Jan Schakowsky may be the most vile politician in Illinois, which is quite an accomplishment. Stroger is the most stupid. Dunnings, a mere cousin of Stroger, is not eligible for the stupidity award.
In a seriously stupid political move, Dunnings bailed her young protege out of jail with a credit card. What a chumbolone. Every machine politician in the world knows that you use cash to spring your friends from the lockup.
Democratic ship stuck with Urkel, Tombstone
By John Kass
Chicago Tribune
5:47 PM CDT, April 18, 2009
Even before the Stroger hit the fan in last week's political scandal, Democrats were worried about selling voters on two of the most hapless brands in politics on the 2010 ticket:
Urkel and Tombstone.
"Ouch," said one leading Democratic Party official over a bowl of poached eggs at a breakfast diner near City Hall late last week. "The two of them up there, well, it could be a problem."
Urkel, as everyone must know, is Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, the favorite pinata of the local media who's just given everyone another reason to smack him. And Tombstone is Sen. Roland "Tombstone" Burris, a weakling so desperate to add "Senator" to the honors on his ridiculous mausoleum wall that he stooped to kiss the hand of Gov. Dead Meat for an appointment.
What complicates all this for the Democrats is that Urkel and Tombstone are African-American politicians, so weakened by their own inability to comprehend reality that they have little chance of winning in a general election.
Yet without African-American votes, there is no Democratic Party in Illinois, only two middle-age South Side Irish guys in nice suits who are still young enough at heart to play with bendable black and Latino political action figures.
"Like I said, this is a problem," said the guy at breakfast, sullenly poking at his eggs with a spoon. "You need African-Americans on the ticket to get the vote in the general election. You don't want black voters to stay home. But these guys?"
Stroger can't get through even one news cycle without getting thwacked by "reformers" and editorialists.
Yet even his critics must know that two 11th Ward baby-sitters from Mayor Richard Daley are always within arm's reach of Stroger: Joe Fratto and Pam Munizzi.
If Daley asked them to bring your head on a platter, it would be done, even if all they had was a brick and a dull butter knife. And I mean this only as testament to their loyalty.
But Stroger is now a frozen albatross around Democratic necks, getting heavier with each embarrassing episode.
Stroger was forced to announce to the Tribune's Breaking News Center late last week that he fired his own cousin, Donna Dunnings, the county's chief financial officer, from her $160,000 a year job over her relationship with former county employee Tony Cole.
Cole is a former basketball player and a fired patronage hack with a history of arrests for violence against women. He has been found guilty of violating an order of protection and passing a bad check. He has been accused but not convicted of punching an ex-girlfriend in the face, threatening a woman with an Uzi, groping other women, making harassing phone calls, trespassing and being involved in a gang rape.
In a seriously stupid political move, Dunnings bailed her young protege out of jail with a credit card. What a chumbolone. Every machine politician in the world knows that you use cash to spring your friends from the lockup. A credit card might alert somebody, say Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, a 19th Warder running for something, given all the puffy publicity he's getting lately, bold enough to fight Internet prostitution, yet compassionate enough to counsel hookers to renounce their sins.
Yet how this all became news isn't my business. But Tribune reporter Jeremy Gorner scooped the Sun-Times, interviewing Stroger early Friday morning when he announced Dunnings was toast.
Among Democrats waiting to remove Stroger is Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), an African-American progressive with a clean reform record.
"I know Todd personally, and I like him," Preckwinkle told me on Friday. "It's just that I don't think this is the right job for him. All the bad news that keeps trickling out of the president's office clearly helps the challengers."
Another challenger could be Stroger's old nemesis, Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool, a friend of David Axelrod, media wizard to Daley and President Barack Obama.
"The county has become a bit of a media circus and political circus," Stroger told WGN radio. "And anything that happens for reasons that are just about who is in the office may become bigger than sometimes they should."
What does that mean, exactly? Who knows?
"It doesn't matter," a Democratic Cook County Stroger ally told me. "Everyone told him to get rid of Dunnings, and he kept stalling. Now guys are saying about Todd, 'Is it time to jump off the ship?' Right now, I don't know. But how is he going to raise campaign money if people think it's a losing cause?"
Preckwinkle taking out Urkel in the primary would keep an African-American on the Democratic ticket. The great reformer, President Obama, will fly back home on a vast cloud of Hopium, to embrace Preckwinkle and whomever rids him of the annoying Tombstone. Black voters might even buy it, if Obama's selling.
Icing Urkel and Tombstone in the primaries would solve the Democrats' delicate demographic problem. And the white guys could continue playing with their toys.
That's how the Chicago machine poaches its eggs. But first, they have to break a few.
jskass@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
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