Brown wants to be mayor; can she win 2019 election before being indicted?

It’s not unheard of for someone under criminal suspicion by federal investigators to run for government office. Heck, the taint of a possible indictment doesn’t even always scare voters off from casting a ballot in support of someone.

Is this for real?

Yet I suspect that Dorothy Brown, the Cook County Circuit Court clerk who now has visions of running for mayor come the 2019 election cycle, may well go into the political history books for an over-bloated sense of self-importance.

FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS HAVE long focused their attention on Brown’s behavior as a court clerk and political official, even though as of yet she has not been indicted for anything.

Yet the reports have been intense enough that her name always gets tossed about whenever political corruption is the topic of discussion.

So should Brown, who has been a part of the local government for nearly two decades, seriously be thinking of herself as a challenger to Mayor Rahm Emanuel when he seeks re-election come the Feb. 26 municipal elections?

My guess is she figures there’s so many other challengers (it could be as many as one dozen in the non-partisan election format) that she has as good a chance as anybody else in finishing in second place – which would put her up against Emanuel in an April 2 run-off election (provided that Rahm doesn’t get a clear majority in February).

Just a couple of past politicos who ran ...

BUT COULD BROWN, who some say solicited cash and gifts from her employees – in exchange for promotions, actually overcome the political stink of suspicion and win anything? For her part, Brown says people are lying to federal investigators about her. Or is this a way of bloating her ego in the months prior to the federal government handing down an indictment?

Would this ultimately be the “achievement” for which Brown will be remembered on political scene – the candidate who got indicted in mid-election cycle!

Of course, there have been many names in our political past who wound up having to deal with the suspicion of criminal allegations being floated against them.

... for office with taint of indictment

Rod Blagojevich, whose name cropped up in the news recently when the Supreme Court of the United States rejected a final attempt at appealing his conviction, had suspicion and the FBI against him when he sought re-election in 2006.

YET HE MANAGED to win a second term in office by dumping so much rhetorical crud (including some outright slander) against the reputation of Republican challenger Judy Baar Topinka. It wasn’t until more than two years later that the U.S. Attorney’s office came down with the indictment (which actually was motivated by his actions in the days following the 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama).

Blagojevich was in position to pick Obama’s replacement from Illinois in the U.S. Senate, and prosecutors claim he blatantly solicited payoffs from people interested in getting the appointment.

There are some who think that if Blagojevich hadn’t been so arrogant in his behavior while under investigation, federal investigators might not have been able to get anything on Rod – and the resulting years of criminal proceedings and his incarceration wouldn’t have occurred.

Is that what could happen with Brown? Her having the nerve to run for mayor while under suspicion will motivate prosecutorial-types to find something on her? I’m sure there are some who will fantasize about Brown being carted away in handcuffs by FBI agents just before she could take the mayoral oath of office.

THE OTHER “BIG name” politico who pops into my head is Dan Rostenkowski, the Northwest Side member of Congress who used to be the all-powerful House Ways & Means chairman before he got busted for what some considered a petty offense – purchasing some $22,000 in stamps from the House Post Office, then converting them to cash for his personal use.

EMANUEL: Trying to laugh off his challengers

This came up during his re-election bid of 1994, and the 36-year member of Congress ultimately lost to Republican Mike Flanagan, who lasted but one two-year term before being replaced by none-other-than Blagojevich in his days before becoming governor.

Can Brown be more successful than Rostenkowski was in overcoming suspicion in swaying voters to back her bid for higher office?

Or will her scheduled announcement Sunday that she’s running for mayor merely be the beginning of an absurd election cycle, one which Emanuel himself on Thursday described as a, “political improv show … audition(ing) more cast members.”

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We’ll get to see how much (or little) party politicking has changed in Cook

Political party officials, and not just in Chicago, are usually stubborn types who think they’re always right and that if they just stand fast in their ways anybody who has the nerve to complain will just go away!

BROWN: How long will she keep the lawbooks?

So it is with that attitude in mind that we ought to appreciate the happenings of Friday in which the Democratic Party for Cook County decided to openly dump on Dorothy Brown in her desire to get elected to a fifth term as Cook County court clerk.

HERS IS THE office that keeps track of what happens in the court system, and has been criticized often in the past for maintaining antiquated office procedures that often make it more complicated to get information than it ought to be.

Brown also has come under criticism, and investigation, on claims that employees of her office were being forced to make payments to Brown if they were to have any chance of having their desires for job promotions taken seriously.

In short, bribes. That is if we’re to believe the little tidbits that have come from the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago.

Recently, there were reports that federal investigators came to Brown’s home, and wound up confiscating her cell phone. Although Brown – who claims that all political people wind up being investigated at one point in time or another – says the phone was taken from her outside her house.

THAT IS A point that might matter to her, but I doubt many in the general public will make any such distinction.

Which may be why the Cook County Democratic Party, which earlier this year slated Brown as the officially preferred candidate for county court clerk in next year’s March primary, felt compelled to take it back.

They gathered on Friday, heard Brown out, then gathered in a back room for a brief bit of time before deciding to rescind her as the party pick.

By days’ end, the party shifted their preference to 8^th Ward Ald. Michelle Harris. Meaning that party precinct workers, when working their areas and encouraging people to vote, are supposed to tell people to pick Harris for county court clerk.

WHETHER PEOPLE WILL actually do that is yet to be seen. Perhaps in the old days, it would have been a shoo-in for Harris to win the nomination (and most likely, the general election next November).

HARRIS: How long until she blamed for flaws?

But I wonder if many people will have been so used to hearing the “Dorothy Brown” name throughout the years that they will give a knee-jerk reaction and vote for her. Will anybody remember five months from now what happened on Friday?

We’d like to think they would. But who’s to really say how seriously people will take the political party hacks who acted on Friday as though they could will away the presence of Dorothy Brown?

Personally, I think Friday was memorable for one moment – the point when Brown tried arguing that the county party structure had no authority to rescind her slating because she gave the party a $25,000 donation AFTER being slated earlier this year.

SHE CLAIMED IT was the equivalent of a legally-binding contract, although her description also makes it sound more like a bribe; like she bought the right to be the officially recognized choice of the Democratic Party.

As it is, I have already read my share of anonymous Internet commentary saying Brown has no concept of a contract, and has revealed her ignorance.

It will be curious to see just how extensive that thought is among the electorate. Will Brown manage to get herself re-elected despite the slating shift; thereby requiring an indictment and eventual criminal conviction to remove her from office?

Or will it soon become Harris who becomes the person who takes the blame for now antiquated the court clerk’s record keeping measures are?

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What does an endorsement mean?

It’s hard to say just what the effect is of an endorsement by a government official for someone seeking another electoral office.

Do I think there are thousands of potential Chicago-area voters who are now going to rush right out and cast their vote for Cook County Board president based on what Reps. Danny Davis or Luis Gutierrez, both Illinois Democrats, said on Thursday?

I DOUBT IT.

Yet that didn’t stop the two men who represent Chicago in Congress from issuing statements telling us who they think should replace Todd Stroger.

That’s the key. Neither man is backing the Son of John.

Davis thinks we should support Dorothy Brown, while Gutierrez gave his backing to Toni Preckwinkle.

NOW I DON’T think either man is all that interested in how the electorate is going to vote. What I mean is that they’re really not trying to influence the turnout.

What an endorsement like this is really about is a government official willing to take a gamble that they are picking the eventual winner. Meaning, that Davis fully expects the county’s circuit court clerk to make the move up to county board president. Which is also why people like Richard M. Daley rarely make such endorsements. He’s afraid of picking the wrong person and developing an enemy.

When Brown winds up holding that position of great authority (which some local political observers have been known to refer to imformally as the “mayor of Cook County”), Davis wants her to know that he was among her early backers.

Which really means he’s going to want to know that he can count on her to do his political bidding on local affairs.

WHAT IS INTERESTING is that Davis has taken the factual data that has cropped up thus far and come to the conclusion that Brown will be the county board president. That same information was made available to Gutierrez, who apparently interpreted it differently.

He’s banking on the fact that there will someday be a “President Preckwinkle” working out of the fifth floor office located down the hall from the Cook County Board chambers.

Who knows something that the other person doesn’t? That is the question we will be pondering for the next month-and-a-half until the Feb. 2 primary election.

There has been one poll of significance thus far in this campaign – the one commissioned by the Chicago Tribune so they could write stories that could try to influence the course of the electoral cycle.

THE PUBLIC SPIN put on that poll early on was that incumbent Stroger was lagging in third place in a four-candidate field. That means Brown and Preckwinkle are the numbers one and two candidates respectively.

But with a significant number of undecided voters remaining, no one should assume it is impossible for Preckwinkle to close the gap that she faces, provided she can put some energy into her campaigning.

There are those who wonder if she’s a tad too boring, and possibly Hyde Park-ish, to appeal to the bulk of Chicagoans.

For his part, Davis said that Tribune poll motivated him to make his decision, although he said the results matched up with two polls he commissioned as well. Davis is the guy who put aside his own desires to be county board president so as to reduce the chances that he would split the black vote up and enable a white guy to win the post.

SO I’M SURE he is viewing his endorsement as bolstering the leading African-American candidate’s chances of success.

Could Gutierrez be thinking just the opposite, hoping that his selection helps persuade many Latinos to start thinking of Preckwinkle as their preferred candidate?

Preckwinkle seems to hope so.

In her statement announcing Gutierrez’ support, she touts him as the “highest-ranking Hispanic elected official,” hoping she can repeat the Barack Obama formula of a variety of voters of all the ethnicities and races will come together to move her up to the county board presidency.

I BRING THIS up because while she may be trying to appeal to many of the same Chicago-area people who were smitten with the presidential bid last year of Barack Obama, she doesn’t necessarily have his same personable quality that enabled him to capture the emotions of the voter the way he did.

She may be from Hyde Park and may once have been Obama’s alderman, but that doesn’t mean things will automatically transfer over.

But then again, back in the ’08 Democratic primary season, Illinois was one of the few places where Obama won the Latino vote (remember how much we loved Hillary for awhile?). That was done with Gutierrez’ help.

Could the Preckwinkle bid turn out to be a political encore for Gutierrez? If so, then a Preckwinkle victory would mean some serious favors owed to the Congressman, which is what these kinds of endorsements are truly all about.

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Not a surprise Stroger gets challenges

Even if Cook County Board President Todd Stroger weren’t getting criticized from all sides for just about everything he does (mostly it is because some political people are still bitter about the circumstances under which he got the post), he’d be facing some serious challenges for his office.

The perception is that the son of the late Chicago politico John Stroger is young and inexperienced, AND he’s only finishing his first term as county board president. He doesn't have the benefits of incumbency now the way he will have in future years.

IF EVER THERE is a time to knock him out, it is now.

So that is why we’re seeing the people coming out of the woodwork saying they will challenge him.

Just on Wednesday I had a press release sent to this site’s e-mail, promoting the campaign of circuit court Clerk Dorothy Brown saying she’d like to run for the top post in county government.

And in the Chicago Sun-Times, we get an item telling us that Mayor Richard M. Daley is planning to back the candidacy of Toni Preckwinkle, the alderman from the Hyde Park neighborhood whose campaign rhetoric and literature almost tries to bill her as a female version of Barack Obama.

ADMITTEDLY, THAT ITEM from the newspaper was merely a “Sneed scoop.” So who knows what Daley is really thinking (he’d probably deny it, if publicly asked who he’s endorsing for county board president).

But the thing these two officials have in common (aside from gender) is that they are African-American.

Both of them are political people who have had some experience in the ways that things work in and around City Hall. And there’s no way that Stroger will be able to criticize them for trying to take an elective office away from an African-American official the way he likely would if some white official were to run for the post.

Things may be a tad more subtle in Chicago politics compared to the days of the mid-1980s and “Council Wars,” but there still remains a racial undertone to our city’s politics – primarily because there still remains the racial undertone to our society.

DO I THINK the sole reason that someone like Forrest Claypool decided not to challenge Stroger in next year’s Democratic primary for county board president is because he’s white?

Probably not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a factor that he didn’t want to get branded as some sort of “racist” the same way that many people now think of the memory of Bernard Epton.

Remember the one-time state legislator from Hyde Park who challenged Harold Washington for Chicago mayor with those “before it’s too late” commercials who in reality was that now-extinct breed of politician – a liberal Republican?

The only thing I wonder now is if the final lineup of candidates for the Democratic primary (which I honestly believe will be the real election, I just don’t see the Cook County Republican Party coming up with a legitimate candidate) will wind up consisting of Stroger, Brown, Preckwinkle, perhaps another African-American official like Danny Davis (who has hinted he might give up his seat in Congress to run for the post) and one lone white official.

COULD WE WIND up with a situation where all those African-American officials split the black vote in the primary, allowing that white official who has the gumption to run to take a slim victory?

The reason I wonder about this is because of the impact it could have on that overall Democratic party ticket for the November general elections.

This is the election cycle where a lot of political people who consider themselves to be completely responsible are behaving in ways that make it clear they want to dump Roland Burris as U.S. senator and Stroger as county board president.

There is the fear that if a final Democratic ticket winds up having Jesse White for another term as Illinois secretary of state as its lone African-American official, that the black vote for November could wind up being repulsed and staying at home.

ARE WE STUCK with Stroger in some sense that his presence is needed to maintain political harmony? I’d hate to think so, and the fact that other legitimate African-American officials are willing to come forth reduce the chance that such rhetoric can be spouted come next year.

Like I wrote earlier, Stroger is vulnerable because he’s still early in a political career, although his circumstance is unique in that his actions during his first term as county board president have angered enough people to want to ensure that the career dies prematurely.

When the county board meets again Thursday and is expected to vote on a plan to repeal part of last year’s sales tax increase (which is part of Stroger’s legacy since he pushed for it so hard and has used his power to ensure it remains in place), we hopefully will be putting aside this particular moment.

After all, the understanding is that Stroger will not continue to veto these repeals, and he will be able to get to keep part of the increase in place.

IN SHORT, BOTH sides won something.

Now, we can move on to the campaign rhetoric, as political people attempt to use the activity of recent months to attack each other in ways that help bolster their own chances of political success.

It will be curious to see what becomes of Todd Stroger during the course of the upcoming 16 months. He’s going to get hit with a political avalanche unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years.

If he’s able to survive it and get re-elected, then perhaps his detractors will have to start piping down.

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