Boss Toni deserves a thumping at the ballot box
In a 2018 Fran Spielman Show podcast, the host, a longtime Chicago Sun-Times reporter, had this to say to Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners who is now running for a fifth term.
“All right. Now, you say you’re a reformer and you pride yourself on that. And yet, you once had Tony Rezko as your finance chairman. You're a friend of Ed Burke; he holds fundraisers for you. You stand by Joe Berrios. Is that the record of a reformer?”
The short answer is a resounding “No.”
But first, for those who are newcomers to Illinois politics, here is a brief rundown of those pols named by Spielman:
- Antoin “Tony” Rezko is a convicted political fixer and schemer who wielded enormous power within Rod Blagojevich’s gubernatorial administration. “Blago,” like Rezko, served time in federal prison for his crimes, although President Donald Trump later pardoned Blagojevich.
- Edward M. Burke, a living and breathing argument for term limits, was the alderman for Chicago’s 14th Ward for over 50 years; he finally left office under a cloud in 2023. Burke for many years oversaw the county Democrats’ judicial slating committee. Last summer, Burke was released from federal prison after serving 10 months on various corruption charges.
- Joseph Berrios, Preckwinkle’s predecessor as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, was the ethically challenged and incompetent county assessor whose only discernable talent was placing his otherwise unemployable relatives and cronies on the public payroll.
Rezko the slumlord her financier
Preckwinkle denied Spielman’s implications, specifically telling her that Rezko was merely a member of her 4th Ward campaign finance committee, when Preckwinkle was serving as alderman for that South Side ward.
Wow, that sure makes a difference.
Actually, it doesn’t a difference at all.
Because in 2007 the Chicago Sun-Times’ crack investigative journalist Tim Novak wrote that Rezko was indeed Preckwinkle’s campaign finance chairman. Novak also named Preckwinkle’s political fund as a top beneficiary of the crook’s dirty cash. Rezko, who also raised money for Barack Obama and who helped engineer the future first couple’s complicated purchase of their Kenwood mansion, was a slumlord. “Six of Rezko’s troubled housing projects were in Preckwinkle’s ward,” Novak reported in his ‘07 article.
A Cook County SUV used for political purposes
In 2016, the day after Election Day, an abandoned Chevrolet Tahoe with two flat tires was discovered sunk in mud in Lemont Township. Cook County sheriff’s police traced the SUV’s license plate to the Cook County Department of Homeland Security. Sheriff’s officers towed the car out of the mud, and when they looked inside, they discovered bags filled with campaign flyers, palm cards, and candidate brochures--all for Democratic candidates.
Using government vehicles for political purposes is illegal.
The cops also found a dry-cleaning receipt belonging to Delwin Gadlen, Preckwinkle’s county security chief. Sources contacted by Fox Chicago said this vehicle was used to transport Boss Toni on official business, although Preckwinkle told Spielman that wasn’t true.
At that time, Fox Chicago attempted to reach Preckwinkle and Gadlen, who were not available for comment, but a county spokesperson told the station Preckwinkle’s county office kept a “strict wall between politics and government.”
A long investigation into the abandoned SUV followed — one that lasted two years. On the Friday before Election Day in 2018 — yes, a Friday news dump — Gadlen was fired.
Preckwinkle was reelected as county board president on that Election Day, but then Phony Toni immediately began her disastrous campaign for mayor of Chicago. While Preckwinkle made it to the runoff, she was clobbered in the second round by Lori Lightfoot, losing all 50 wards.
But Gadlen didn't keep quiet. In a rare instance of solid reporting from the Chicago Tribune’s Gregory Royal Pratt, he explained to the Trib what happened.
“She fired me because it was expedient to get rid of me for her mayoral campaign,” Gadlen said.
Defamation suit
Moving forward to the 2023 municipal campaign, while Preckwinkle wasn’t a candidate in that go-around, she was not inactive.
An unsuccessful candidate for 4th Ward alderman, Ebony Lucas, sued the winner of that race, Lamont Robinson, as well as Boss Toni's 4th Ward Regular Democratic Organization for defamation. Last summer Lucas was awarded $1.475 million by a Cook County jury.
After the first round of mayoral voting, Preckwinkle endorsed Brandon Johnson for mayor, as she did for the then unknown Chicago Teachers Union organizer in his successful 2018 race against incumbent Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin.
Criminality run amok
One so-called reform championed by Preckwinkle is criminal justice reform. Preckwinkle remains a strong supporter of the calamitous no-cash bail SAFE-T Act and she has a strong say in the appointment and slating of pro-criminal judges on the Cook County courts.
Violent crime committed by youths has exploded in recent years. Many judges, as well as former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Preckwinkle’s protégé and onetime chief-of-staff, as well as Boss Toni herself, are the midwives of this criminality scourge.
Does Preckwinkle favor a crackdown on youth crime?
No.
In January, while a guest on the Tavis Smiley Show podcast, she gleefully doubled down on her get-even-softer-on-crime approach.
“We’re talking about young people, we have to understand that second chances, third chances, and fourth chances are absolutely necessary to help them move on to productive adulthood because they’re going to make mistakes.”
Do those mistakes include car-jackings, rapes, and murders? Preckwinkle acts as if these kids caught breaking the law are nothing more than a mischievous stock teen sitcom character who gets caught breaking windows with a slingshot, with the mini-crisis completely and happily resolved in a 30-minute episode.
Real life isn’t so simple.
Fourth chances?
Five strikes and you're out? Or is it 10?
Preckwinkle remains a fervent supporter of Cook County’s failed electronic monitoring program, a leftist approach to locking up accused criminals as they await trial.
“But the fact of that matter is EM is a safe and effective alternative to detention,” she absurdly claimed in a debate with her Democratic primary opponent, 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly, on Fox Chicago.
The career criminal with 72 prior arrests who set a woman on fire last year on the CTA Blue Line was free on electronic monitoring. Many other crimes — way too many — have been committed by violent thugs while walking the streets on EM.
Vote for Brendan Reilly
As discussed in a January Chicago Contrarian article, if Reilly unseats Boss Toni in the March primary election, it will be difficult for her to be reelected as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. To repeat, in Chicago politics, without the yin there is no yang.
Reilly can bring Cook County government into a new era.
And a much safer one.
Real reform is within reach of Cook County voters.
Early voting has begun.
It’s time to yank Phony Toni out of public life.
