Death Rattle for the Good Guys

It was around 11 p.m. on Election Night, and Channel 7’s Alan Krashesky was interviewing Cook County Board Presidential candidate Forrest Claypool at Claypool’s campaign headquarters. Claypool spoke for just a moment, but his tone said everything that needed to be said about his chances at that hour. And if there was any room for doubt, it was erased when Krashesky asked Claypool what he thought of the numbers coming in.

They were encouraged, Claypool said. But you could tell they really weren’t. It was still early, he said. But actually it was quite late. They probably wouldn’t know the outcome until morning, Claypool predicted. Wishful thinking. By then the deal was done. John Stroger has retained his icy death grip on the Cook County Board.

As of midnight, only 39% of the precincts in Cook County had reported results. New electronic voting systems throughout the county and in the City of Chicago had had a rough day of it. There were reports of malfunctions, of voters being turned away, and of others leaving frustrated after long waits and erroneous information offered by incompetent election judges. Results were trickling in. The bad news for Claypool, who was leading 53% to 47% at the time, was that two-thirds of the suburban Cook County precincts’ votes had already been counted while fewer than half of the votes in Stroger’s stronghold—Chicago’s South and West sides, and the south suburban towns—had been counted. That meant that most of the rest of the votes would go to Stroger, and he would likely close the gap by morning.

What does that mean for Cook County? No one is sure, because no one other than Stroger’s family and close political operatives has been allowed to see him since he suffered a stroke last week and was wheeled into the hospital. Information on his condition has been closely regulated. His supporters and those delusional enough to believe them insist Stroger will be back humping county taxpayers … er, whoops … running the county in no time. Good as new. Doctors have been more guarded, insisting he will recover, but only to some baseline of greater disability than the overweight, diabetic, high-blood-pressure-suffering Stroger was at before.

In the background during a Stroger campaign headquarters stand-up by Channel 7 reporter Charles Thomas was a podium with a microphone sticking up like a bare and thorny winter rose bush on the prairie. The Indignant Citizen wondered if that would be a preview for upcoming County Board meetings—an empty microphone at Stroger’s Board President seat barking orders to the Patronage Army. Or maybe the Democratic committeemen will find a qualified replacement from among the ranks of the Chicago Department of Streets & Sanitation. Either way the Machine won. Again.

It has often been said that in its heyday the Machine could have run a dead man and gotten him elected. These, then, may be the new Glory Days for the Machine. An elderly stroke victim enters the hospital a week before the primary, no reliable information about his condition is released … & he wins, riding a wave of support generated from Democratic party regulars like Mayor Daley, Bill Clinton and Rod Blagojevich.

All three of them gave positively stomach-turning performances on Stroger’s behalf this last week, especially Daley. When asked at a press conference Thursday a very logical question about what would happen if Stroger couldn’t run in the general election if he won the primary, Daley reacted by accusing the reporter of “putting John Stroger in the ground.” Daley and everyone else then message-shifted into “Stroger’s Not Dead” mode and claimed the only Right thing to do for a man who had done so much for the county was to support him in the primary.

In the end, Stroger’s stroke gave his listless soldiers a rallying point. Claypool had been coming on strong, beating Stroger with his waste and corruption and mismanagement. What was beginning to sound like a death rattle for the Machine instead wound up choking off Claypool’s momentum.

By the time the sun sets on Wednesday, it’s likely John Stroger’s name will have more votes next to it. What will it mean? Nothing good for county taxpayers, that’s for sure. Either we get four more years of Stroger’s hacks, or the hacks get to choose a hack of their own after slicing up the county payroll and coffers in a series of back-room dealings to get everyone On Board behind a Stroger stand-in.

May as well bend over now, folks, here it comes again.