Monday, January 7, 2019

It's just about the money

Cash Connects 'Independent' Preckwinkle To 'Good Ol' Boys Club'
toni giving that sheepish look
The federal indictment of Ald. Ed Burke did more than expose a shakedown that pumped dirty money into mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle's campaign war chest. 
It inspired a casual perusal of Preckwinkle's political fundraising history. I used a few key words — Burke, Berrios, Madigan and Daley, among them — to search the state election board database, kept an eye out for the names of clout-heavy developers, insiders and important moments in a politicians'
career like the lead up to elections, important votes and the awarding of questionable contracts.
It didn't take long to spot evidence that the Cook County Democratic Party boss who claims to be progressive is a lapsed independent connected by cold hard cash to the "Good Ol' Boys Club" she publicly denounces. 
She takes contributions from the same billionaires, contractors, labor unions and insiders that have financially backed her alleged political foes, former Mayor Richard M. Daley and current Mayor Rahm Emanuel, among them. 
And, by the way, Preckwinkle didn't just start taking campaign cash from Burke a few years ago. 
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During her City Council tenure when her war chest wasn't the behemoth it is today, Preckwinkle accepted a spattering of contributions — $200 here and $500 there — from Burke and his family, including his wife Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke and brother former State Rep. Daniel J. Burke. Ald. Burke's political generosity toward Preckwinkle increased once she was elected county board president, including the fundraiser at his house mentioned in the alderman's federal indictment.
About three weeks before Preckwinkle's successful 2003 aldermanic re-election bid, her campaign received $2,500 from Illinois' most clout-heavy Democrat, House Speaker Michael Madigan. 
It's no secret that Preckwinkle got elected Cook County Board president in 2010 with the quiet support of the Daley Machine not long after she dropped her opposition to Mayor Richard M. Daley's Olympic bid. She described her reasoning for backing the failed bid for the 2016 games to the New York Times this way: Daley "was prepared to spend a good deal of his political capital on it, and under those circumstances, you can either be on the outside throwing rocks or you can be on the inside trying to get the best deal you can for the communities you serve."
Well, since 2010, Preckwinkle's decision to be in the inside to serve her community also earned her some campaign pocket cash from the Daleys. The law firm Daley and Georges — run by the former mayor's brother Michael Daley, has contributed $4,750 to Preckwinkle. In 2013, Preckwinkle got a check for $250 from Bill Daley, who is now her ballot rival. In 1999, the heart of her so-called "independent" years on the City Council, she accepted a check from County Commissioner John Daley, the mayor's brother, state records show. 
Real estate developer and aspiring newspaper mogul Elzie Higginbottom — Daley's long-time fundraiser and J.B. Pritzker's "connector" to the African American community — pitched in $5,000 to Preckwinkle's war chest in December 2011. That contribution came after Higginbottom, then president of the Cook County Housing Authority board of directors, helped a Daley operative land a job as that agency's executive director, and one of his companies won a $3.3 million public housing construction contract shortly thereafter. Months after that curiously timed deal, and his contribution to her campaign, Higginbottom left his post as the authority's chairman after Preckwinkle told him she had reservations about the appearance of a conflict of interest. "I expressed my concerns to him, and he resigned," according to a January 2017 Sun-Times report that didn't mention Higginbottom's campaign contribution to the county board president. (Higginbottom became part owner of the Sun-Times in July 2017.)
And there's a money trail that might explain Preckwinkle's controversial decision to support the failed re-election bid of former Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, the old-school Democrat she replaced as party boss. Berrios, known for his penchant for nepotism, protecting patronage and other Chicago political traditions, contributed $20,500 to Preckwinkle since 2013, state records show. 
More recently, Rahm Emanuel's trusted adviser and fundraiser-in-chief, billionaire Michael Sacks and his wife, have surfaced as Preckwinkle backers. The couple has contributed $33,300 to Preckwinkle's campaign since October 2017.
During her days on the City Council, Preckwinkle funded her political operation with an outpouring of money from contractors, developers and property management companies doing work in her ward. I've never tapped her phones, so I can't tell you if Preckwinkle ever pushed for a campaign cash quid pro quo — the kind of arm twisting that the feds call attempted extortion in Burke's indictment. That's not the point. In Chicago, everybody knows there's no need to push. 

Mark Konkol: The Chicago Mayor's Race

A well-timed campaign donation from someone with a project or permit could benefit from an alderman's gentle nudge is tradition and considered part of the cost of doing business in this town, according to people who know about these things.
Here's an example: Antheus Capital partner Eli Ungar, who owns more than 80 properties in Hyde Park, has been the driving force behind neighborhood redevelopment. Around the time Ungar's company bought property for the $145 million Harper Court redevelopment in 2005, he donated $1,500 to Preckwinkle's campaign. That might not sound like much but it's the most city campaign-finance rules allowed from somebody backing a project that needs City Council approval.
Then, in January 2010, the same year the project won a zoning change that's subject to aldermanic preragotive, Ungar gave Preckwinkle another $1,500 donation. (He also donated $1,500 to Ald. Leslie Hairston's campaign that year.) 
I'm not picking on Ungar. There's nothing illegal about the friendly exchange of an allowed amount of campaign cash between developers and elected officials. At best, it's an honored Chicago political tradition that thrives in ethical gray areas. Besides, it happens all the time.
It's part of an accepted institutional corruption that's protected by a political code of silence in one-party Chicago that true independent progressives running for mayor want to destroy.
That's a campaign topic that gets shrugged off in news reports until a powerful ward boss gets sloppy when the feds are listening in and the cold-hard truth gets shoved in our face. 
Ald. Burke's indictment has started to unravel an undeniable truth about Preckwinkle: She ain't who says she is. 
Bet your bottom dollar she's not the only one.

Read More About Chicago's Mayoral Hopefuls

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the Chicagoland series on CNN. 
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1/08/2019

    Vote Republican if you want an honest candidate.
    Democrats are the party of Obama, Durbin, Emanuel, Preckwinkle, Foxx, Cunningham, Hurley, etc.

    ReplyDelete

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