Stroger Ally: Budget Fight All About Race

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger can’t get his budget passed “because he’s black,” his floor leader angrily charged Tuesday.

Commissioner William Beavers said “if Todd was a white man, he wouldn’t have half these problems,” further alleging “this is a remake of the Harold Washington days” at City Hall, where racially fueled votes often ended in 29-21 decisions.

“Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is,” he said.

Beavers railed on that one of Stroger’s top critics, Commissioner Tony Peraica, “hates everybody who’s black . . . all black elected officials,” going on to say Peraica used to beat up black people growing up in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

Peraica and others say the comments are not only untrue, they’re born of a desperate frustration that Stroger can’t pass a 2 percentage-point sales tax hike or other increases.

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Yet, prompted by a reporter’s question, Beavers yelled not to forget that he’s “the hog with the big nuts and I’m gonna tell you what it is.”

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More jabs at Peraica

Name-calling continued as Commissioner Liz Gorman, county Republican Party chairman, ripped into fellow Republican Peraica unprovoked, reading from a list of insults, calling him a “loser,” “pathetic, pathological liar,” an “abusive weasel” who is “no man,” and an “ineffective leader” who has “no substance.”

A shocked Peraica said Gorman has “no self-respect” and her attack was “abominable” and “despicable.”

But then, even Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno called Peraica “a jerk.”

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