How names (and times) change

One of the tales we Chicago political geek-types like to tell is of the 1986 Democratic primary elections when gubernatorial nominee Adlai Stevenson III wound up having his chances of victory sabotaged by being tagged with a lieutenant governor running mate who was an ideological ally of Lyndon LaRouche.

PUCINSKI: From no-name to big name?

That was the cycle that two of the candidates for statewide office wound up being LaRouche disciples – including the party’s candidate for Secretary of State in Janice Hart.

SHE IS SIGNIFICANT because, the story goes, she had a WASP-y sounding name that appealed to voters who didn’t really know anything about any of the candidates.

So they picked her over the woman whom the Democratic Party establishment wanted to get the Secretary of State nomination, a woman whose name just sounded “way too foreign” for Illinoisan sensibilities.

That woman was Aurelia Pucinski, whose career has recovered significantly since that debacle 26 years ago. She served a lengthy stint as clerk of the Cook County court, is currently an appellate court justice and is running in the Tuesday primary elections for a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court.

That post is now held by Mary Jane Theis, who is seeking re-election.

YET THERE ARE political observers who believe that Theis could lose this primary election to Pucinski, who supposedly now is the BIG name on the ballot. She’s the one whom voters in Cook County (who are the only ones involved in this particular election) will recognize.

She’s the familiar name whom people will give a knee-jerk reaction vote to, rather than this Theis woman (whom some are trying to denigrate on the grounds that she lives on the same block as Mayor Rahm Emanuel).

In short, she’s come a long way from the days when she was the “foreign-sounding” woman whom nobody knew nothing about.

Now part of it is that Aurelia now has a reputation of her own. She’s NOT just the daughter of “the Puch” (as in former Congressman-turned-alderman Roman Pucinski). She gets a tad more respect now from some people.

BUT I CAN’T help but think this is some evidence that we, as a people have changed. We’re turning, ever-so-gradually, into a people whose definition of society extends beyond that Scottish-Irish mixture that so many thought was “the norm” of our society.

Maybe we’re moving beyond the days when we presume that anyone with an Irish sounding name (the “Mc’s” or the “O’s”) is the knee-jerk preference of voters, and that anyone deviating too far from such a surname has to accept the fact that they may have too many strikes against them to ever serve in public life.

So in that sense, it is a pleasant perk that someone like Pucinski can be taken so seriously and not have something as stupid as an ethnic bias held against her.

Heck, Pucinski even managed to defeat the aforementioned Janice Hart (when Ms. Hart tried to extend her “15 minutes” of political fame by running against Aurelia for the court clerk post that Pucinski ultimately held for three terms). By then, people knew who they were voting for.

CLUELESSNESS COULD NOT play a factor – except for the most clueless of people who are determined to live their lives in society’s shadows. So I’ll be watching come Tuesday night to see who gets the Democratic Party nomination for that state Supreme Court seat (which is for a 10-year term).

Will Theis enjoy the benefits of incumbency and prevail, or will another candidate Joy Cunningham appeal to the significant African-American population of the city and become the first black woman elected to the state’s high court?

Or will the “Pucinski” name recognition prevail to the point of a primary election victory – overcoming the fact that she is a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-back-to-Democrat again.

Because as far as I’m concerned, that ought to be the reason to vote against the Puch-ette – even if she is a former Cherry Blossom Princess.

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Casting the election cycle ’12 ballot

I’m not really someone who has undying faith in the political establishment. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the trend established when I cast my ballot on Monday for the upcoming primary elections.

THEIS: Should neighbor cost her election?



Yes, I used a couple of free hours I had during the afternoon to run some personal errands – including a visit to one of the early-voting centers so I could earn my right to complain about our government for the next four years.

SO OUT OF my continuing sense of giving you all a clue as to where I stand on assorted issues, I will confess to requesting a Democratic Party ballot. Those of you who were hoping I’d help you pick a Republican for president will have to figure that one out for yourself.

I couldn’t possibly bring myself to vote for any of them – even if a part of me thinks the concept of a “President Newt” would provide for high entertainment when it comes to political reporting.

Instead, I cast my vote for the 11 individuals on the ballot from my congressional district (the Illinois first) who want to go to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., to formally make Barack Obama the nominee for U.S. president.

In my district, those delegates include Kwame Raoul, the Hyde Park neighborhood state legislator who took over for Obama when he left the Springfield scene to be a U.S. senator for four years.

BUT THOSE WERE the predictable votes. No one else appeared on my ballot to run for president, other than Obama and his 11 delegates.

Which means the real votes “of interest” were the ones where there was a sense of choice. And I found myself, by-and-large, picking the incumbent out of a sense that none of the other choices had done or said anything to indicate that we should take them any more seriously than we do the current politico.

MUNOZ: A replacement?

That certainly goes for the five Democrats challenging Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., for his seat in Congress. If anything, somebody looking for a serious challenger to Rush ought to shift attention to the Republican ballot, where perhaps Blue Island Mayor Donald Peloquin has the background and ability to be a credible challenger.

But no one on the Democratic primary ballot deserves to be thought of in that class. So I picked Bobby for a term that, if the one-time Black Panther activist-turned-alderman gets it, would have him start his third decade of service on Capitol Hill.

THAT WAS MY same attitude when it came to picking someone for a seat on the Supreme Court of Illinois.

Mary Jane Theis is one of four Democrats and one Republican who wish a 10-year term on the state’s high court from the district that represents Cook County. If you’re a legal geek familiar with Cook County judges, some of the names might seem familiar.

But my guess is that to the average schmoe (of which I myself can be one), this is the campaign between Theis and Aurelia Pucinski.

She’s the daughter of one-time Congressman and Alderman Roman Pucinski who eventually worked her way up to being Cook County Court clerk before getting her current post on an Illinois appellate court for the Chicago area.

BUT SHE’S ALSO one of those political people who has swayed from the Democratic to the Republican parties – although political reality in Cook County has caused her to once again be a Democrat.

If it reads like I’m not sure what to make of people who swing around all over the place politically, that might be part of the reason I didn’t vote for her. But it is more because I haven’t heard anything to indicate why we should dump Theis – except some partisan rhetoric that is just too hard to take seriously.

Such as the claims that Theis should not have participated in the Illinois Supreme Court ruling that reinstated Rahm Emanuel to the ballot for the 2011 mayoral election. Both Emanuel and Theis live on the same block.

I’m not swayed.

ALTHOUGH IT DOES shock me to learn that there is one thing Pucinski says that could be construed as me agreeing with her.

For Pucinski has gone so far as to make an endorsement for the county court clerk position. She’s backing Ricardo Munoz for the office, using a forum by the Anti-Defamation League to say that incumbent Dorothy Brown has “made a mess of that office” – which Pucinski ran for 12 years.

Of course, Brown has accused Pucinski of being “vengeful” and claims she is the one who made a mess of the office that she has spent three terms trying to fix.

RUSH: No challengers, yet!



Yet I can’t help but think that, if after three terms, there is still a sense that the office is messed up, perhaps it comes down to a question of whether someone else should be given a chance.

THAT IS WHAT caused me to cast a vote for Munoz – who is giving up the City Council seat he has held for nearly two full decades to try to get himself a county-wide political post.

I’ll even be willing to forgive Munoz for that knuckleheaded vote of a few years ago when he went along with the plan to privatize the city’s parking meters – depriving city government of potential income for the future. It certainly didn't stop such prominent public officials as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle from formally endorsing his campaign.

Oh, and by the way, I also cast votes for Barack Obama for president and Anita Alvarez for state’s attorney.

But considering that both are running unopposed, what choice did I really have?

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