Toni Preckwinkle and Brendan Reilly are at each others’ throats like a pair of battlin’ weasels in the primary for Cook County Board president.

Reilly, the alder of the downtown 42nd Ward, was out with the first negative commercial, asking, “Remember when Toni Preckwinkle promised us lower taxes?” A big red “LIE” filled the screen. “She promised not to raise the sales tax.” Another big red “LIE.” “And remember Toni’s soda tax?” The ad ended by accusing Preckwinkle of raising taxes throughout her 34 years in local politics, and asked voters to reject “Toni’s lies.”

Preckwinkle responded by charging that Reilly is, in the world of Cook County politics, the only thing worse than a liar: a Trump enabler. “Reilly wanted Chicago authorities to help ICE,” a narrator intoned, using that doom-filled voice that narrators always use in negative ads. “He pushed a bill to remove protection from immigrants,” referring to Reilly’s vote to (unsuccessfully) overturn Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance. Then the ad accused Reilly of voting to allow Trump to “deface” the city’s skyline by stamping his name on the Trump International Hotel & Tower, which rises in his ward.

The race for County Board President has become so bitter because it’s a proxy for the divisions in contemporary Chicago Democratic politics. Reilly, who represents the headquarters of most big local corporations on the City Council, stands for the business wing of the party. Preckwinkle, who is a product of the Kenwood/Hyde Park independent movement, stands for its progressive wing. We’ve already seen those divisions play out on the City Council. A group of alders, including Reilly, a leading member of the so-called Common Sense Caucus, voted to pass a budget that didn’t include Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pet corporate head tax, which would have been anathema in Reilly’s ward. Reilly endorsed pro-business Paul Vallas in the 2023 mayoral election.

Preckwinkle was one of Johnson’s earliest supporters. She mentored him during his single term on the county board, endorsed him when he ran for mayor, and — during the first year and a half of his mayoralty — engaged with him in biweekly phone calls to discuss city and county business. Although neither candidate has mentioned Johnson by name, and Johnson hasn’t endorsed Preckwinkle, the race can be seen as a test of the popularity of his brand of left-wing politics.

To give you an idea of where Reilly stands, take a look at his campaign team. His campaign manager is Greg Goldner of Resolute Public Affairs, who has a long history of fighting progressives within the Democratic Party. Goldner’s last job before working for Reilly was as campaign manager for Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate to the right of eventual winner Zohran Mamdani in last year’s New York City mayoral race. That wasn’t Goldner’s first tilt against socialism. Goldner’s shop led the campaign that defeated a ballot initiative for Johnson’s Mansion Tax, which would have increased real estate transfer fees on properties that sell for more than $1 million.

“This mayor routinely pits Chicagoans against Chicagoans,” Goldner told WTTW. “We made the case this is the wrong policy for the city.”

“I think he’s just a Democrat-Republican,” says a former Goldner staffer, who asked to remain anonymous. “He’s just on Democratic campaigns, but they’re with Republican policies.”

And, the staffer added, Goldner is “not afraid to get his hands dirty.”

In 2011, Goldner was the man behind For A Better Chicago, a secretive pro-business political action fund that exploited a loophole in campaign finance laws to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in anonymous donations and funnel the money to aldermanic candidates supporting the agenda of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also had a reputation as a corporate Democrat.

“We’re very supportive of Rahm and what he wants to accomplish and want to continue to drive and push him to follow through — and help move those same agenda items through the City Council,” Goldner, told the Tribune at the time. “His campaign commitments and positions are very similar to ours.”

Speaking of the Tribune, the newspaper’s editorial board, which trumpets its disdain for left-wing politics, endorsed Reilly, criticizing Preckwinkle for her role as political godmother to Johnson and former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. 

Preckwinkle is an institution in Chicago politics. If she wins a fifth term as County Board president, she’ll tie George Dunne’s record in that office. The most recent poll, taken in November, had her leading Reilly 53-22 — but that was before the negative ads aired. Preckwinkle has a prominent, well-funded challenger in Reilly, who outraised Preckwinkle $880,000 to $340,000 in the fourth quarter of last year. That might say a lot about the discontent with her brand of progressive politics.