Mayor Daley is either biding his time or declining to endorse a candidate for Cook County Board President in the Feb. 2 primary.
But is Alderman Toni Preckwinkle getting his endorsement by proxy?
A Preckwinkle fundraiser next week will be co-hosted by Marilyn Katz, a heavyweight Daley backer whose public relations firms handles city business.
It’s not the first time Daley supporters have lent their support to Preckwinkle, who is challenging President Todd Stroger, Clerk of Court Dorothy Brown and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O’Brien for the Democratic nomination.
“We take the support we can from every corner,” says Preckwinkle’s campaign manager Scott Cisek.
And while the mayor told reporters last month that he is too busy to pay attention to the county race and cast an endorsement, his supporters “certainly have not been discouraged from doing so,” Cisek says.
The mayor has appeared at at least one of Preckwinkle’s fundraisers, too.
The Jan. 11 fundraiser, held at the home of Democratic high-rollers Lew and Susan Manilow, is co-hosted by a list of donors who figured prominently in Barack Obama's 2008 campaign.
One of them is Micheal Bauer, whose involvement in the Obama campaign stirred controversy in 2007. Bauer was accused of plundering a family trust fund of $300,000, and barred from practicing law for nine months, according to published reports.
Bauer said the money went to prop up a failing business, though records show at the same time he donated $300,000 to local and national political candidates.
“It’s a family dispute, and I don’t think it’s anybody’s business,” Bauer told the Sun-Times in 2007. “My brother consented to me taking the money out ... I had a business at the time that was losing a lot of money. It was to try to keep the business afloat until I could sell it.”
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