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Cook County Board Thu Jan 07 2010
Cook County Board President Candidates Debate Tonight--Catch the Extremely Specific Fever!
The Better Government Association and ABC-7 are sponsoring a debate [PDF] between the candidates for the Democratic nomination for the Cook County Board Presidency tonight at 7pm on Channel 7. The BGA, now headed by Andy Shaw, has been aggressive in pairing with local media outlets. It will be interesting to see if "camps" are created--will everybody go after nominal frontrunner Dorothy Brown? Or actual front runner Preckwinkle? Do any of the candidates have a strategy to accent some element of their campaign, or downplay something?
My read: Stroger has nothing to lose. If he's still got the fire in his belly to win, he's going to go after the person splitting his base, Dorothy Brown. That's a big IF though. Preckwinkle has the most to gain simply by increasing her name recognition. The others would have to be crazy to team up on her, particularly Stroger. Also, there's that white guy.
I don't know how honed Clerk Brown's or Water Reclamation District President Terry O'Brien's (afore mentioned white guy) debating skills are, or even whether they consider this debate as that important, get-out-the-vote wise. For both, it may just be a matter of keeping what they have and focusing on turning out their base.
