The local news is full of stories about a Todd Stroger aide being arrested on corruption charges. Okay, that’s par for the course. But what puzzles me is, why is Todd still around?
Didn’t he lose the primary election back in, like, February? Has he been sticking around all this time as a lame duck? This seems like a long time to endure someone who the voters threw out many moons ago.
So what’s the deal? Thanks for any insights.
His term isn’t over yet. The voters haven’t thrown him out, they just haven’t nominated him for reelection.
Yep, he’s just finishing out the term to which he was elected in the first place. It’s just that incumbents rarely lose primaries, so you seldom see lame-duckism lasting more than a couple of months (except, of course, in cases of term limits or incumbents choosing not to run, but such lame-duck periods have a different type of feel.)
Just one of the quirks of our electoral system. Sometimes I think we should take a page from the British. Their entire election season lasts, what, six weeks? Then the winner takes office almost immediately afterward.
Illinois moved the timing of its primaries up to February in 2008, to give a boost to Obama’s presidential bid, and hasn’t moved it back. So, yeah, Stroger loses in the primary, and will wind up spending the better part of a year as a lame-duck, plundering the county for all it’s worth before he departs.
I’m actually kind of morbidly curious as to how much he’ll manage to rip us off for in the interim. Then again, I really don’t want to know.