Voters Picking Replacement For Todd Stroger
CHICAGO (CBS) - Voters on Tuesday are casting their pick to replace Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, who came in last in the Democratic primary this past February.
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In the February primary, Stroger took just 14 percent of the vote, compared with 49 percent for the victorious Toni Preckwinkle. Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien and Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown polled in between.
Preckwinkle is now up against Republican Roger Keats, a former state senator representing a North Shore district, and Green Party candidate Tom Tresser, a community activist and organizer who led the No Games Chicago effort against the city's failed bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Todd Stroger's father, three-term incumbent John Stroger, defeated county Commissioner Forrest Claypool in the 2006 primary for board president, despite being incapacitated by a stroke. When it became clear that the elder Stroger would not recover enough to return, slatemakers placed Todd Stroger on the ballot, and he went on to defeat Republican Commissioner Tony Peraica in the general election.
But Todd Stroger was bogged down by the unpopular tax hike, which brought the sales tax in Chicago to the highest level in America.
He was also dragged down by scandals involving his staff. In 2009, he fired his cousin and chief financial officer Donna Dunnings, after finding out she had twice bailed another county staffer, Tony Cole, out of jail. Cole was hired despite a felony conviction for writing bad checks, and fired when Stroger found out about the conviction.
And last month, well after Stroger had already lost the Democratic primary, Stroger deputy chief of staff Carla Oglesby was charged with felony public corruption for allegedly handing no-work contracts to businesses that included her own PR company.
