With growing numbers of black and Latino politicians calling for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign, it’s probably time for the county’s Democratic Party leaders to rethink their summertime decision not to endorse anyone in the March primary election.
Alvarez is facing two primary challengers, Kim Foxx and Donna More.
Foxx, a black woman and a former prosecutor, is the former chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and is backed by other black and liberal leaders, plus some labor unions.
More is white, a former county prosecutor and has represented casino interests since she left the Illinois Gaming Board many years ago. She also contributed to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s campaign (one of only a few political contributions she has made). The first-time candidate has demonstrated an ability to raise enough money to compete.
The general rule of thumb for incumbents in primaries is “the more, the merrier.” Multiple candidates can split the “anti” vote against the incumbent, which means Alvarez won’t need to receive 50 percent plus one to win. In other words, she could win.
The Chicago media is in an uproar about police-involved shootings, and Alvarez is taking big heat for her cozy ties to Chicago police and for her alleged deliberate delay in bringing a murder charge against the police officer who shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014.
Alvarez has always been very friendly to police interests — once charging a woman with a felony for recording two Chicago officers as they were trying to persuade her to drop sexual harassment charges against another officer. That kind of a charge is going above and beyond.
So, when the state’s lone Latino in Congress, U.S. Rep. Luiz Gutierrez, D-4th, withdrew his Alvarez endorsement, and other major Cook County Latino figures called on her to resign, the pressure on her built to a full-on boil.
But as we’ve seen elsewhere, a racial backlash could easily develop in this contest. Racial politics are a hard fact of life in Cook County (as they are most places), so what follows may seem insensitive, but it’s not meant to be at all.
The hard fact is that suburban Cook County is not as racially diverse or as liberal as Chicago. It was just 24 percent black and 25 percent Latino in the 2010 census, compared with 32 percent white in the city. The suburbs have a lot of people who fled Chicago or who refuse to live there.
It’s also not a stretch to imagine that the reaction by suburban whites to the Black Friday protests on Chicago’s famed Michigan Avenue were different than they were on the South and West sides.
Alvarez has repeatedly and quite angrily insisted that she won’t let the “politicians” with “political agendas” force her out of office or out of the primary election.
So, the question has to be asked — what if Alvarez actually wins the Democratic nomination as a pro-police, law-and-order candidate? The uproar from the Democratic base would be deafening, and the consequences in the state’s largest and most important county might be substantial.
On the other hand, House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, support Alvarez. Those two have a lot of sway in Cook County, so as long as they are with her, the party likely won’t officially back anyone else.
Both men represent majority Latino areas. Madigan is facing a Latino primary opponent (which is probably no big deal, but Madigan hates taking chances).
When asked last week if it was time to reconsider the county party’s non-endorsement for state’s attorney, Madigan said he was too busy focusing on the state budget. That’s not believable if you know the multi-tasking Madigan even a little bit.
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And Burke flatly refused to back away from Alvarez last week.
Madigan also will have quite a few contested suburban House campaigns in November, so the opinions of those voters have to be factored in as well.
It’s always possible, perhaps even probable, that Alvarez and More will cancel each other out in March, allowing Foxx to gain the nomination.
But Chicago Democrats have enough problems these days (impending school strike, huge budget deficits, a murder spike, taxes rising everywhere) without piling an Alvarez primary victory on top of that mountain.
The Democratic Party showed it could adapt when it stripped Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown of her slating because of an ongoing federal investigation into her office and handed its endorsement to one of her opponents.
The same sort of rethinking should be done with Alvarez.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com