My New Internship...
So I officially started my internship at Commissioner Suffredin's office this morning. It's only going to be two days a week, but it looks like it's going to be a fascinating experience. Commissioner Suffredin is one of the Cook County Commissioners - his is the 13th District, covering Rogers Park and West Rogers Park, Evanston, Skokie, Wilmette, Morton Grove, Lincolnwood, Niles and a few other communities up to the Lake County line. He's hugely connected in Chicago - he's a partner at a major Chicago law office, lobbies for major companies in Springfield, knows everybody in the city (Congresswoman Schakowsky co-chaired his 2002 election committee), and is both very intelligent and comfortably liberal. I'm really excited to be working for him. Oh, and celeloriel: yes, you did go to HS with his daughter. She went to Loyola for law school, interned with Congresswoman Schakowsky and is now an account executive at Wilhelm and Conlon, who are big-time Chicago area political consultants (and, incidentally, where I have another internship interview next week).
It turns out that the other Loyola law student I'm interning with (who graduated from the U of C in 2003) knows woodstock218 - they're both from Lansing, and woodstock218 was his O-Aide. He also knows Anne Choate, as he's on the board of the Loyola International Law Review. Small world, eh?
I'm pretty surprised by the sheer amount of power the Board of Commissioners has in Cook County. Clearly they don't play second-fiddle to Mayor Daley the way I thought they did on Tuesday (even if Mayor Daley's brother is the Chairman of the Finance Committee). The yearly budget for Cook County is $3.2 billion dollars, and the commissioners have power over not just the sherriff and the county courts, but the county hospitals, county roads, the forest preserve, county ordinances, and so many other things. Commissioner Suffredin alone has three offices.
Watching the political infighting in the commissioners' office is fun, too. The districts are gerrymandered so that all but three or four of the commissioners represent some part of Chicago (even, as with Suffredin, it's only two wards or, as with Commissioner Gorman, it's just O'Hare), and some of them stretch upwards of 45 miles across and around the county. The woman the represents the Gold Coast has a district that covers much of the Near South Side, comes up in a small line to cover just the Gold Coast and Old Town before shooting west to cover the Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park, along with some of the Latino neighborhoods further west. The districts get redistricted every decade, and Eric tells me that the redistricting battles frequently go not just over blocks, but over individual houses.
Anyway, it's fascinating. As I learn more cool stuff about Cook County, I'll write more about it. I'm really starting to understand why politics is such a popular pasttime and a bloodsport in Chicago...
It turns out that the other Loyola law student I'm interning with (who graduated from the U of C in 2003) knows woodstock218 - they're both from Lansing, and woodstock218 was his O-Aide. He also knows Anne Choate, as he's on the board of the Loyola International Law Review. Small world, eh?
I'm pretty surprised by the sheer amount of power the Board of Commissioners has in Cook County. Clearly they don't play second-fiddle to Mayor Daley the way I thought they did on Tuesday (even if Mayor Daley's brother is the Chairman of the Finance Committee). The yearly budget for Cook County is $3.2 billion dollars, and the commissioners have power over not just the sherriff and the county courts, but the county hospitals, county roads, the forest preserve, county ordinances, and so many other things. Commissioner Suffredin alone has three offices.
Watching the political infighting in the commissioners' office is fun, too. The districts are gerrymandered so that all but three or four of the commissioners represent some part of Chicago (even, as with Suffredin, it's only two wards or, as with Commissioner Gorman, it's just O'Hare), and some of them stretch upwards of 45 miles across and around the county. The woman the represents the Gold Coast has a district that covers much of the Near South Side, comes up in a small line to cover just the Gold Coast and Old Town before shooting west to cover the Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park, along with some of the Latino neighborhoods further west. The districts get redistricted every decade, and Eric tells me that the redistricting battles frequently go not just over blocks, but over individual houses.
Anyway, it's fascinating. As I learn more cool stuff about Cook County, I'll write more about it. I'm really starting to understand why politics is such a popular pasttime and a bloodsport in Chicago...