Preckwinkle has the power to choose, and she always chooses losers
January is the month of football playoffs at both the college and professional levels. Unfailingly, during broadcast coverage of games, the subject of “coaching trees” comes up.
Perhaps the ultimate test of the greatness of any football coach is how many other good to great coaches they produced.
The Dallas Cowboys' Tom Landry had an extensive coaching tree. Mike Ditka, the legendary coach of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl champion team, was an assistant coach for Landry. Bill Walsh, whose San Francisco 49ers won three Super Bowls in the 1980s, had a substantial tree of assistants who became head coaches. Walsh himself was a branch of the coaching tree of Paul Brown, the longtime head coach of the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Bill Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, has his tree, of which University of Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brent Bielema is a member.
In Chicago, Cook County Board of Commissioners President Toni Preckwinkle planted her tree — and it is one of destructive politicians.
Yet another argument for term-limit laws, Preckwinkle is now running for a fifth four-year term as County Board president.
Fortunately, Preckwinkle is facing a strong challenge in the March Democratic primary from Brendan Reilly, the alderman of Chicago’s 42nd Ward.
Preckwinkle is a far-left Democrat, and she is largely responsible for the county party’s embracement of radical policies, such as the enactment of Illinois’ no-cash bail SAFE-T Act and the abrupt about-face from established law enforcement practices that have protected people for decades.
Ms. Preckwinkle has also served as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party since 2018.
Boss Toni uses her power as party leader and County Board president to get her way, while generally remaining in the background. "So, she's Toni Preckwinkle again," as Amy Jacobson phrased it in a Chicago Contrarian podcast last year, "pulling the strings."
Pulling the strings and growing her tree.
Bear in mind, while other politicians have their trees, these three poison fruits from the Preckwinkle mentioned in this article were almost complete unknowns to voters until Toni pointed her far-left finger in their direction.
And none of them appear to have held a job as an adult in the business sector, a quality voters should be looking for when deciding among candidates.
Dan Aykroyd’s character in Ghostbusters phrased this qualification perfectly, “I’ve worked in the private sector, they expect results.” Facing paying customers and clients — who have a choice to spend their money elsewhere — does help businesspeople develop common sense.
An aside: Earlier this month, Patrick Dent discussed the dearth of practical skills among our elected officials in his Chicago Contrarian essay, “Chicago’s Confederacy of Dunces, the Marxist Kind.” It’s a great read.
Meanwhile, here are some of Preckwinkle’s results:
Former Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx
After the Cook County Democratic Party declined to endorse anyone, including the incumbent, Anita Alverez, for state’s attorney in the 2016 race, the party suddenly reversed itself shortly before the primary election “at Preckwinkle's bidding,” Chicago Magazine’s Carol Felsenthal wrote at the time, and lined up behind Foxx. In that same article, Felsenthal called Preckwinkle “a clout-heavy, aggressive queenmaker.”
The assault on law-and-order by Foxx began when she served as chief of staff for Preckwinkle, presumably while her boss was nodding and smiling.
Reducing the number of inmates at Cook County Jail has been one of Preckwinkle’s longtime goals.
One of Foxx’s first actions as the county’s chief prosecutor was to ignore state law and raise the threshold for felony theft from $300 to $1,000. Soon retail theft flash mobs were plaguing Chicago and the suburbs. Car thefts and carjacking soared as well, as did the homicide rate.
Foxx’s attacks on public safety are numerous. Here is just one of them:
For most of her eight years in office, Cook County led the nation in exonerations of supposedly wrongly convicted individuals. They were set free at the urging of Foxx’s Conviction Integrity Unit. Of those exonerations, Paul Vallas wrote in the City Journal, they were “based on policing irregularities rather than exculpatory evidence.”
In other words, many criminals were set free.
Preckwinkle, as party chairman, presided as Cook County Democrats endorsed Foxx for reelection in 2020. Fortunately, Foxx declined to run for a third term four years later. But county residents were spared four more years of Foxx and Preckwinkle’s pro-criminal policies after Eileen O’Neill Burke narrowly defeated Clayton Harris III, a University of Chicago lecturer, in the Democratic primary.
Harris received the endorsement of Preckwinkle and the county party. He campaigned on continuing the Preckwinkle and Foxx policies of prosecution, or rather, non-prosecution.
Good news. Yes, the Machine can be beaten.
Harris’ loss meant there would be one less branch of the Preckwinkle tree.
Brandon Johnson, mayor of Chicago
In 2017, a one-cent-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax went into effect in Cook County. Widely known as the "soda tax," it was enacted by the county board only after Preckwinkle cast a tie-breaking vote. One of the commissioners who voted against the tax was Richard Boykin of Chicago’s West Side, who represented the 1st District.
The soda tax was almost universally reviled. Boykin led the successful effort to repeal it a few months later — and he opposed Preckwinkle on other issues as well.
Then came Boss Toni’s revenge.
In 2018, Preckwinkle endorsed Chicago Teachers Union organizer and failed CPS teacher Brandon Johnson over Boykin in the 1st District Democratic primary. Johnson eked out a 437-vote win. Johnson returned the favor and endorsed Preckwinkle for her 2019 mayoral run.
For his own mayoral campaign, Johnson leaned on his wafer-thin experience as a commissioner, a part-time job, which was bolstered by significant support from his primary employer, the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, to defeat Vallas in the 2023 mayoral election.
Boss Toni endorsed Johnson in the runoff over Vallas.
Johnson has been a colossal disaster as mayor. In every approval poll taken about his performance, he is deeply underwater.
Had Preckwinkle not sided with Johnson over Boykin in 2018, he’d still be a nobody. And Chicago would very likely be a better place.
Another aside: Boykin is a candidate for the 7th Congressional District Democratic primary race in March. He’s the best candidate in the large field running to succeed Danny K. Davis.
Moving ahead to next year, the Preckwinkle tree can be pruned in February 2027 when Johnson next faces Chicago voters.
Robert J. Peters, state senator
Preckwinkle plucked Robert J. Peters from well-deserved obscurity after Kwame Raoul, then the state senator of Illinois' 13th District, was elected attorney general in 2018.
The Chicago Democratic ward committeeman in that district, including Preckwinkle, who is the 4th Ward committeeman, in a closed-door election -- transparency anyone? -- appointed Peters to succeed Raoul, even though there was credible evidence at the time that he didn’t even live in the district.
Peters was once a paid political consultant to Preckwinkle, whom he describes as his mentor. He also once worked as a community organizer for Reclaim Chicago, which in 2016 endorsed Bernie Sanders for president and -- no surprise -- worked to elect Kim Foxx state’s attorney.
But Peters is best known as a leading force for creating the SAFE-T Act, another affront on public safety.
Peters is now running for the open 2nd Congressional District seat. Illinois’ ineffectual media hasn’t bothered to ask him this undeniably relevant question, one even a remedial school giraffe could conceive: Do you want to ban cash bail on a national level?
Well Robert, do you?
The good news is that Peters, despite a massive fundraising lead over his opponents, is polling at just five percent in the most recent survey regarding the 2nd District Democratic primary race. The bad news is quite disturbing -- leading the pack, although 45 percent of the poll respondents are undecided -- is convicted felon and former 2nd District Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.
On the 2nd District ballot, you won’t find these inestimably better choices: "None of the Above," "Do Over," and "Are You Freaking Serious?"
Around the time of announcing his run for Congress, Peters erased his history on X's social media platform, which included a post where he blamed “wealthy white people” for the spread of COVID-19. After a 2023 downtown Chicago riot, Peters said on the widespread violence and hooliganism was “a mass protest against poverty and segregation.”
Peters is a poison fruit of the tree, indeed.
Preckwinkle and her tree must go
To chop that tree down -- which will prevent new branches -- Cook County Democratic voters need to choose Brendan Reilly over Preckwinkle in March. Once Boss Toni loses that race, as former state party Chairman Michael Madigan did after he failed to win reelection as Illinois House speaker, she'll likely walk away from her party leadership post.
Because in Chicago politics, without the yin, there is no yang.
