By: Gino Giovannetti

Stroger: Wanted Dead or Alive

CHICAGO – I swear, I didn’t mean to do it. But I’m afraid I may be a conspirator in a fiendish plot to kill a man.

The victim: Cook Bounty Board President John H. Stroger, Jr.

The weapon: The optical scan ballot.

Here’s how it happened. On primary election day Tuesday, 21 March, incumbent Cook County Board President John Stroger was running for re-election in the Democratic primary against 48-year-old reform candidate Forrest Claypool.

The Cook County Board administers everything from taxes and forest preserves to hospitals, courts and the infamous jail.

The endorsed Democratic Party organization candidate, Stroger, was the first African-American to serve as County Board President, an office he has held for three terms since 1994.

It figured to be a hotly contested primary election along racial and geographic lines characterized by low voter turnout. It was.

But a terrible thing happened as the race neared the finish line.

On Tuesday, 14 March, just one week before the election, John Stroger suffered a stroke.

Stroger was rushed by ambulance to Advocate Trinity Hospital where he was examined by his personal physician, Dr. Robert Simon.

At first, the Stroger camp said that the County Board president was merely tired and was hospitalized as a precaution.

Later that day, Stroger was transferred to the intensive-care unit at Rush University Medical Center where he underwent two CT scans. Doctors confirmed that Stroger had suffered a “mild stroke.”

One day after Stroger was admitted to the hospital, Dr. Simon said he was making outstanding progress. And Rush issued a statement saying that Stroger was stable, his vital signs were normal, he was able to move part of his left arm and leg, and was able to speak to doctors. (I presume his first question was why didn’t they take him to Stroger Hospital?)

For the overweight 76-year-old Stroger, who had already had prostate cancer, quadruple-bypass heart surgery and diabetes, “mild stroke” was a severe oxymoron.

The “Soldiers for Stroger” patronage army vowed to march on without its wounded general.

“The campaign is fully engaged and aggressively moving forward,” said campaign manager Bruce Washington. “We’re not changing anything.”

But things were changing.

“Significant Disability”
On Thursday, a magnetic resonance angiogram revealed that the stroke had blocked Stroger’s right middle cerebral artery that supplies 80 percent of the blood to the right side of the brain.

By Friday neurologist Michael Kelly, director of stroke services at Rush University Medical Center, confirmed that the stroke had been more serious than doctors originally believed and questioned whether Stroger could ever resume his official duties.

“All possible outcomes are there for us, from very good functioning to quite disabled,” said Kelly. But he cautioned that Stroger’s progress would be evaluated not in relation to how he had been prior to the stroke, but in its aftermath.

“I don’t think he’s going to be able to come back from this to a baseline, normal state,” cautioned Kelly.

Stroger, he said, will most likely suffer residual damage ranging from attention difficulties, the loss of sensation and movement on his left side, and affected speech. Most disheartening, Kelly could not rule out the possibility of permanent brain damage.

This did not dampen the sprits of Stroger campaign officials who downplayed the doctor’s somber assessment in a statement that noted only that their boss was “stable” and “continues to recover.”

On Sunday, Stroger surrogates visited several churches on the South Side to implore their constituents to get out the vote on Tuesday.

“President Stroger will be back” declared 8th-Ward Ald. Todd Stroger, Stroger’s son, to enthusiastic crowds at Salem Baptist Church.

Curiously, Ald. Stroger invoked the name of Mayor Richard J. Daley by reminding churchgoers that the late mayor recovered from a stroke in 1974 before being re-elected to serve a sixth term.

“If he can do it, John Stroger can” said the alderman.
It was a parallel noted by none other than the current mayor’s brother, County Commissioner and 11th Ward committeeman, John Daley.

What the half-full crowd didn’t mention was that the patriarchal Mayor Daley was five years younger than Stroger is when he suffered a stroke in May of ’74.

Daley eventually had successful surgery to remove blockage of an artery feeding the brain. He took the entire summer off to recuperate at the family’s Michigan home. And he didn’t have to endure the rigors of a campaign until November of the following year.

Most noteworthy, the elder Mayor Daley died of a massive heart attack just two-and-a-half years later in December of 1976.

The “down but not out” theme was reinforced by Doc Simon who equated the plight of the County Board president with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“The only president to serve four terms in this country, Roosevelt, was in a wheelchair. And he did a great job,” said Simon.

At that moment, however, Stroger was closer to DOA than FDR.

Later that Sunday, citing neurological improvement, Stroger was transferred from Rush’s intensive-care unit to a “step-down unit.” His condition was listed as serious, but stable.

Forrest Claypool, meanwhile, was forced to don the proverbial kid gloves. Eschewing the attack ad that criticized Stroger as a caretaker for old-style political corruption and cronyism, Claypool unveiled a new and subdued ad that wished his opponent a complete recovery and highlighted his own media endorsements.

“This campaign isn’t about John or me,” said a laconic Claypool, which had to come as quite a shock to campaign contributors for both candidates.

On Monday, the day before the election, Mayor Daley, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, political and union leaders appeared at a news conference in the Loop to assure voters that Stroger would recover and that they should not hesitate to re-elect him to a fourth term.

Radio stations that day played emphatic endorsements of Stroger from Mayor Daley and former President Bill Clinton.

Election Day
As election day dawned, the forecast for low voter turnout appeared to bode well for Stroger. A WGN/Chicago Tribune poll had Stroger leading by 10 percentage points with 15 percent of the voters undecided.

At stake was the presidency of the $3 billion County government representing 25,000 largely patronage jobs throughout 130 municipalities.

In addition to the presidency, 17 county commissioner seats were up for re-election in the primary, contests that could tip the balance of the Board against Stroger budgets, tax proposals, health care priorities and other initiatives.

With Stroger ailing, cynics pointed out that ward and township committeemen and precinct captains may actually be energized by this unfortunate turn of events.

Because if Stroger won re-election and then was found to be incapable of serving, or if he retired before the 7 November general election, 80 Cook County Democratic Central committeemen would be able to hand pick his successor.

Even if he won the general election before stepping down, the County Board would be authorized to select a candidate because Stroger’s name cannot be withdrawn from the ballot involuntarily.

The election was, in fact, characterized by low voter turnout and by glitches in federally mandated new voting equipment and procedures.

The bottom line is that voter apathy—an estimated two-thirds of eligible voters failed to showed up to the polls—and support from African-Americans who have the most at stake in the management of County services enabled a weakened Stroger to prevail.

With 12 to 15 percent of the vote unaccounted for until late the following day, Stroger held a 52 to 48 percent lead.

It was apparent that the first-term County Commissioner didn’t have enough support among independents and progressives on the North Side and outlying suburbs to overcome Stroger’s strong voter turnout among African-Americans on the South and West sides.

On Wednesday, with thousands of votes in hundreds of precincts still uncounted, Claypool called “Alderson” Stroger and conceded the election. A half-hour later at a news conference, Claypool graciously issued his formal concession.

“It’s obvious John Stroger has tremendous affection and respect in the African-American community and they came out strongly for him,” said Claypool.

Ironically, Stroger has been one of the most loyal African-Americans to the Democratic Party organization. Even when whites and blacks joined forces to elect Harold Washington as the City’s first black mayor, Stroger was firmly in the Daley camp.

Stroger won the Democratic primary and is virtually assured of being elected to a fourth-term through 2010 after he faces unopposed--and unknown--Republican candidate Tony Peraica in November.

In the event that he cannot serve, another African-American is expected to fill the vacancy because Mayor Daley will need the support of blacks for his re-election bid in 2007. Former Attorney General Roland Burris, Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown and Secretary of State Jesse White are among the likely candidates for the job.

Voting Pocketbook Over Conscience
At approximately 6 p.m. on election day I crossed over, requested a Democratic ballot, and voted for John H. Stroger, Jr.

As I dutifully filled out the optical scan ballot, Stroger was bedridden, was being fed through a tube, and was experiencing brain swelling, slurred speech, constant drowsiness, partial paralysis, high-blood pressure, and problems with spatial orientation.

All of this on the heels of the aforementioned obesity, prostate cancer, quadruple-bypass heart surgery and diabetes.

Other than that, he was fine.

But what would make me cross over to vote for the Democratic Party machine’s slate of candidates? Flashback to 6 December 2004.

A raging fire has engulfed the LaSalle Bank building in Chicago's Loop. Every network TV station in the market has cameras fixed on the 29th- and 30th-floor “fire floors.”

On 14 December I received a phone call from friends at Skyline Building Services offering me a job helping to restore the bank. There was only one catch. I had to join the union.

Twelve hours later, I joined nearly 200 union members on the job working under the supervision of Belfor, Inc., an international natural disaster restoration company headquartered in Germany. I’m still a card-carrying member of the International Laborers’ Union Local No. 4 to this day.

We were down to a handful of laborers nine months later when the gig ended and our supervisors were sent to the Gulf Coast to clean up after hurricane Katrina.

On 6 March at our monthly meeting, union officials gave us our marching orders direct from the Chicago Federation of Labor.

A vote for Stroger was a vote for jobs according to union officers. Forrest Claypool would cut jobs and/or redistribute them.

In addition to the Cook County Board presidency, we were advised to vote for labor endorsed County commissioners, plus the County Treasurer (Maria Pappas), Clerk (David Orr), Assessor (James Houlihan) and Sheriff (Tom Dart).

Ballots Vs. Bullets
I still don’t know how many votes Stroger actually got. But I’m worried that if he tries to serve out his term, my vote may be the death of him.

It’s like the six guys who pull the lever on the electric chair to terminate the life of a death-row inmate. None of the six knows which one actually killed the condemned. But they know that one of them did.

At 76, Stroger should be concentrating on the three Rs: rest, recovery and rehabilitation. Not trying to manage a bloated $3 billion bureaucracy.

In November, barring a union intervention, I’ll cross back over to vote for Judy Baar Topinka over Governor Blagojevich. And I’ll probably vote for Peraica over Stroger or the inevitable “player to be named later.”

In 2008 I’ll be back voting for ABC—Anybody But Clinton—while I rue the loss of individual liberties and question the arbitrariness of excessive taxation.

But at least I won’t have to worry that by voting to put an enfeebled candidate back to work, I may have hastened his death.

Let’s face it, Stroger may be worth as much to the Democratic Party organization dead as he is alive. And once again, ballots may prove deadlier than bullets.

Gino Giovannetti is a member of the “Jonathon Brandmeier Morning Show” on “The LOOP,” WLUP 97.9-FM. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and also attended the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University. The views and opinions of Gino do not represent those of WLUP Radio, Emmis Communications, Inc., or anyone with a brain the size of a walnut. Gino@WLUP.com