November 7, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Carlos Hernandez Gomez is a reporter with attitude. Streetwise and smart, punky yet sweet. When Carlos walks into a news conference, he brings his own electricity.

Thick black glasses, trimmed black beard, and fedora whenever possible -- these are the accessories of a young man whose questions to politicians and prosecutors will not be ignored.

But you won't be seeing him on TV for a little while. Carlos, 36, is off the air working on the most challenging story yet to cross his path. It's the ongoing medical effort to save his life. Diagnosed and operated on for colon cancer on New Year's Eve of 2008, he has recently had another surgery to scrub the lining of his stomach of malignant cells. His stomach was then pumped with boiling hot chemotherapy to nuke whatever microscopic bits of cancer remained.

"His doctors compare it to getting third-degree burns to your stomach," said Carlos' wife, Randi Belisomo, who also is a reporter for CLTV.

As I write this, Congress is preparing to go into session to take the first vote on President Obama's health-care reform package.

Meanwhile, Carlos is in a hospital bed in the oncology wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital with Randi at his side.

When I visited Friday, two amazing nurses named Jon and Linda worked for almost an hour fixing IVs, drawing blood and giving him injections, all the while keeping a close watch on his heart rate.

Carlos, in pain so great that he couldn't smile, is lucky nonetheless.

He still has a job in an America where unemployment last week hit double digits and is expected to get worse.

He still has health insurance in a country where even the employed often don't, and where the unemployed stay awake at night fearing the onset of illness will bankrupt them before it kills them.

And Carlos is lucky because he has a solid-gold wife and friends who love him. And a medical team that offers first-rate care.

In his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama promised change we can believe in. And devotion to the values and economic dreams of the shrinking, struggling middle class. He promised to take the partisanship out of Washington and restore a collaborative sense of purpose across party lines.

To date, those are still only promises.

Meanwhile, there is a basic divide between Congress and ordinary Americans. As Politico reported on Friday, 44 percent of the members of Congress are millionaires, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But only 1 percent of Americans can claim that good fortune.

Obama needs a boldness he hasn't shown, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate need a backbone they can't always find.

Bipartisanship is a laudable goal, but that may have to wait in line behind the 35 million Americans praying for health insurance.

When Carlos beats this thing and gets back on his feet, he may have some lessons to share about how to muster bipartisan support.

Since word of his illness was first posted on Rich Miller's CapitolFaxBlog, get-well wishes have poured in from political enemies Rod Blagojevich and Judy Barr Topinka. Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna offered prayers. Democratic Cook County Assessor Jim Houlihan arrived with jokes. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald quietly popped in, and former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson took Carlos out for a good-luck dinner before the last surgery.

Carlos has people from both sides of the aisle in his corner.

Americans without health care should be so lucky.

November 7, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Carlos Hernandez Gomez is a reporter with attitude. Streetwise and smart, punky yet sweet. When Carlos walks into a news conference, he brings his own electricity.

Thick black glasses, trimmed black beard, and fedora whenever possible -- these are the accessories of a young man whose questions to politicians and prosecutors will not be ignored.

But you won't be seeing him on TV for a little while. Carlos, 36, is off the air working on the most challenging story yet to cross his path. It's the ongoing medical effort to save his life. Diagnosed and operated on for colon cancer on New Year's Eve of 2008, he has recently had another surgery to scrub the lining of his stomach of malignant cells. His stomach was then pumped with boiling hot chemotherapy to nuke whatever microscopic bits of cancer remained.

"His doctors compare it to getting third-degree burns to your stomach," said Carlos' wife, Randi Belisomo, who also is a reporter for CLTV.

As I write this, Congress is preparing to go into session to take the first vote on President Obama's health-care reform package.

Meanwhile, Carlos is in a hospital bed in the oncology wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital with Randi at his side.

When I visited Friday, two amazing nurses named Jon and Linda worked for almost an hour fixing IVs, drawing blood and giving him injections, all the while keeping a close watch on his heart rate.

Carlos, in pain so great that he couldn't smile, is lucky nonetheless.

He still has a job in an America where unemployment last week hit double digits and is expected to get worse.

He still has health insurance in a country where even the employed often don't, and where the unemployed stay awake at night fearing the onset of illness will bankrupt them before it kills them.

And Carlos is lucky because he has a solid-gold wife and friends who love him. And a medical team that offers first-rate care.

In his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama promised change we can believe in. And devotion to the values and economic dreams of the shrinking, struggling middle class. He promised to take the partisanship out of Washington and restore a collaborative sense of purpose across party lines.

To date, those are still only promises.

Meanwhile, there is a basic divide between Congress and ordinary Americans. As Politico reported on Friday, 44 percent of the members of Congress are millionaires, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But only 1 percent of Americans can claim that good fortune.

Obama needs a boldness he hasn't shown, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate need a backbone they can't always find.

Bipartisanship is a laudable goal, but that may have to wait in line behind the 35 million Americans praying for health insurance.

When Carlos beats this thing and gets back on his feet, he may have some lessons to share about how to muster bipartisan support.

Since word of his illness was first posted on Rich Miller's CapitolFaxBlog, get-well wishes have poured in from political enemies Rod Blagojevich and Judy Barr Topinka. Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna offered prayers. Democratic Cook County Assessor Jim Houlihan arrived with jokes. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald quietly popped in, and former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson took Carlos out for a good-luck dinner before the last surgery.

Carlos has people from both sides of the aisle in his corner.

Americans without health care should be so lucky.

October 31, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Dawn Clark Netsch, the venerable voice of Illinois political reform, called early Friday morning even though it was going to make her late for a dentist's appointment. She was concerned I was going to get it wrong. That I was going to blast the Legislature for once again passing a watered-down, weak-kneed bill on campaign finance reform that they would hail as progress.

But I listened.

I always listen to Netsch because at 83 she has more street cred than almost anybody, having been state comptroller in 1990, the Democratic nominee for governor in 1994 and a bona fide reformer.

"They've moved incredibly far," she said of lawmakers who ended the week by passing the first-ever campaign donation caps on candidates, corporations and political action committees.

"For the first time, there are real limits to what people can pour into campaigns," she said. "Year-round disclosure, random audits. For anyone to say this is no improvement is simply not true."

And yet, it has been less than a year since Illinois took the national spotlight, not for the historic election of a president, but for the FBI arrest of a Democratic governor while his Republican predecessor was doing time in Club Fed.

Campaign cash was at the heart of the alleged crimes.

Wasn't that a signal that it was time to build a new house, not just patch the siding on the old one?

The short answer is no.

And so, while candidates, corporations and PACs will be limited in the amount of campaign cash that can be given or received, political parties and their leaders (read House Speaker Michael Madigan), will be exempt from any significant limitations. They keep their clout.

"In the end, we had to make a really hard judgment," said Cindi Canary, the chief negotiator for the reform group, Change Illinois.

"The good outweighed the bad," she said by phone from Springfield Friday. "But there are holes I don't like."

Canary, 50, has fought the reform fight in this state for more than a decade. The "holes" she doesn't like include a Clintonesque bit of legislative language that defines the "receipt" of a campaign donation as the day it becomes a "deposit" in the bank. Thus a candidate can hang on to a check and skirt new requirements for timely reporting of contributions until, say, after an election.

Cute.

"This is not how we teach our children about making public policy," Canary said. "For right now, it's the best we can do. . . . [Senate President John] Cullerton and Madigan were immovable objects. . . . The governor just parked himself in a corner and wasn't a player. . . . All those editorials, press conferences and peoples' calls did not outweigh legislative personal interest."

Like when it passed an Open Meetings Act but made legislative caucuses exempt?

Now comes campaign finance reform, and the Legislature has made political parties exempt.

Are we surprised?

If there is a bright side, as Netsch firmly believes, it is that politicians have to disclose the amounts and sources of their money more often than before.

If there is something to celebrate in this tortured process, it is that Illinois has not yet succeeded in killing off all its reformers who do this thankless work on our behalf.

"We fought like hell, we fought like hell," Canary said. "And I wish I could bring a lion back to the people of my tribe, but it's something less."

It was not for lack of trying.

October 28, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Scott Turow, the prolific, best-selling Chicago author, had a message for Illinois lawmakers the other day.

"Don't come home without it," he warned.

The "it" is campaign finance reform.

And they've made a promise they better finally keep.

To put limits -- real limits -- on the limitless amounts of cash Illinois politicians can legally pour into their campaign war chests. And to make especially sure those limits apply not just to the rank and file, but to all-powerful Speaker of the House Mike Madigan, his fellow leaders and their respective political party funds.

Turow made his declaration the other day while being honored by the Better Government Association for his decades of civic leadership. But Turow, a former federal prosecutor, was quick to point out the profound irony of one of his many civic endeavors.

"You may not remember," he ruefully told a packed audience at the Union League Club Thursday, "but I was appointed in Gov. Rod Blagojevich's first term to be the chairman of his newly formed Ethics Commission."

That was in 2002.

Back when Rockin' Rod had just been elected on a "reform" agenda. Back before any of us knew that he was already scheming to figure out how he could out-do his now-incarcerated predecessor, George Ryan, on the pay-to-play front.

But it quickly became apparent to Turow and everyone else that when Blagojevich didn't bother to appoint the rest of the commission, reform wasn't exactly one of the governor's burning passions.

Nor has it been for most of those in the state Legislature. Or for its leadership over the years. Illinois is one of only six states where the sky's the limit on campaign cash.

"Unlimited campaign contributions are an incumbent protection plan," said Turow, who pointed out that the last statewide incumbent to lose an election was Gov. Dan Walker in 1976.

Blagojevich blew the top off when it came to accepting obscenely large amounts of cash from people seeking appointments or contracts from the state.

"Nobody believes," said Turow, "that someone who gives a candidate $50,000 doesn't expect something in return."

Last December, it seemed we might have seen the light at last.

That's when Blagojevich was pulled from his bed in his pajamas and hustled into handcuffs by the FBI. And when solemn-faced lawmakers in January impeached him, tried him, and removed him from office.

Our new governor, Pat Quinn, stood with Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton and GOP leaders Christine Radogno and Tom Cross, and pledged a new day.

By May we knew that new day was a joke.

Quinn had betrayed his own newly appointed Ethics Reform Commission, caved to Madigan and Cullerton, and with great ceremony declared the hollow new campaign finance law they pushed through their Democratic majorities to be "landmark" legislation.

So full of loopholes, and so crammed with leadership spending prerogatives, citizens all over the state saw the Swiss cheese they'd made and rose up.

That's why Quinn was forced to veto that which he had hailed, with Madigan and Cullerton uncomfortably at his side.

They promised to do better.

But the sticking point -- then and now -- has been whether Madigan, Cullerton and political parties would be exempt when it came to limiting the amount of money they could pump into the campaigns of their preferred candidates.

There was a closed-door meeting Tuesday as Quinn and the leaders met with civic reform groups.

The only reason there was a meeting at all is that they know you are watching.

Call them.

Tell them.

Campaign finance reform.

Don't come home without it.

October 24, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

'Illinois Republicans eat their own," one of my breakfast companions said Wednesday morning at a GOP candidate forum.

Meaning?
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Carol Marin

Can we ever forget Alan Keyes?

Will this election be different?

"Yes," says Pat Brady, the new head of the Illinois Republican Party.

Why?

"Job creation and the rotten economy," Brady said. "My neighbor just lost her job. Republicans are talking about fiscal issues. These are the social issues this year, and voters are angry."

Brady noted that at last week's breakfast, as five Republican hopefuls for governor laid out their positions on issues, their focus was on the economy, education and ethics -- not reproductive choice. Those candidates, by the way, were DuPage County Chairman Bob Schillerstrom, former Cicero town spokesman Dan Proft, state Sen. Kirk Dillard, state Sen. Bill Brady (no relation to Pat Brady) and businessman Adam Andrzejewski.

"It was a 70-minute debate, and [abortion] came up for three minutes," Brady said.

"It was," he said, "one of the most substantive debates I've ever seen."

Agreed.

But if there remains potential for a Republican food fight, look at the competition at the top of the ticket for the prized Senate seat once held by Barack Obama.

A win there would plant a flag high on the hill of a hoped-for Republican comeback.

Five-term North Shore Republican Rep. Mark Kirk is the GOP spear carrier of this election.

A pro-choice moderate, he has taken positions that have given conservatives in his party fits, such as being one of a few Republicans voting in support of cap-and-trade legislation to regulate carbon emissions.

Already, though, Kirk has reversed and moved to the right on that issue. And he's combat-ready against any primary opponent claiming to be a more authentic Republican.

Kirk's principal primary opponent is Patrick Hughes, 40, an attorney and real estate developer from Hinsdale. Though Hughes talks first about the economy, hot-button social concerns are clearly in his sights. And so is the Illinois GOP.

"I'm not happy with my party clearing the way for Kirk to run unopposed," Hughes said by phone Thursday. "This race is a battle for the soul of the Republican party . . . pro-business, pro-economic growth, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment."

A Rasmussen poll last week had Kirk, in a general election, neck-and-neck with Democratic front-runner Alexi Giannoulias and with small or moderate leads over Cheryle Jackson and David Hoffman.

Good news for a red guy in a blue state.

Then again, Kirk's poll numbers have tightened some.

And though he would like to keep focusing on the general election, Kirk took time last week to do a little smackdown on Hughes, who claimed to have the endorsement of Mike Ditka until Da Coach said otherwise.

The Kirk campaign quickly sent out an article from The Hill reporting the flap, even though Hughes is far behind Kirk by any measurement, with just $352,000 to Kirk's $3 million and no name recognition.

Why, I asked Kirk, did he bother?

"We take nothing for chance," he said Friday by phone from Washington.

Meanwhile, Kirk is making it clear that within his own party, he's a force to be reckoned with in a new and rebuilding GOP. One who, despite the red-meat eaters on the right, is determined to proceed with discipline.

The awful alternative, after all, is once again being served up as a blue plate special in 2010.

October 18, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

How come Gov. Pat Quinn, in the wake of a clout scandal at the state's premier university, can sweep out the University of Illinois' board of trustees (with two notable exceptions) but can't do the same for our most beleaguered university?

I'm talking about Chicago State University, the mostly African-American school on the Far South Side with a horrifically low 16.2 percent graduation rate.

The suit, targeting the university and its trustees, was filed by Patricia Arnold, hired in 2008 as the executive director of university relations and marketing, and Stephen Seth Hosick, hired the same year as director of human resources.

They arrived on campus in the wake of a yet another damning audit by Illinois' auditor general, who cited egregious fiscal mismanagement at the school, such as former President Elnora Daniel's absurd, state-funded "leadership seminars" aboard cruise ships with her family in tow.

Daniel resigned, and an interim president, Frank Pogue, was brought in to right the ship as trustees looked for a new president.

Pogue hired Arnold and Hosick. Then all three allegedly ran afoul of Leon Finney, the chairman of the board of trustees.

Arnold's firing, according to the suit, "coincided with the board's awarding of no-bid, short-term public relations and marketing consulting contracts" to two people. One was Hermene Hartman, publisher of N'Digo magazine, a friend of Finney and supporter of Wayne Watson for the presidency. The other was Marilyn Katz, owner of MK Communications, a firm that does a lot of business with the city of Chicago.

Hosick's firing, the suit contends, came when he blew the whistle to "the Executive Inspector General and the Auditor General [about] the Trustees' intricate involvement into the Univer- sity's personnel matters and files, and its demands to approve the hiring of all full-time employees . . ."

Finney, according to Pogue, openly interfered. "Definitely, yes," said Pogue, whose one-year contract ended in August.

Finney declined to comment.

Last spring, the search for a new president was ugly. Members of the search committee -- including faculty -- walked out after Finney and the board narrowed the choice to the two finalists the committee found least attractive: Wayne Watson, the longtime chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, where low graduation rates are also an issue, and Carol Adams, onetime head of the Illinois Department of Human Services, who battled a controversy over using a well-paid state employee as her chauffeur.

Watson got the job. And Adams got a consolation prize: Illinois trade representative to Africa, with a salary of $110,000.

"Does Illinois need Carol Adams or any other person as a trade representative in this economy? No," said Comptroller Dan Hynes, Quinn's main Democratic primary opponent. "I've called for the closing down of the trade offices to save millions of dollars for the state."

And Hynes adds his voice to the call for Quinn to fill three vacancies out of seven trustee positions on the CSU board immediately.

"You've got to bring in new leadership to address the problems of accreditation, graduation rates, retention rates," he said.

With the February primary fast approaching, is Quinn reluctant to jeopardize African-American support? Is that why he backed down and kept the only two African-American trustees on the U. of I. board. And hasn't jumped in to challenge the CSU board? And gave Adams a job Illinois may no longer be able to afford?

Quinn's press secretary, Bob Reed, says absolutely not. Moreover, the governor is close to filling vacancies.

Let's hope so, because 7,000 or more African-American students are in need of his urgent advocacy.

September 26, 2009

CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com

Early Tuesday morning, sitting in a pre-surgical cubicle dressed in the always-awkward hospital gown, I was waiting to be prepped for a routine colonoscopy.

And thinking about President Obama's mission of revolutionizing health care. And about his mantra of bringing "change we can believe in" to Washington.
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Carol Marin

His story line was simple. In exchange for supporting aspects of the Obama health initiative, some members of Congress, including the leadership of the president's own party, want pork. And so, imbedded in the fine print of the 1,000-page-plus legislation, are sweeteners for certain senators who intend to bring home some bacon in exchange for their vote.

The worst example cited was none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He wants to ensure that the Nevada Cancer Institute, a cancer treatment center with no particular national reputation, reaps "a big gain in federal reimbursements as part of the health-care overhaul."

Functionally, it's an "earmark," which Obama railed against during the campaign. Kirkpatrick found a number of them tucked in this so-called reform package, written in a wily way to slip by us taxpayers unnoticed, proposals that "would provide more favorable Medicare payment rates to just a handful of specific medical facilities."

I'd call it a scandal but sadly, it's not. "It's just business as usual," says Lou Weisbach, a multimillionaire Chicago entrepreneur who has been on mission to do something truly revolutionary with our health-care system.

Weisbach, 60, is a voice we should be listening to in this debate. He understands money. Back in 1972, he borrowed $3,500 from his mother and began selling T-shirts out of the trunk on the Northwest Side. It turned into a global promotional products company that spawned other enterprises. Today, he's making millions in the sports stadium business.

But somewhere along the way, health care began to dominate his thinking as he began to ask why, in his lifetime, not a single cure had been found for any major disease.

Weisbach and Dr. Richard Boxer, a urologist and onetime candidate for U.S. surgeon general, started putting their heads together, talking to experts around the world and researching what Congress could do to fundamentally rewire the way we approach health care and disease.

What they came up with was the American Center for Cures, a public-private concept that would not compete with the National Institutes of Health but would complement its work and create a Cabinet-level focus on quickly finding cures.

Right now, we spend about a trillion dollars a year on treating the diseases of between 110 million and 150 million sick Americans, Weisbach argues. We have been reactive, not pro-active.

And clearly, research institutions and treatment centers across the country are not pursuing a unified approach on diseases from diabetes to autism to colon cancer.

Weisbach, a longtime, big-money Democratic fund-raiser, has enlisted bipartisan support for this idea, ranging from former Iowa governor and current Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and a raft of medical experts. You can find it all at www. theamericancenterforcures.org.

By curing three or four major diseases in the next seven years, Weisbach argues, taxpayers could save $400 billion a year. And businesses would reduce their costs.

Optimistic? Perhaps. But the plan is revolutionary in a time that calls for nothing less.

And it certainly trumps cleverly hiding costly earmarks.

That's old politics. And bad medicine.

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

"Wednesday's child is full of woe . . .

Thursday's child has far to go . . ."

Old nursery rhyme

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was born on a Thursday, but these days he could claim to be Wednesday's child and who'd argue?

The latest installment came, appropriately, on Wednesday when the House ethics committee announced it's postponing its investigation into allegations surrounding Jackson. At issue is whether he or an emissary attempted to buy an appointment to the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama in exchange for $1.5 million in campaign contributions to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The committee said it was delaying its own probe at the request of the feds -- never a good sign -- who plan to put Blagojevich on trial next June.

Jackson, in the Blagojevich indictment, is listed as Senate Candidate No. 5. According to the complaint, he met with the governor just one day before the FBI yanked Blago out of bed at dawn and put him in handcuffs.

Moreover, the ethics committee revealed a new dimension to its investigation, saying it had been looking into whether Jackson's staff in Washington and Chicago was improperly used in campaigning for the appointment.

Though Jackson staff members, according to a source, have been questioned by the committee, some campaign legal experts argue that without an election at stake, proving a technical violation on this score might be tricky.

The South Side congressman, for his part, isn't answering questions about it. The normally talkative/texting Jackson issued a written statement this week reiterat- ing previous written statements: "As I've said from the beginning, I have done nothing wrong, nor have I been accused of doing anything wrong. . . . I will continue to cooperate fully with the ongoing probe . . . My efforts and actions were all public, ethical and legal."

Of all the candidates mentioned as possible successors to Obama, Jackson arguably was one of those who had earned the slot. At 45, he works hard in Congress, ferociously represents his city and suburban constituents (60 percent African American, 40 percent white), and has handily won eight terms.

His first victory came in 1995 as his predecessor, the disgraced Rep. Mel Reynolds, was heading toward prison. In 14 years, Jackson has built a sophisticated political machine and vanquished some of his fiercest -- and most venal -- enemies, including the infamous Shaw brothers of suburban Dolton, bouncing Bob Shaw from the county's Board of Review and Bill Shaw from the state Senate. He also toppled the Beavers family's control of the 7th Ward, with wife Sandi Jackson defeating Darcel Beavers for alderman and her dad, William Beavers, for ward committeeman.

It hasn't helped Jesse Jackson Jr. to have a controversial, polarizing father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose enemies can't see the son in separation.

And it certainly hasn't helped that the congressman decided to put his wife on his political payroll to the tune of $247,500 since 2001. Or that his political fund dropped $300,000 worth of in-kind contributions into her political fund. It's legal but it isn't smart.

And now that Ald. Jackson has told ward committeemen that she's almost certainly running for lieutenant governor in 2010, she raises not only her profile but her husband's when it comes to those payments; the long-distance operation of her aldermanic office from their home in Washington, and the upcoming Blagojevich trial, which will crash directly into next campaign season.

Jackson Jr. has long felt underestimated and disrespected by the regular Democratic political establishment. Often, he has been.

But how he handles this next year will be every bit as important as whatever ultimate vindication he insists will come his way.

As any Thursday's child ought to know, there's far to go.

HIs story is one of great business success, political access, federal indictment and death by his own hand.

He was Rod Blagojevich's friend and fundraiser.

And our indicted ex-governor wants to make sure you know he'll be there:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/index.htm

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1766641,CST-EDT-carol13.article

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

Call the Neanderthal who left anonymous, threatening, epithet-laced messages on Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims voice mail by three names: Coward, racist and dope.

The first two require no explanation. The last one is worth a few words.

The caller, in addition to a mournfully stunted vocabulary, didn't seem to understand the focus of his tirade was misdirected.

But Sims is a bit player, not the villain of this story.

House Speaker Mike Madigan and Stroger are the problem.

Each is a believer in the time-honored Chicago tradition of one-man rule. Thus, in Cook County, it's all but impossible to override a presidential veto because the threshold is so much higher than in other units of government across the country. Others require a three-fifths majority to override, but not us. We're stuck with a four-fifths requirement.

And so it takes a whopping 14 out of 17 votes to win a fight with the president.

And the Democratic Machine seems to like it that way. That includes Speaker Madigan.

Back in 2006, state Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), bucked Madigan by proposing a bill that would put Cook County in line with the rest of the free world by lowering the override barrier.

His bill died in a House committee.

This spring it looked like that legislation, this time sponsored by state Sen. Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge), might actually have a strong heartbeat.

The state Senate, led by President John Cullerton, passed it 57-0.

But once again, the life drained out of it when it went to Madigan's House. It lies like a corpse in the Rules Committee, where all good bills go to die unless the speaker raises them from the dead.

"Bills that the speaker wants to see passed, pass," Fritchey said by phone Friday. "Those that he doesn't want to see the light of day, don't."

Fritchey, who was only one of a handful of Democrats to denounce the hollow campaign finance reform bill his leadership claimed as "landmark," is now leaving the House to run for the Cook County Board. The seat he seeks has been occupied by now-retiring reform Commissioner Forrest Claypool.

And Fritchey has a few things to remind Stroger about as his campaign goes forward.

Back in 2006, when Fritchey stuck his neck out on that override legislation, guess what?

Stroger, who was running for president, sided with Fritchey in favor of it.

"Put power back into the hands of county commissioners," trumpeted a Stroger campaign press release.

But once elected? Whammo. Change of heart.

"The Office of the President of Cook County" is listed as an official opponent of Fritchey's bill.

Just think.

If Fritchey's bill had passed two years ago or Kotowski's bill had been taken up in the House this year, maybe Commissioner Sims wouldn't have had to endure some sexist/racist ranting into her voice mail.

"We had a great opportunity to fix a problem before it really hurt the public," Fritchey said. "And it was an opportunity lost."

State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) said Friday she will fight to get a House vote on it in the October veto session.

With another election, who knows?

Maybe Todd Stroger will remember that this is something in which he once claimed to believe.

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

No wonder Todd Stroger looked so darned happy at Tuesday's Cook County Board meeting.

He knew he had a surprise vote to pull from his pocket -- like a rabbit from a hat -- to show his critics he is the Big Tuna of Cook County.
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Carol Marin

Not since the Ice Age (practically) had majority Machine Democrats and minority spineless Republicans teamed with reformers to stare down the mighty president of Cook County.

It was going to be "history-making."

Yada yada.

Reformers, return to your caves.

Todd Stroger's win is no small deal.

He proved he's someone to be reckoned with.

And that his victory, even in the face of terrible Cook County unemployment, high foreclosures, and consumer flight to collar counties with lower sales taxes, is something to sit back and study.

Especially if you are Mayor Richard M. Daley and his brother, County Commissioner John Daley.

John Daley is head of the county's powerful Finance Committee. The Daleys have been Stroger allies dating back to Todd's father and predecessor, John Stroger.

Thus, John Daley's reproof of Stroger, his willingness to repeal part of the sales tax, was a sign from the Daleys that Todd Stroger was in big political trouble and needed to rethink his career path.

But now comes the Chicago parking meter revolt and Olympic discontent. And the lone African American in the U.S. Senate, Roland Burris of Illinois, is beginning to look less like an opportunist and more like a martyr. And then there's Gov. Quinn, throwing himself into reverse over the removal of the entire University of Illinois Board of Trustees to make an exception for two African Americans.

There is a simmering resentment in the African-American community that could reach a boil in the coming 2010 election.

It's something Todd Stroger is counting on.

Yes, Barack Obama, a black man from Chicago, is president. But here at home? There is no longer an African American in top leadership in the Illinois General Assembly since Senate President Emil Jones retired; no evident enthusiasm from the state Democratic Party for the African-American candidacies of Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, who is running for U.S. Senate, or former legislator Robin Kelly, who's running for state treasurer; no apparent African-American candidate in the governor's race.

Meanwhile, federal investigators continue to ask questions about U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson's alleged negotiations with Rod Blagojevich for appointment to the U.S. Senate. And there's a federal indictment of Ald. Isaac Carothers on matters of zoning. Not to mention the fight over another Wal-Mart in black neighborhoods, opposed, in significant part, by powerful white aldermen.

Is there a double standard here, African Americans ask?

Even black candidates who seriously -- and properly -- question County Board President Todd Stroger's leadership are treading carefully right now as they oppose him.

Like I said, Todd Stroger's victory today is no small thing.