why is Peraica running for State's Attorney?

Stephen Covey wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You can read all seven habits. I'd like to concentrate on habit #2: begin with the end in mind.

As I've mentioned before, Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica's campaign for State's Attorney seem to involve an awful lot of insulting other Republicans.

Here's my question for Peraica, why are you running for Cook County State's Attorney?

a. To fulfill some need for attention and approval;
b. To prove to God that you are on the right side of the issues in a wicked world;
c. Because the people around you expected you to run and you couldn't say “no”;
d. To get a platform from which to push for reforming the Cook County Republicans;
e. To get elected State's Attorney;
f. To get elected State's Attorney and use the power to reduce corruption in Cook County

I'd like to believe the answer is “f”.

Even if you assume Commissioner Liz Gorman, chair of the Cook County GOP, did maliciously push the story about Fred Ichniowski (see Sun-Times (Steve Patterson)), what's the best way to respond?

If Peraica's larger goal is to get elected State's Attorney, what's the smaller goal in how he handles the Ichniowski story?

I would think the goal is to get past the story while minimizing the damage.

How did Peraica respond? He attacked Gorman. See Peraica's campaign blog.

The record of Liz Gorman speaks for itself. She has proven herself to be a committed ally of the Democrats - a close associate of indicted political insider Ed Vrdolyak and the disgraced Shaw brothers.

Gorman also has been a staunch ally of Todd Stroger - recruiting Stroger's former spokesperson, Sean Howard (who was arrested last year for harassing a woman) to join her public relations team at the Cook County GOP. She supported Todd Stroger's disastrous budget. She has supported the Stroger position against numerous and even bi-partisan reform efforts. She has gone out of her way to oust good Republicans from Cook County GOP committeeman positions - in favor of Democrat shills that will toe her "party line."

Liz Gorman's motives are clear: she is smearing me now to provide herself a reason to slate a primary opponent against me for State's Attorney. Rest assured that any Liz Gorman-backed candidate will be an enemy of reform, and a friend of the corrupt, Democratic machine.

There is a long road ahead before Election Day in November of 2008. The Democrats and Gorman allies will spend the next 13-plus months slinging mud at us ... because they fear us. And fear us they should - because our campaign for honest reform will win and put them out of business.

By attacking Gorman, Peraica kept the story alive. He also undermined his claims he didn't encourage his supporters to do anything inappropriate. And he reinforced the impression he doesn't play well with others.

Peraica is a highly driven, highly successful person. He's charismatic and he can turn a mildly hostile crowd into a sympathetic audience in a relatively short amount of time.

However, Peraica is running in a majority Democratic--overwhelmingly Democratic--county. He might be good enough to beat the Democrats in an election year that's probably going to be brutal to the GOP. But he's got to play his situation about perfectly.

When Peraica was running against Todd Stroger for President of the County Board, there were plenty of Democratic committeemen willing to let Stroger lose because they felt the Eighth Ward was hogging the jobs and contracts. So, the Democrats weren't so united behind Stroger.

However, if Peraica runs promising to prosecute political corruption, the Democratic committeemen with juice are going to feel threatened. The Democratic Machine is going to be more unified in keeping Peraica out of the State's Attorney's office than they were when he ran against Stroger.

Peraica can't be fighting with the chair of the Cook County Republicans and "corrupt" GOP committeemen in the media and still win the election.

I want see more focus on getting elected State's Attorney and less intra-GOP bickering.