
The race for county board president is widely expected to be one of the hardest fought and closest watched during the next election cycle.
Stroger plans to be spending at least $2 million on his re-election bid. He thinks black voters in his core Chicago neighborhoods will vote him back into office.
“I found the base – the South Side and the West Side – may not always be happy about paying a tax, but if it goes toward something they think is a good cause, they’re for it,” he said.
Among other issues broached during Wednesday Journal’s interview with Stroger:
Stroger said his biggest failure during his first term was hiring Tony Cole, a ex-offender who went from being a busboy to a working for county chief financial officer Donna Dunning, a Stroger cousin who resigned after the Cole controversy hit: “If I had known a little bit more about his background, I would have known that he wouldn’t be able to survive in this environment.”
Businesses that get contracts from the county should be able to donate to Stroger’s campaign fund. “Those guys are citizens; they work. Why can’t they give money to who they like?” he said.
County government could be shrunk another 5 percent with efficiencies.
The county forest preserves are “doing great,” he said, and critiques of safety and clean-up of the forest preserves are based on perceptions rather than evidence.
The vacant Old Cook County Hospital building, on the Near West Side of Chicago, has been on the back burner. Stroger said he’d like the structure to be converted into housing for nurses, with doctors’ offices on its first floor.
In spite of what he says is a record of promises made and kept, the road to re-election will be tough.
“There won’t be a bigger underdog than Todd Stroger in this election,” he said. “It’s impossible.”