Will Dems follow orders, back Foxx?

The Cook County Democratic Party put the word out Thursday – loyal Democrats are supposed to back Kim Foxx’ bid to be the new state’s attorney.

FOXX: The official choice of Dem party

With the party deciding to slate her bid over that of incumbent State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and challenger Donna More, it means that the political operatives in charge of getting people to actually turn out and vote for Democrats on March 15 will be under orders to stress votes for Foxx.

OR, IF THEY happen to be among those people who just can’t bring themselves to vote for the woman who was once chief of staff to county board President Toni Preckwinkle, they will be under orders to keep their mouths shut and do nothing to interfere with Foxx’ campaign operations.

Personally, I remain unsure how the election for a new state’s attorney this year will turn out.

I don’t doubt that people upset by incidents involving police violence against black people will be in place, and there will be some people more than willing to see incumbent Alvarez go as punishment for the fact it took her office about a full year to decide to prosecute the Chicago cop who shot Laquan McDonald to death.

Even those who I’m sure want to protect the interests of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Sacrifice Anita, but keep Rahm!

BUT THE FACT is that Foxx will not be in a head-to-head political fight against Alvarez come the Democratic primary. More, a one-time federal prosecutor who also has been involved with the Illinois Gaming Board, has her own share of supporters.

The overly-simplistic way of viewing this fight is to say Foxx will dominate the South Side and suburbs where significant numbers of African-American people live (she is a resident of suburban Flossmoor), while More will be the preferred opposition to Alvarez for North Side and suburban voters who are overwhelmingly white.

PRECKWINKLE: Will she decide election?

Which could result in a split that gives Alvarez just enough voters to win a three-way fight.

So what does this decision to slate Foxx really mean?

IF IT IS a factor in getting North Side and suburban political types to get on board with the program for Foxx, it could be significant. It could be what enables her share of the vote to top Alvarez – particularly if it drives More’s campaign into irrelevancy.

But the one thing I have learned about being around political people is their talk in public often does not match their actions.

RAUNER: Will ties help, or hurt, More?

I could very easily envision a whole batch of whispering taking place up north that enables More to keep getting voter support – even though publicly the officials will claim they’re going along with the political party’s pick on Thursday.

For all I know, the fact that More has a record of financial ties (as in campaign contributions) to Gov. Bruce Rauner could wind up being a boost for herself – even though I’m sure both Alvarez and Foxx will go out of their way to make More out to be the governor’s lackey because of it.

IN SHORT, I remain confused about how this particular election will turn out – and remain convinced that the race for Cook County state’s attorney will be the prime campaign at stake on March 15.

ALVAREZ: Any love for Anita these days?

U.S. president? Forget it! Who really cares which of those clowns running in both major party’s political primaries manages to take Illinois voter supports? Just a bit more evidence of the overly-local tendencies Chicago and suburban voters tend to have when it comes time to walk into the voting booth on Election Day!

And one that could provide yet another anecdotal story about how the political parties just don’t mean as much these days as they did in the days of “the Machine” when “Boss Daley” could bark orders at who should get elected to office.

Somehow, I don’t think Preckwinkle has the same boss-like tendencies.

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Whodathunk we’d see day when Cook Dems wouldn’t blindly back a Daley

I’m sure there are some people scratching their heads and wondering why the Cook County Democratic Organization would give its official backing for Illinois governor to a candidate with approval ratings in the mid-20s.

QUINN: The officially preferred Dem

Because that is what happened Friday. The Democratic Party’s 50 ward committeemen and 30 township committeemen officially slated Gov. Pat Quinn for re-election.

PARTY OFFICIALS WILL be required to tout the campaign of Quinn, even though William Daley (the son and brother of former Chicago mayors) is also in the running – and there is speculation that Kwame Raoul (a state legislator from the Hyde Park neighborhood) may get into the primary race.

This is the same Pat Quinn who has had approval ratings of about 25 percent. There are those who are determined to believe that Quinn is beatable by anybody who challenges him.

Yet most of those people have their own partisan interests. They WANT to believe Quinn is a loser.

When one erases those people from the equation, the fact that the strongest Democratic Party organization in Illinois would decide to throw its lot in with the incumbent is such an obvious decision.

IT IS THE reason that Bill Daley (the former Commerce secretary and White House chief of staff) didn’t even bother showing up for the slating session held Friday morning.

He can save face by saying he wasn’t even interested in getting the support of the organization that was the reason his father, Richard J., was “the Boss!!!” of local politics. It allowed him to decide just who even got to run for office – knowing full-well that the committeemen of his era would rubber-stamp his choice.

Things are different today. The party slating doesn’t mean what it used to. And I’m  sure the people who are eager to dump Pat Quinn are going to ignore what happened on Friday.

DALEY: Not about to give up campaign

But the reality is that political parties always prefer to endorse an incumbent. The idea being that picking somebody else is an admission that somebody screwed up in voting for the incumbent to begin with.

AS FOR THE fact that Quinn has such low approval ratings, I don’t get as shaken up by those low levels the governor receives.

Because the fact is that most people these days don’t think highly of any government official. Anybody currently in office these days seems to draw these record-low levels of support.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is the guy who has had approval ratings as low as 16 percent. The “Daley” name is in one of its lulls when it comes to support (although I won’t be surprised if the next generation produces a politician or two).

I suspect most people don’t have a clue who their state legislator or member of Congress is. Because if they did, those officials would have lower approval ratings.

SO THE IDEA that Cook County Democrats went for Pat Quinn? Not surprising. As one south suburban state legislator told me recently, “At least Pat Quinn listens to us and sort of has the right idea.”

Compared to Daley, who is developing a reputation amongst some people as being so business-oriented (he likes to boast that his stints as chairman of JPMorgan Chase and on the Fannie Mae board are more significant than his political posts) that people wonder if he wishes he could really be a Republican.

If there really was serious support for Daley and a split in the Cook County Democrats, what would have happened on Friday was a lengthy debate behind closed doors – with an eventual public announcement that the party was not going to slate either candidate.

It would have remained neutral – which would have allowed the committeemen to publicly support whomever they wanted come the March primary election.

INSTEAD, IT MEANS the official Daley support will be muted. Unofficial support will continue (people do, after all, have a right to express themselves). But for the official backing of party officials, Daley is going to have to turn to the other 101 counties.

Slating not the same as when HE was in charge

And the fact is that those Democratic Party organizations don’t have the numbers or the strength to turn out the vote the way the Cook Dems do.

Not that I’m convinced Quinn achieved a significant plus in his desires to serve another four years as Illinois governor. There may be a Republican field of candidates to offer an alternative, but I’m convinced this election cycle is really one where the winner will be the candidate whom the voters despise the least.

That may well be Pat Quinn. You never know.

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Will it matter that Quinn is now the officially preferred gubernatorial candidate of the Cook County Democratic Party?

There’s only one statement I can positively make. The attention span of Chicagoans on Friday was focused on a Springfield. Of course, I suspect more cared about the Massachusetts version of the city rather than the central Illinois version.

I’m realistic enough to know that more people were probably intrigued by the hoopla surrounding the Basketball Hall of Fame – which on Friday officially recognized Chicago Bulls immortal Michael Jordan as one of the all-time athletic greats – than they gave any consideration about who should become this state’s next governor.

BUT THE POWERS-that-be of the Cook County Democratic Organization held their slating sessions in recent days, and on Friday made the announcement that they are backing Pat Quinn’s campaign for election to his own full term, instead of picking the son of longtime Chicago politico Tom Hynes – who also wants to run for that office.

There is a part of me that finds such action ironic.

For these slating sessions are the 21st Century version of the old “smoke-filled rooms” of party hacks who would decide among themselves who the candidates should be that “the people” will elect to government office in upcoming elections.

Pat Quinn has always tried to be the ultimate good government type – the “goo goo” who rails against the indecency of having Democratic Party hacks having any say in terms of who gets to run in a primary election.

YET HE SURE didn’t do anything to reject such slating. It will enhance the political rhetoric when Republican opponents try to label Quinn as just another Chicago political hack.

Of course, the modern-day GOP always tries to label any Democrat in this state as a Chicago political hack – even if they have no connection to Chicago. So Quinn might as well take the ceremonial rhetoric that comes along with being the officially slated candidate for governor in the Feb. 2, 2010 primary.

The real question is whether people will care about who gets slated for governor.

Could this be an election where all those Democrats who throughout the years were dumped on by Quinn and his good government antics will be willing to openly ignore the decision of the Cook County Democratic organization and vote for Dan Hynes – who in many ways fits the image of what a 21st Century Chicago Democrat is about.

BECAUSE THE REALITY is that the only people who care about who gets slated by the party for political office are the party regulars – the ones who are in government because it is their employer or they support some interest group.

How many local Democratic voters with ties to the labor unions that have endorsed Hynes will decide that their union, and not their party, got it right in the pick for governor?

The ones who are “into” politics because of ideology aren’t going to care who gets slated. If anything, they may be the ones who will wonder if this means that Pat Quinn has now “sold out” his soul in order to get himself elected to his own four-year term as governor come the November 2010 general election.

There was a part of me that thought the Democratic organization types who gathered at the hotel Chicago insiders will always think of as the Bismarck Hotel would decide to slate no one.

TAKE NO STAND.

It may sound cowardly to some, but it is a way of saying that the party faithful are so split that no one should be able to go through a campaign season calling themselves the officially preferred choice of the Democratic Party.

That is what the Cook County Dems did for lieutenant governor and for county board President. Despite the pleas of Todd Stroger that his incumbency status warranted some special consideration, the party is doing nothing – thereby leaving him on an equal playing field with the other four candidates who wish to replace him at the head of county government.

But when one thinks about it rationally, I can understand why Quinn got the slating.

HE IS THE incumbent. After going through a 26-year time period in Illinois with Republicans as governor of the state, I’m sure one of the last things that Democrats here want is to lose this office to a candidate of the GOP.

I’m sure there is a part of the Democratic Party that would like it if Hynes were to back down so that more attention could be spent focusing on keeping the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in the hands of a Democratic candidate.

There is the fact that the older party types can remember 1976, when incumbent Gov. Dan Walker was dumped in a primary fight led by Chicago politicos who were disgusted by him. The winner of that primary – Michael Howlett – wound up so weak that he lost to James R. Thompson (the man who began that 26-year GOP streak).

It ultimately is because of this factor that Lisa Madigan backed away from her preferred goal of running for governor and decided to try to keep her current post of state attorney general – why run for governor if there’s no chance you get slated and your candidacy gets viewed in some segments of Illinois political society as a spoiler.

NOW, IT IS Hynes who has the potential to fulfill that role. And it is Quinn who gets to fill a niche I’m sure he never would have envisioned for himself eight years ago – the officially slated choice for governor by the Cook County Democrats.

What next; Michael Jordan returns to the NBA? Then again, the idea of Quinn as an establishment Democrat is about as absurd as that stint Jordan did with the Washington Wizards.

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