Chicago pols: Crooks, heroes, romantics

Chicago Sun-Times

August 13, 2006

By Carol Marin

"By the time you read this, I hope to be long gone, wiggling my toes in the sand of a distant beach."

That's what I wrote exactly one year ago on the first anniversary of writing this political column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Now I'm off again, but thanks to a clumsy fall, a wrenched kneecap and a leg brace, wiggling my toes will be a little more work this time around. Even so, as I head for vacation, it seems like a good time to look back over the last 12 months and take stock.

In that time, former Gov. George Ryan was convicted of corruption charges and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, has turned up the heat on Illinois' current chief executive.

Pay-to-play politics and the ghost of George Ryan are likely to be what drives the governor's race this fall between incumbent Rod Blagojevich and state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. We've already seen the early acts of this political play. It will go something like this:

Topinka barks: "He's a crook."

Blago barks back: "She's an old pal of Ryan, a certifiable crook."

"All In The Family" has been the abiding theme of the last year. The anointing of Ald. Todd Stroger by his ailing dad, former Cook County Board President John Stroger, has been so outrageous and bizarre that it has even moved the Blagojevich-Mell family intrigue off center stage.

The Democratic Party of Cook County lived up to its inglorious past and, pathetically, replaced the father with son on the November ballot. The fall contest between Stroger and Cook County Commissioner Anthony Peraica shapes up to be as snippy as the governor's race.

It will go something like this:

Stroger: My name is Stroger.

Peraica: His name is Stroger.

But there was something good, even noble, that happened politically in the past year. Amazingly, it also had to do with Cook County Board politics.

In December, County Commissioner Mike Quigley actually put aside his own campaign dreams and ego to allow fellow Commissioner Forrest Claypool to challenge John Stroger one-on-one in the primary.

His decision came a few days before Christmas and looking again at the photo of Quigley that ran back then, it's easy to see in his eyes just how painful a decision that was.

Imagine. A selfless politician.

This year, like every other year I've spent working in news, I'm reminded just how much I like politicians in all their varied shapes and sizes, from the hacks to the occasional heroes. In Chicago, they never cease to amaze and surprise -- none perhaps more than 28th Ward Ald. Ed Smith.

This year, I read his new novel.

Alderman? Novelist? Do fish fly?

In this case, I guess, the answer is yes. Smith, a longtime politician from Chicago's gritty West Side, is not just a novelist but a romantic novelist.

His first attempt at writing fiction, Love that the Town Couldn't Stop, garnered 32 rejection letters before a small publishing house picked it up in 1996. His latest effort, self-published, is titled Almost Too Late.

Not unlike the alderman himself, the main character Ray Brody is a chivalrous teetotaler who falls in love at first sight with Yaz, "the most fascinating, the most gorgeous, and the most captivating woman I had seen. . . . Just looking at her sent me into a virtual trance, and I broke into a cold sweat."

Love, heartbreak and rebirth are Smith's themes in a fictional world that could not be farther from the floor of City Council where, the last time I looked, Smith was beating the drum demanding big-box retailers like Wal-Mart pay a "living wage" to its employees.

"There is a very passionate side of me," Smith said when we talked last week.

He has poured that passion into 149 pages of dialogue that goes like this:

Main Character: "Does this mean forever?" I whispered in her ear.

Woman of His Dreams: "Wherever you go, I will go. I will be as your shadow."

Come to think of it, maybe Smith's fiction isn't so far afield from Chicago City Council after all.

Wasn't there once a time when Mayor Daley would whisper "forever?" in an alderman's ear, and the alderman would respond, "Wherever you go, I will go. I will be as your shadow."

But in a rebellion late last month, a majority spurned the mayor and voted in favor of forcing the big boxes to pay better wages. Whether Daley issues his first veto in 17 years on this will play out sometime in September.

I'll be back by then. In the meantime, since Ed Smith is still finishing his next opus, working title Where the Corn Doesn't Grow, I've got to go find myself something else to read on vacation.

See you soon.

Copyright 2006, Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.

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