Liz Gorman whines that village clerk is father of her opponent
Kristen McQueary (Daily Southtown) has a column noting Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman (R-Orland Park) is complaining that the Village of Orland Park is an early voting site and the village clerk is the father of one of her Democratic opponents, Patrick Maher.
Gorman's husband ran a car dealership. Daimler-Benz had a dispute with Mr. Gorman over some money and took him to court. How did Gorman respond to the allegations about the money? He filed a motion saying that his point of contact at Daimler-Benz used derogatory terms to describe Black people.
Liz Gorman is throwing allegations against the wall. Guess what Commissioner G? A whole bunch of candidates run in elections where the village clerk isn't on their side. Deal with it.
[UPDATE: Victor Forys is also running in the Dem primary. Ray Hanania (OrlandParker.com) calls Forys the leading candidate. Gov. Pat Quinn just appointed Forys to the Illinois Board of Health.
[Forys did well in the Polish community when he ran for IL-05. Quinn supporting Forys allows him to give something to the Polish community and it forces Maher, who is kin of Dan Hynes, to run opposed in the Dem primary.]
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.
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.
Peraica was something of a media darling when he ran against Todd Stroger for President of the County Board. Media people liked Peraica because he was accessible, gave good quotes and reflected back the media's perception of Stroger. Peraica railed against the cronyism, corruption and incompetence.
On election night Peraica's campaign was celebrating, including drinking. Mike Manzo was at the location where the ballots were being tabulated by the Cook County Clerk. There had been a number of irregularities and Manzo witnessed a bunch of Stroger people being on the inside.
Manzo called Peraica and informed him that the campaign should get there people to come over to prevent any cheating.
Peraica marched his campaign staff, many under the influence of alcohol, to the location and they were not allowed to get the equivalent access that the Stroger campaign had.
The media saw and filmed Peraica's celebrants, including intoxicated people, marching like an angry mob. This became the defining image of the campaign: Peraica's angry mob.
The Democrats and their allies in the media are now playing-up stories that re-enforce this image. This is somewhat analogous to the media deciding Howard Dean was unhinged for opposing the Iraq War (before it was socially acceptable on the DC cocktail circuit to say the invasion was a bad idea). So, when the media got an image to match the story they already told themselves, they repeated it over and over again.
For Democrats that want to pooh-pooh Peraica, his complaints about election fraud in Cook County were quite similar to complaints Democrats were making about electronic voting in other parts of the country. The basic complaint is that the dominant party has access to the machines and the votes and if the votes were tampered with the tampering is exceedingly difficult (impossible?) to detect.
I imagine if the Peraica campaign would have had it to do over again... they would have done certain things differently.
But the image of Peraica as the leader of an angry mob is getting re-enforced by other stories now. Capitol Fax Blog (Rich Miller) tied together a couple stories under the title "More thuggery from Peraica".
There are those who say that Peraica’s infamous march to the County Building on election night last year was simply an unfortunate, isolated incident, despite the obviously stupid move of leading a drunken mob across town. But Tony apparently loves him some thugs, and likes to have them do his bidding.
I like Peraica. And the need to reform Cook County government, and especially law enforcement in Cook County, doesn't disappear because the reformers are uncouth.
I think Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, who is chair of the Cook County GOP, is closer to the mark on Peraica than the image the media is trying to sell.
“Peraica thinks everything is a fight, but it takes two to fight, and I won’t be part of this,” Gorman said. “He’s tossed too many grenades. One was bound to backfire on him.”
Peraica, and the people around him, often refer to other Republicans as venal, corrupt or incompetent.
When Peraica kicked-off his campaign for State's Attorney he had a conference call for bloggers. Someone--not me--asked a question.
Peraica starting ticking through suburban townships where he had good words for the GOP committeemen, but they he got to Proviso Township and gave a more detailed analysis of the local political landscape.
Peraica said of Michael Corrigan, the Proviso Township Assessor and GOP committeeman, that he barely shows up for his township job, how could you expect him to do any work as committeeman?
However, Peraica seems to have trouble focusing on saying things that advance his cause of getting elected without adding gratuitous insults of others, especially local Republican officials.
Gorman may think Peraica's a jackass, but she's not hell bent on sticking it to Peraica. One Peraica campaign worker told me that when he approached Gorman--he'd known her for a long time--she got her people out to help Peraica's campaign.
My two cents is that Peraica and his staff should resist their inclinations to engage in conflict with others when it doesn't advance their interests in accomplishing something specific, like winning an election.
Republican Commissioners Elizabeth Gorman (Orland Park), Gregg Goslin (Glenview) and Peter Silvestri (Elmwood Park) broke from the opposition budget to support Stroger's budget.
Democrat Commissioner Joan Murphy (Crestwood) stayed with the opposition and voted against the Stroger budget.
