Democrats push hard to cement GOP’s ‘super-duper’ minority on Cook County Board [Chicago Tribune]

Democrats have dominated the Cook County Board since 1910 and that isn’t going to change on Nov. 8.

The question is whether Republicans will claw back one of the seats it lost four years ago or lose even more ground, most notably a seat for Chicago’s Far Northwest Side and northwest suburbs that has been held by a retiring Republican for more than a quarter century.

Democrats, led by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to take the seat being vacated by Peter Silvestri of Elmwood Park, who has represented the 9th District since 1994. The Democrats are also spending big to hold onto the nearby 14th District they took from the GOP in 2018 when Democrat Scott Britton defeated Gregg Goslin.

Republicans, meanwhile, are focused on keeping the 9th District seat and taking back the 14th District by hammering Democrats on crime and tying Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to as many candidates on the ballot as possible.

With a combined budget of nearly $9 billion, the board oversees Cook County’s courts, jail, health system and forest preserves. Only one incumbent Republican — Sean Morrison — is running for reelection for the 17th District that covers most of the county’s western border. As the head of the Cook County GOP and with a district drawn to be one of the most conservative, he is considered relatively safe.

Things are less certain in the 9th District, which includes Far Northwest Side Chicago neighborhoods filled with police officers, firefighters and other city employees as well as suburbs from River Forest and Elmwood Park to Park Ridge and Mount Prospect.

Praised by Preckwinkle as a consensus-builder who “kept things on an even keel” on the board, Silvestri previously told the Tribune he hoped a fellow fiscal conservative centrist would replace him. Nevertheless, Preckwinkle is leading an effort to undermine Silvestri’s wishes and helping Maggie Trevor, a market researcher in Rolling Meadows, flip the seat.

Until the campaign’s final weeks, Trevor had been outraised by Republican challenger Matt Podgorski, owner of the polling firm Ogden & Fry and a logistics manager for the bottling and distribution company Reyes Coca-Cola.

Trevor has received about $230,000 in the four months since the June primary, which includes about $220,000 from the Cook County Democratic Party in the form of ads, polling, consulting and staff — while Podgorski has brought in just under $175,000 in the same span from nearly 70 contributors.

Podgorski is also chairman of the Northwest Side GOP, based out of Chicago’s 41st Ward. He’s received money and endorsements from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, the Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2, and other labor groups and thousands from fellow Northwest Side Republicans. He’s also received $12,000 from conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein.

The party boost has helped Trevor, who until the late September donation from the county Democratic Party was running a “bare-bones” campaign. She’s also counting on help from unions that haven’t sided with Podgorski, as well as endorsements she’s received from environmental, LGBTQ and abortion access groups and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.

In addition, Trevor said she built up her name recognition in 2018 and 2020 when she unsuccessfully ran for an Illinois House seat, races heavily subsidized by the Democratic Party of Illinois and Democratic majority that were both at the time controlled by then-House Speaker Mike Madigan, who has since been indicted on racketeering charges.

The two offer contrasting visions for the seat.

Podgorski, the son of a former Chicago police officer, says he ran when he realized “Republicans and sort of pro-police folks were at risk of losing another seat” on the board and that he’d use the position to press Foxx to more aggressively prosecute gun crimes, and county judges to hold more accused gun offenders in jail while they await trial.

Foxx lost the district in 2020 and has become a focal point of criticism, mostly by Republicans, for violence in the city and her support of the so-called SAFE-T Act. She’s also been questioned about morale and attrition in the state’s attorney’s office.

Foxx “set a culture in her office where undercharging and not charging is the norm,” Podgorski told the Tribune. “That’s bad enough as it is, then what that does is that has a trickle-down effect to the police officers … What you end up getting is a rolling of the eyes of, ‘Why am I going to bother making this arrest when I know it’s not going to be prosecuted?’ ”

Trevor voted for Foxx in the last two general elections but says it’s “peculiar” Republicans like Podgorski are putting so much focus on a separately elected official: There’s little the County Board can do to force Foxx’s hand on policy, short of tweaking her budget, she said.

Still, Trevor’s become “less supportive of (Foxx’s) shift of focus away from some of the lower-level crimes” and says they need to “address their staffing shortages so we can get cases through the court system faster and also make sure that we are prosecuting violent crimes and lower-level crimes.” Trevor said.

The July 4 shooting in Highland Park earlier this year and national issues like the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion are “clearly what’s driving a lot of people’s positions” heading into this November’s elections, Trevor said.

On gun control, she supports a ban on the sale of weapons like the semi-automatic rifle the Highland Park shooter used, and an expansion of abortion access.

“I’m not for a total ban on firearms, but military-style weapons have no place in civil society,” she said.

On abortion, Trevor said she would prioritize expanding access to meet the demand from out-of-state patients and that she’d support county-run clinics offering medical abortion pills and other gynecological services “so people can easily travel to get those services.”

Trevor’s focus on the board would be hyperlocal: strengthening transportation access for pedestrians and cyclists in the northwest suburbs and managing the potential traffic headache of a Chicago Bears move to Arlington Heights — a move she provisionally supports to boost the area’s economy.

Given that he would likely remain in the “super-duper” minority of the board if he won, Podgorski said he’d skew “nonpartisan” and work with different coalitions of Democratic commissioners.

On issues that don’t typically play well with the majority of Cook County’s voters, such as abortion and the presidency of Donald Trump, Podgorski downplayed his positions.

He said he’s given abortion access in the county “almost no thought. I don’t know how I could change anything on the county level if I wanted to,” said he “held his nose” in voting for Trump in 2020 and said he hasn’t paid attention to the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee hearings.

Though the Northwest Side GOP previously shared an article on Twitter claiming Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election, Podgorski said Biden was rightfully elected as president. He did say the Cook County clerk’s office can do a better job publicizing ballot returns.

While Democrats are trying to take the 9th District, they have spent even more money in the 14th District race. Britton, a Democratic attorney, has so far received $325,000 in help from the county Democrats as he faces hedge fund manager Benton Howser to represent the northern suburbs from Glenview to Palatine.

The party helped Britton win the seat in 2018 when he defeated 20-year incumbent Goslin by 8 points.

Shortly after taking office, Britton helped raise the smoking age in unincorporated Cook to 21, a measure that was quickly followed statewide and updated county regulations that offered “critical protections” for renters. A vexillologist, which is someone who studies flag design, Britton also spearheaded the redesign of the county’s flag. Like Trevor, he has the endorsement of Personal PAC, which supports increased abortion access.

Britton said a top priority for the next four years will be expanding access to the county’s health care system, noting he received proper care for a 2021 diagnosis of throat cancer that is now in remission.

“I got the best care you can get at the NorthShore system and in Glenbrook, but my result, which was great, is substantially because of my ZIP code,” he said. “Cook County Health needs to be that entity because you want to go there, not because you have to.”

On the campaign trail, Howser highlighted the “mass exodus” from Foxx’s office, saying the county board must “take charge of this extremely important situation.” Howser said he was troubled by Foxx’s prosecution policies, pointing to a Tribune analysis that showed she dropped felony cases involving charges of murder and other serious offenses at a higher rate than her predecessor during her first term.

“Right now, what’s going on on the county board is they just say she’s doing a great job,” he said.

A spokesperson for Foxx declined to comment. In party mailers, Britton is featured alongside Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who lauds Britton for supporting investments in violence prevention and prosecution of gun crimes.

Both Howser and Podgorski say they take issue with the way the county is spending the $1 billion in COVID-19 relief money the county received through the American Rescue Plan. “We should prioritize the ARPA money to make our fiscal situation more solvent, so we can lower taxes” and fees, Howser said, rather than on programs like the guaranteed income pilot.

Morrison, the sole incumbent Republican running for reelection and head of the county’s GOP, said the board needs fiscal hawks to hold the line on spending. “I’ve always said one party rule is not good for anyone,” he said. “Toni shouldn’t be able to do whatever Toni wants to do arbitrarily. Let’s just have good governance.”

He is hopeful that not only will he maintain his seat, but that the GOP holds onto the 9th District, and potentially flips the 14th, and possibly the 15th, where incumbent Democrat Kevin Morrison is facing Republican Chuck Cerniglia.

Aside from Silvestri, three of the board’s other Democrats are being replaced. In the 5th District, retiring Commissioner Deborah Sims’ endorsed choice, Prairie State College Trustee Monica Gordon, is expected to prevail in a face-off against Libertarian Jason Decker, a handyman.

And in the 13th District, retiring Commissioner Larry Suffredin is likely to be replaced by Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Josina Morita. Andrew Border, her Republican challenger who works in the title insurance industry, has raised less than $500, according to campaign finance records.

And in the 8th District, Commissioner Luis Arroyo Jr. will exit the board after being defeated in the primary by Anthony Joel Quezada, a democratic socialist. Quezada, a Logan Square resident who has served as neighborhood services director for 35th Ward Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa, is unopposed on the November ballot.

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