EXTRA: Will family tie be the key to White Sox success with Machado?

The Chicago White Sox had their face-to-face meeting Monday with Manny Machado, the all-star infielder who's trying to get the big-money contract that will make him potentially the highest-paid ballplayer ever.

Is Yainee Machado key to if her husband plays for Sox?

Reports are indicating that the White Sox aren't enthused about having to spend that much money (potentially some $300 million). There's also the fact that his meeting with the White Sox came first -- the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies are scheduled to have their one-on-ones Wednesday and Thursday.

The newest White Sox

MEANING THE WHITE Sox are unlikely to get in the last word and chance to top anybody else's financial offer. Which really means that any serious chance of Machado coming to Chicago is going to be in the hands of Yainee.

As in Machado's wife -- who also is the sister of Yonder Alonso, who happens to be a professional ballplayer in his own right. In fact, he's a first baseman who was acquired by the White Sox from the Cleveland Indians.

Freddy Garcia once had to call 'skip' … 

Would Machado want to be on a ball club with his brother-in-law? Would Yainee be inclined to think that having her brother and husband so close be a benefit (the two actually live a couple of blocks from each other in Miami during the winter months)? Or will they decide that a little bit of space during the summer would be beneficial to maintaining family unity?

I don't actually know the answers to any of those questions. But it would be an intriguing story line if the White Sox' ability to acquire a star shortstop like Machado depends on who their reserve first baseman is.

… the man who was sort-of a father-in-law

IT COULD TURN out to be as interesting as back when the White Sox' pitching rotation included Freddy Garcia -- who was married to the niece of manager Ozzie Guillen.

For a few years, including that World Series'-winning season of 2005, White Sox baseball was truly a family affair. In fact, when the Sox later traded Garcia away to Philadelphia, one of the people most upset was Guillen's wife, Ibis, who blamed her husband for not stopping the trade from occurring.

Machado would have Hall of Famer Aparicio as goal, if he becomes a Sox

Could the saga to rebuild the White Sox into a team that doesn't think avoiding 100 losses a season is a significant accomplishment develop its own potential for a family-type soap opera angle?

And could Machado wind up following in the path of star shortstops from Latin America who established their athletic credentials while wearing the old-English script logo of the White Sox.

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Ego brought down to Earth – Stroger to seek water district, not county president

Todd Stroger, the one-time state legislator and alderman who will forevermore be remembered for his stint as Cook County Board president and his effort to raise the county portion of the sales tax, will go about thinking to himself that he could have been re-elected to that post – IF ONLY.

STROGER: Water dist., sted of president

Stroger on Facebook this weekend was boasting of the Sunday night campaign event where his nominating petition circulators would gather together the results of their work.

THAT WOULD ALLOW Stroger himself (or more likely some flunk on his behalf) to file the petitions Monday to get him a place on the ballot for county board president come the March 20 Democratic primary.

But instead, Stroger on Monday decided to instead file the nominating petitions he had originally collected to get himself on the ballot for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

Which under typical circumstances could be considered a government post of some significance – one that would allow Stroger to go around thinking of himself as a government official. Rather than a political has-been – which is what he’s been in recent years.

Stroger aides were honest in admitting he was unable to get enough signatures of support to get himself a place on the ballot with just over 8,200 valid signatures of support. There wasn’t enough time, since he only began his county board president talk just over a week ago.

WHEREAS HE HAD been using the past several months to gather signatures for the ballot slot for the water district.

If Stroger had gone ahead and sought the county board president post, there’s a very good chance that his petitions would have had the appearance of a rush job; as in sloppy and flawed.

It happens, particularly since the rules governing the process are so vague that who’s to say what will ultimately be determined to be a flawed signature.

PRECKWINKLE: One less primary challenger

Meaning it would have been likely that some supporter of incumbent Toni Preckwinkle would have filed a challenge to Stroger – and he likely would have suffered the ignominious embarrassment of being kicked off the ballot!

IT’S MORE LIKELY that his water district petitions are more legally sound and less likely to be challenged.

Although it’s always possible that someone motivated by spite will go ahead and challenge Stroger’s water district candidacy on the grounds that he had a hell of a lot of nerve to think he could run against Preckwinkle.

If that line of logic sounds incredibly petty and absurd, keep in mind we’re talking about electoral politics. It’s all about the egos for these people.

Including for Stroger, who probably has some resentment that voters dumped on him for his sales tax initiative that was meant to stabilize the county government finances – but instead caused resentment because the increase in the county portion of the sales tax caused the overall tax in Chicago to exceed 10 percent.

THEN AGAIN, THERE are others for whom Stroger’s real offense was being picked by his father, the late John Stroger, to succeed him as county board president.

Todd may have been a one-time state legislator and alderman, but the people who were somehow willing to accept all the generations of Daleys, Madigans, Cullertons, Lipinskis, etc., who have been a part of the local government scene were somehow unable to accept it when the Stroger family tried to follow suit.

John Stroger must settle for county hospital named in his honor, rather than being a political family like the Daleys

I don’t doubt that a Stroger candidacy for Cook County Board president would have drawn a certain amount of negative energy. He would have been a long-shot to win, regardless of what he thinks about Preckwinkle and her ‘pop tax’ effort to balance the county budget.

Although I wonder if his couple of weeks as a Preckwinkle challenger will merely elevate Todd’s profile to the point where the people who eight years ago chanted “Don’t Vote for the Son” as their mantra will suddenly take an interest in the water district race to ensure he doesn’t win that seat either.

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Will we be ‘begat’ a Daley & a Simon?

Bill Daley is getting off his electoral behind and kicking his gubernatorial aspirations into gear – he formally filed the paperwork on Tuesday that says he’s a gubernatorial candidate (and not just running an “exploratory” committee).

DALEY: Finally going for gov

As if Daley isn’t enough of a candidate with political family connections, we’ll also have Sheila Simon. Our lieutenant governor who doesn’t want that post anymore plans to rent an airplane and make appearances in Chicago, Springfield and Carbondale on Wednesday.

SHE WON’T SAY officially what she’s running for in next year’s election cycle; but we know her desires to run for state attorney general got dumped on when Lisa Madigan refused to try to move up the political ladder to governor, and she’s likely to run for Illinois comptroller.

A Daley and a Simon; it makes me wonder what the spirits of Richard J. and Paul are thinking as they look down upon us to see how we react to their offspring!

It also will give us a chance to see just how venerated the “Daley” and “Simon” names are these days, as voters in next year’s Democratic Party primary get their chance to determine if they want to continue the trend of political siblings.

For Daley (the son and brother of former Chicago mayors and the uncle to a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner), he has never held elective office – even though he has the titles of “Commerce secretary” and “White House chief of staff” on his resume.

HE HAS OFTEN hinted at wanting to run for Illinois governor, but has always managed to find reasons to back away from a campaign – until now.

 

DICK & PAUL ...

For Daley seems to be banking his chances on the concept that incumbent Pat Quinn is so weak and ineffectual in his political post that there’s no way anybody votes for him.

He expects that all of Chicago will want to have another “Daley” in office, and that the Chicago vote will dominate the Democratic primary turnout. Hence, he wins. Which is an overly simplistic strategy. Reality is rarely that straightforward.

Because while I’ll be the first to admit that nobody is going to get all excited about voting for Pat Quinn, I suspect that many people will be even more offended at the thought of voting for a Daley.

THEY MIGHT WIND up taking out grudges they held against Richard M. (but were too cowardly to do anything about while he was actually in office) on his brother.

... the 'proud' political papas

There also there will be the “good-government” types who will wind up seeing a vote for Quinn as voting against the whole concept of political families (which would have been Lisa Madigan’s biggest problem had she decided to go for governor).

Or maybe some will wind up backing the political siblings. Because it always amazes me how much many people whine and complain about the concept, but then wind up casting their ballots in support of it. I suspect the people who really have an aversion to voting for a "Daley" will wind up casting their ballots in the Republican primary.

Then, there’s Sheila Simon; who could wind up being the only person on the Democratic ballot for the 2014 general elections who isn’t from Chicago – she’s a Carbondale resident.

THE DAUGHTER OF former Sen. (and Congressman and lieutenant governor and state legislator) Paul Simon got herself into her current position because of the disgust felt by many toward nominee Scott Lee Cohen. This will be Sheila’s first attempt at running an actual campaign to get a nomination.

 

SIMON: Beating Judy in a jam session?

That has some wondering if she’s too inexperienced in the ways of politicking to be running a campaign for a statewide office.

She may well win the primary (I don’t see anybody getting excited over the prospects of Will County Auditor Duffy Blackburn, who wants the comptroller’s post as well).

But can she take on incumbent Illinois comptroller Judy Baar Topinka come the general election? It doesn’t help that the suburban Riverside resident is one of the few Republicans whom the Chicago-area Democrats are willing to accept.

SHE MIGHT BE the lone official who keeps the Democrats from running up a string of victories in 2014 that gives them complete domination of Illinois state government. Of course, we’ve seen how Dems are incapable of “playing nice” with each other, meaning that domination wouldn’t really mean much!

Although there could be a quirk that we’ve never quite had before – a musical campaign. Topinka is the “wacky aunt”-type with the accordion, while Simon plays banjo in a bluegrass band.

I wonder about the younger voters – particularly those 17-year-olds who will now be able to vote come the March primary. Will they think this is intriguing? Or will they view it similar to Simon’s own daughter, who (according to Chicago magazine) once referred to her mother as being in an “old lady band.”

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Battle of the political siblings – will we soon ‘begat’ another Stroger or Sawyer?

John Stroger and Eugene Sawyer have both moved along to the Great Beyond, so to speak. Yet their names don’t seem to wither away from our political scene.

We’re talking about a couple of South Side officials who rose to top-level posts – Cook County Board president and mayor, respectively – whose sons now are seeking a vacancy in the city’s political universe to try to advance their own careers.

FOR IT SEEMS that Todd Stroger – the former legislator and alderman who served a term as county board President himself – wants a political comeback.

He doesn’t like being a political nobody – which he became following his loss in 2010 to Toni Preckwinkle. Now, he’s talking about wanting to be the replacement for William Beavers, who likely is going to have to serve some time in a federal correctional institution following the “guilty” verdict reached by jurors recently on tax-related criminal charges.

But even if the committeemen from the South Side and nearby suburbs are willing to agree to let Stroger back into the universe of Chicago politics, he’s not going to have the post handed to him on a political platter.

For one of the other people who’s letting the committeemen know he’d like the post of Cook County commissioner from Chicago’s Southeastern portion and nearby suburbs is Ken Sawyer.

HE’S A COUSIN to 6^th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer – who is a son to the late alderman-turned-mayor upon the death of Harold Washington.

If that isn’t enough people with ties to the Sawyer family, it also seems that the current alderman’s chief of staff, Brian Sleet, also has some thoughts dancing about his head of being able to call himself commissioner, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Which may be lower-ranking than alderman or congressman, but sure beats the heck out of being a hired staffer to an elected official.

Are we literally going to get factions of the Sawyer and Stroger families engaged in a civil war of sorts – with all the committeemen of the sixth and seventh wards trying to negotiate the best deals for themselves in exchange for their support from the special committee created by Cook County Democratic Chairman Joe Berrios to screen candidates for the post to which Beavers still had just over another year-and-a-half to serve?

HOW UGLY COULD it get?

Personally, I’d get a kick out of it if someone else came into the mix – and neither a Sawyer nor a Stroger wound up getting the position.

But let’s not forget the Book of Royko and all those “begats.” The mere existence of a familiar surname is bound to sway many of those who will have a say in this decision.

And for those whose distaste for Todd Stroger is just too intense for them to consider backing him for the post, I can’t help but think that someone whose ties to Sawyer ought to be considered the frontrunner.

ALTHOUGH I WONDER if the idea of having a Sawyer as alderman and as county commissioner will scare some people into thinking that too much political power will lie in one family. Then again, when the name was “Daley” and there were simultaneous sittings on the county board AND the mayor’s office, few were bothered.

Then again, that “Daley” name contains a certain appeal to a certain type of Chicagoan to the point that I’m convinced it will crop up again in a third generation – yet another “begat” for us to beget.

There’s also the fact that I’m certain there are some people who take all the Stroger trashing that Todd endures as some sort of bias. They’d be willing to disagree with it – particularly if they still have some sort of debts (not necessarily financial) owed to the family.

There also would be one way in which bringing Todd Stroger onto the county board would be all too appropriate.

FOR BEAVERS WAS usually the one county commissioner who was willing to defend Todd in some way. He’d usually mock talk of financial problems by saying they were created by the eagerness of some county officials to do away with the hike in the county’s portion of the sales tax that Stroger pushed through during his term in office.

Now that Beavers is gone, we’d lose what public opposition we could have to county board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Unless we have Todd Stroger sitting in that front row seat within easy eyeshot of
“Madame President” herself.

At the very least, it could make county board sessions for the next year or so all the more interesting – unless you get excited by the repeated efforts of commissioners to get their government colleague, Jerry “the Iceman” Butler to sing!

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