“Yes, she’s running again,” Scott Kastrup, Preckwinkle’s political director said at a fundraiser held at the Chicago Cultural Center. “We’re pleased to be doing this [fundraiser] again, and she’s definitely running for re-election for the County Board.”
It looks like Toni Preckwinkle isn’t ready to ride off into the sunset after all.
Nearly three months after a blowout loss to Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the April runoff election, Preckwinkle on Tuesday threw the door to seeking another term as Cook County Board president wide open.
“Yes, she’s running again,” Scott Kastrup, Preckwinkle’s political director said at a fundraiser held at the Chicago Cultural Center. “We’re pleased to be doing this [fundraiser] again, and she’s definitely running for re-election for the County Board.”
A jazz band played tunes such as Dave Brubeck’s classic “Take Five” as supporters filed into the room. At the sign-in tables, donors were encouraged to take buttons emblazoned with Preckwinkle’s face.
The messaging was simple: Re-elect Toni Preckwinkle President of Cook County Board.”
Preckwinkle worked the room, hugging and shaking hands with politicians, county employees and others. The crowd included Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), County Commissioner John Daley, state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, and Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th).
Preckwinkle once declared that her her current term, which began last year, would be her last.
But since losing the mayoral race in April, she has steadily moved away from that stance.
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Max Herman/For the Sun-Times
Just days after the mayoral race, Preckwinkle refused to say definitively that she still planned to step down after her current term ends in 2022.
“You know, I’m looking forward to the next four years,” Preckwinkle said when asked if this term would be her last. “We’ve got a lot on our plate, starting with, frankly, our work on the Census. Billions of dollars are at stake not just for us in the county but every taxing body within the county all the cities towns and villages all the school districts and not to mention our congressional delegation.”
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she repeated when pressed on whether this would be her final term.
Kastrup said her reasoning behind running again would likely be focused on the work Preckwinkle still says she has left to do. The two haven’t talked about that yet, though — Preckwinkle is only a little over six months into her new, third term as president.
After clobbering former Ald. Bob Fioretti in a primary last year, Preckwinkle was less hesitant about closing the door on another run for her current office, saying “I had an agenda for myself when I ran for this job and these are things I care about: access to public health, criminal justice reform, economic development,” Preckwinkle said.
“I made a commitment, I was going to try to do something about the county, both in terms of its fiscal operation and its substantive agenda so that’s what I’m going to try to do for one more term,” she said last year.
If she does win a third term in 2022, Preckwinkle would be 75 when she is sworn in.
That’s a year younger than County Board President John Stroger was when a stroke effectively ended his political career in 2006 in the middle of his campaign for a fourth term. George W. Dunne was 77 when he finished out his nearly 22-year tenure as board president in 1990.
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June 25, 2019 at 06:10PM
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