Cook County's Democratic incumbents plant flags for 2026 re-election bids
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Sheriff Tom Dart, Treasurer Maria Pappas and Assessor Fritz Kaegi have all declared or signaled they plan to run again.
Preckwinkle, who turned 78 Monday, announced her re-election bid to once again lead the board in an interview with Politico. Dart is hosting a re-election campaign kickoff and fundraiser next week. Kaegi sunk $500,000 into his campaign coffers earlier this month — filing a 'self-funding' notice for next year's primary — a reminder to any potential challengers of his deep pockets. Pappas didn't release a formal re-election announcement, but simply told the Tribune, 'I'm in.'
Pappas, Dart, and Preckwinkle have been in their current roles since 1998, 2006 and 2010, respectively.
Many believed Preckwinkle's current term would be her last, an assumption so baked in that preliminary jockeying among current members of the majority-Democratic board to succeed her had kicked off. But allies of Preckwinkle, who also chairs the county's Democratic Party, suggested she still had the energy and interest for another term. In a statement, she echoed another motivator allies have cited: maintaining a steady hand during the Trump presidency.
'With a new administration at the helm in the federal government causing chaos and uncertainty, now is not the time to step aside from this important work. Now is the time to lead the fight to protect all residents of Cook County,' she said in a written statement.
Pre-slating, where countywide candidates introduce themselves to members of the party, will be held mid-April.
Besides those countywide candidates, all 17 members of the Cook County board are up for re-election, as are judges, water reclamation district commissioners, and two of the members of the county's Board of Review. Petition passing doesn't begin until August 5, giving challengers plenty of time to bolster their bids.
Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele is widely rumored to be considering a run for Assessor, but has not yet publicly declared her intentions. If she runs for assessor, she would have to give up her board seat, which is also up in 2026 along with fellow commissioner George Cardenas. So far, Liz Nicholson, a Democratic fundraiser, has filed paperwork to run in Steele's district. Fellow commissioner Larry Rogers, who defeated a Kaegi-backed challenger last year, said he might run to unseat Kaegi next year, or help fund a candidate to challenge him.
Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon, who won a special election to replace the late Karen Yarbrough last year, is also expected to run.
Though he has not made a formal declaration either, Kaegi has filed paperwork with the state board of elections to run for a third term. In recent months, he has reminded taxpayers of their eligibility for property tax exemptions and pushed 'circuit breaker' reforms in the General Assembly. Those reforms, in theory, would help low-income people pay fast-rising property tax bills, but Kaegi and allies don't have a way to pay for it yet.
The $500,000 loan from Kaegi to his campaign brings his self-funding total to $5.6 million since he first ran for office in 2017, according to the Illinois Sunshine database.
'I love this work. I'm running for re-election because there's more work to be done. Making the Assessor's Office fairer is a crucial part of maintaining the public's trust in local government. We need that now more than ever,' Kaegi said in a written statement.
In explain her decision to go again, Pappas said she wanted to see through the publication of more 'brilliant' studies from her property tax research team, and talked about her desire to create an artificial intelligence unit. The treasurer is pursuing her own changes to the tax sale process in Springfield. The 75-year-old has also started a side hustle as a model signed with Lily's Talent Agency.
'The only reason I'm successful is I've hired people much smarter than me, but I know how to run it,' Pappas said Monday. 'That's what a good executive does.'
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San Francisco Chronicle
26 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
North Carolina Senate race sets up as a fight over who would be a champion for the middle class
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Democrats still in the dumps over last year's elections have found cause for optimism in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper jumped into the race for that state's newly open seat with a vow to address voters' persistent concerns about the challenges of making ends meet. Even Republicans quietly note that Cooper's candidacy makes their job of holding the seat more difficult and expensive. Cooper had raised $2.6 million for his campaign between his Monday launch and Tuesday, and more than $900,000 toward allied groups. Republicans, meanwhile, are hardly ceding the economic populist ground. In announcing his candidacy for the Senate on Thursday, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley credited President Donald Trump with fulfilling campaign promises to working Americans and painted Cooper as a puppet of the left. Still, Cooper's opening message that he hears the worries of working families has given Democrats in North Carolina and beyond a sense that they can reclaim their place as the party that champions the middle class. They think it's a message that could help them pick up a Senate seat, and possibly more, in next year's midterm elections, which in recent years have typically favored the party out of power. 'I'm Roy Cooper. And I know that today, for too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,' the former governor said in a video announcing his candidacy. 'Meanwhile, the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense. It's time for that to change.' Cooper's plainspoken appeal may represent just the latest effort by Democrats to find their way back to power, but it has some thinking they've finally found their footing after last year's resounding losses. 'I think it would do us all a lot of good to take a close look at his example,' said Larry Grisolano, a Chicago-based Democratic media strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama. Whatley, a former North Carolina GOP chairman and close Trump ally, used his Thursday announcement that he was entering the race to hail the president as the true champion of the middle class. He said Trump had already fulfilled promises to end taxes on tips and overtime and said Cooper was out of step with North Carolinians. 'Six months in, it's pretty clear to see, America is back,' Whatley said. 'A healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities and a strong America. These are the North Carolina values that I will champion if elected.' Still, the decision by Cooper, who held statewide office for 24 years and has never lost an election, makes North Carolina a potential bright spot in a midterm election cycle when Democrats must net four seats to retake the majority — and when most of the 2026 Senate contests are in states Trump won comfortably last November. State Rep. Cynthia Ball threw up a hand in excitement when asked Monday at the North Carolina Legislative Building about Cooper's announcement. 'Everyone I've spoken to was really hoping that he was going to run,' said the Raleigh Democrat. Democratic legislators hope having Cooper's name at the top of the ballot will encourage higher turnout and help them in downballot races. While Republicans have controlled both General Assembly chambers since 2011, Democrats managed last fall to end the GOP's veto-proof majority, if only by a single seat. Republican strategists familiar with the national Senate landscape have said privately that Cooper poses a formidable threat. The Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, wasted no time in challenging Cooper's portrayal of a common-sense advocate for working people. 'Roy Cooper masquerades as a moderate,' the narrator in the 30-second spot says. 'But he's just another radical, D.C. liberal in disguise.' Cooper, a former state legislator who served four terms as attorney general before he became governor, has never held an office in Washington. Still, Whatley was quick to link Cooper to national progressive figures such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Whatley accused Cooper of failing to address illegal immigration and of supporting liberal gender ideology. He echoed the themes raised in the Senate Leadership Fund ad, which noted Cooper's vetoes in the Republican-led legislature of measures popular with conservatives, such as banning gender-affirming health care for minors and requiring county sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials. 'Roy Cooper may pretend to be different than the radical extremists,' Whatley said. 'But he is all-in on their agenda.' Cooper first won the governorship in 2016, while Trump was carrying the state in his first White House bid. Four years later, they both carried the state again. Cooper, who grew up in a small town 60 miles (96.6 kilometers) east of Raleigh, has long declined requests that he seek federal office. He 'understands rural North Carolina,' veteran North Carolina strategist Thomas Mills said. 'And while he's not going to win it, he knows how to talk to those folks.' As with most Democrats, Cooper's winning coalition includes the state's largest cities and suburbs. But he has long made enough inroads in other areas to win. 'He actually listens to what voters are trying to tell us, instead of us trying to explain to them how they should think and feel,' said state Sen. Michael Garrett, a Greensboro Democrat. In his video announcement, Cooper tried to turn the populist appeal Trump made to voters on checkbook issues against the party in power, casting himself as the Washington outsider. Senior Cooper strategist Morgan Jackson said the message represents a shift and will take work to drive home with voters. 'Part of the challenge Democrats had in 2024 is we were not addressing directly the issues people were concerned about today,' Jackson said. 'We have to acknowledge what people are going through right now and what they are feeling, that he hears you and understands what you feel.' Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, a group that conducts research for an initiative called the Working Class Project, said Cooper struck a tone that other Democrats should try to match. 'His focus on affordability and his outsider status really hits a lot of the notes these folks are interested in,' Dennis said. 'I do think it's a model, especially his focus on affordability.' 'We can attack Republicans all day long, but unless we have candidates who can really embody that message, we're not going to be able to take back power.'
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
North Carolina Senate race sets up as a fight over who would be a champion for the middle class
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Democrats still in the dumps over last year's elections have found cause for optimism in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper jumped into the race for that state's newly open seat with a vow to address voters' persistent concerns about the challenges of making ends meet. Even Republicans quietly note that Cooper's candidacy makes their job of holding the seat more difficult and expensive. Cooper had raised $2.6 million for his campaign between his Monday launch and Tuesday, and more than $900,000 toward allied groups. Republicans, meanwhile, are hardly ceding the economic populist ground. In announcing his candidacy for the Senate on Thursday, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley credited President Donald Trump with fulfilling campaign promises to working Americans and painted Cooper as a puppet of the left. Still, Cooper's opening message that he hears the worries of working families has given Democrats in North Carolina and beyond a sense that they can reclaim their place as the party that champions the middle class. They think it's a message that could help them pick up a Senate seat, and possibly more, in next year's midterm elections, which in recent years have typically favored the party out of power. 'I'm Roy Cooper. And I know that today, for too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,' the former governor said in a video announcing his candidacy. 'Meanwhile, the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense. It's time for that to change.' Cooper's plainspoken appeal may represent just the latest effort by Democrats to find their way back to power, but it has some thinking they've finally found their footing after last year's resounding losses. 'I think it would do us all a lot of good to take a close look at his example,' said Larry Grisolano, a Chicago-based Democratic media strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama. Whatley, a former North Carolina GOP chairman and close Trump ally, used his Thursday announcement that he was entering the race to hail the president as the true champion of the middle class. He said Trump had already fulfilled promises to end taxes on tips and overtime and said Cooper was out of step with North Carolinians. 'Six months in, it's pretty clear to see, America is back,' Whatley said. 'A healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities and a strong America. These are the North Carolina values that I will champion if elected.' Still, the decision by Cooper, who held statewide office for 24 years and has never lost an election, makes North Carolina a potential bright spot in a midterm election cycle when Democrats must net four seats to retake the majority — and when most of the 2026 Senate contests are in states Trump won comfortably last November. State Rep. Cynthia Ball threw up a hand in excitement when asked Monday at the North Carolina Legislative Building about Cooper's announcement. 'Everyone I've spoken to was really hoping that he was going to run,' said the Raleigh Democrat. Democratic legislators hope having Cooper's name at the top of the ballot will encourage higher turnout and help them in downballot races. While Republicans have controlled both General Assembly chambers since 2011, Democrats managed last fall to end the GOP's veto-proof majority, if only by a single seat. Republican strategists familiar with the national Senate landscape have said privately that Cooper poses a formidable threat. The Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, wasted no time in challenging Cooper's portrayal of a common-sense advocate for working people. 'Roy Cooper masquerades as a moderate,' the narrator in the 30-second spot says. 'But he's just another radical, D.C. liberal in disguise.' Cooper, a former state legislator who served four terms as attorney general before he became governor, has never held an office in Washington. Still, Whatley was quick to link Cooper to national progressive figures such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Whatley accused Cooper of failing to address illegal immigration and of supporting liberal gender ideology. He echoed the themes raised in the Senate Leadership Fund ad, which noted Cooper's vetoes in the Republican-led legislature of measures popular with conservatives, such as banning gender-affirming health care for minors and requiring county sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials. 'Roy Cooper may pretend to be different than the radical extremists,' Whatley said. 'But he is all-in on their agenda.' Cooper first won the governorship in 2016, while Trump was carrying the state in his first White House bid. Four years later, they both carried the state again. Cooper, who grew up in a small town 60 miles (96.6 kilometers) east of Raleigh, has long declined requests that he seek federal office. He 'understands rural North Carolina,' veteran North Carolina strategist Thomas Mills said. 'And while he's not going to win it, he knows how to talk to those folks.' As with most Democrats, Cooper's winning coalition includes the state's largest cities and suburbs. But he has long made enough inroads in other areas to win. 'He actually listens to what voters are trying to tell us, instead of us trying to explain to them how they should think and feel,' said state Sen. Michael Garrett, a Greensboro Democrat. In his video announcement, Cooper tried to turn the populist appeal Trump made to voters on checkbook issues against the party in power, casting himself as the Washington outsider. Senior Cooper strategist Morgan Jackson said the message represents a shift and will take work to drive home with voters. 'Part of the challenge Democrats had in 2024 is we were not addressing directly the issues people were concerned about today,' Jackson said. 'We have to acknowledge what people are going through right now and what they are feeling, that he hears you and understands what you feel.' Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, a group that conducts research for an initiative called the Working Class Project, said Cooper struck a tone that other Democrats should try to match. 'His focus on affordability and his outsider status really hits a lot of the notes these folks are interested in,' Dennis said. 'I do think it's a model, especially his focus on affordability.' 'We can attack Republicans all day long, but unless we have candidates who can really embody that message, we're not going to be able to take back power.' ___ Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Trump Must End Dodd-Frank's Backdoor Tariffs Blocking Critical Minerals & Impoverishing Congo
Amid controversies over tariffs and their effects, one particularly destructive barrier to trade has gone overlooked: restrictions on 'conflict minerals' that exacerbate poverty in the developing world, undermine U.S. access to rare earth metals and critical minerals, and hand a competitive edge to China in control of the global supply of these critical minerals. Ironically, this trade barrier was not erected by President Donald Trump. It came from legislation hailed by many Democrats now critical of Trump tariffs. Nor did it come from legislation particularly geared to trade. Rather, this obstruction of trade was a last-minute insertion into the Dodd-Frank financial regulation overhaul signed by President Barack Obama 15 years ago in July 2010. Dodd-Frank's Section 1502 targets the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recently been a focus of the Trump's administration's strategic plans to access rare earths and other critical minerals to ensure a steady supply not reliant on China. The DRC has one of the richest mineral supplies in the world but is plagued by violence from warlords and militias, including a July 27 attack on a Catholic church that left at least 49 worshipers dead. The Trump administration's African diplomatic team has made headway in striking a deal with the nation in which the U.S. would provide security assistance to the DRC government in its fight against warlords in return for U.S. access to critical minerals within the country. But any such deal would likely be threatened by Section 1502, effectively a prohibitive backdoor tariff on many U.S. companies trying to access the DRC's resources. This Dodd-Frank provision forces publicly traded companies in the U.S. to disclose if any of their products contain 'conflict minerals' mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nine adjoining African nations. Under the law, firms listed on U.S. stock exchanges must audit their supply chains and disclose if their products contain even traces of four designated minerals—gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten—that might have been mined in areas controlled by warlords. The provision was sold as a way to protect Congolese residents from warlords who profited from the mining and sale of these minerals, with little effect on U.S. consumers and producers. Yet the rule has ended up increasing poverty and violence in the DRC while depriving the U.S supply chain of access to critical minerals needed for everything from smartphones and laptops to medical equipment. The big problem is that companies often face insurmountable difficulties when trying to trace the origins of tiny components of their products. As the Wall Street Journal reported, manufacturers spent about $709 million and more than six million man-hours attempting to trace their supply chains for conflict minerals in 2014. After all this expense, 90% of those companies still couldn't confirm their products were conflict-free. As a result of these burdens in auditing the supply chain, many companies simply left the DRC and Congo region altogether and sourced materials elsewhere. As David Aronson, an acclaimed journalist who has written about the region for more than three decades, put it in testimony to Congress, 'the law imposed a de facto embargo on mineral production that impoverished the region's million or so artisanal miners.' Among the lingering effects of the de facto embargo are reductions in education, health care, and food supply. These woes stem both from the sharp increase in unemployment of the region's miners and – as noted by Aronson in his testimony and in a New York Times op-ed he wrote -- the sharp reduction in mining company planes that also brought food and medicine to the region that occurred after U.S firms left. A study in the Journal of Law and Economics in 2016 found that the mandate from the Dodd-Frank provision increased infant mortality in the affected Congo regions by at least 143 percent. And the warlord situation didn't improve and in fact may have worsened because of the Dodd-Frank provision. An October report to Congress from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found 'no empirical evidence that the rule has decreased the occurrence or level of violence in the eastern DRC, where many mines and armed groups are located.' The GAO also found that 'the rule was associated with a spread of violence, particularly around informal, small-scale gold mining sites, … since gold is more portable and less traceable than the other three minerals.' The poverty and violence that soared due to Dodd-Frank's effects also gave China the perfect entry point into the Congo region. With limited options, the DRC government agreed to China's offers over the past 15 years of building infrastructure in return for granting China access to its minerals. Now, as China has failed to deliver promised infrastructure improvements, the DRC is looking for a new deal with the U.S that will focus on boosted security and trade rather than aid. But any such deal will likely fail as long as Dodd-Frank's burdens on U.S. companies accessing the minerals continue. As the GAO notes, the rule's near-insurmountable burden – that 'many mines are located in remote, potentially insecure areas, and coordinating teams to visit and inspect them is difficult' – remains standing as a trade barrier. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank provision allows the president to waive its mandate for two years if he deems such a waiver to be in the interest of national security. President Trump, as part of his goal of U.S. resurgence, must make use of this waiver to reduce China's influence and increase U.S. access to the region's minerals. Then, he should call on Congress to end this trade barrier by repealing Dodd-Frank's Section 1502. It's time for the president and Congress to remove this backdoor tariff from Dodd-Frank that puts China first and the U.S. and DRC last. John Berlau is Senior Fellow & Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the book George Washington, Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father's Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World.
