Anger over sales tax hike stains Democrats across suburbs

When Democratic hopeful Mark Walker started canvassing his northwest Cook County district months ago, he was sure to do two things at almost every door: introduce himself and ask residents to sign a petition against Todd Stroger's sales tax hike.

"Stroger has become the symbol of bad government," said Walker, who added that countless residents would go after him by name. "He has become a real lightening rod."

That Walker felt the need to immediately distance himself, as a Democrat, from Cook County Board President Stroger underscores how the controversial sales tax hike this year may undermine Democratic attempts to win more seats in the suburbs.

In fact, Republicans are so confident the anti-Stroger card plays well, they are using it across the region - not just in Cook County where taxes were actually raised - and up and down the ballot.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Highland Park Republican, often tries to tie opponent Dan Seals to Stroger and the equally unpopular Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich in thought-out sound bites.

Much of Kirk's district isn't in Cook County, but Lake County.

"We should not be looking to increase taxes because under Todd Stroger my constituents already pay the highest taxes in America," Kirk said recently in blasting Seals for supporting some tax hikes.

And in DuPage County, Republican candidate Darlene Senger sent out mailers in the Naperville area that tied her Democratic opponent to Stroger, Blagojevich and House Speaker Mike Madigan because her opponent's attack mailers were backed by the Illinois Democratic Party.

"It is not only about them being bad governors of the taxpayer dollar, it is really more about this type of negative campaigning," said Senger, who is running to replace the retiring state Rep. Joe Dunn in the 96th District.

Stroger has taken a lot of heat in the suburbs since hiking the sales tax earlier this year by 1 percentage point, saddling Cook County shoppers with one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation.

The hike drew immediate outrage across the region. Some area Republicans even proposed changing state law to let communities breakaway from Stroger's rule, a plan that went nowhere.

Months later, the outrage apparently hasn't subsided and it may prove the turning point Republicans have needed to stem years of mounting losses in the suburbs.

The GOP has spent tens of thousands of dollars on mailers that paint Democratic opponents as friends of Stroger and Blagojevich.

"Rod Blagojevich and Todd Stroger have secured Cook County as one of the most corrupt and highest taxed places in the nation," says Illinois Republican Party spokesman Lance Trover. "Voters in DuPage County and other parts of the state see this mismanagement and want absolutely nothing to do with it."

House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego is hoping the mailers will allow him to harness the anger at Stroger and direct it toward retaining, or even gaining, seats on his ever-shrinking side of the aisle.

"We feel we have good opportunities," Cross said recently. "(Voters) are focused on Rod and they are focused on Todd Stroger. It is a better environment for us than we would have thought before."

About five weeks before Election Day Walker took those anti-tax petitions he circulated - about 1,300 signatures - and mailed them to Stroger asking him to repeal the tax hike given the ongoing economic crisis.

But that didn't lower the sales tax and it also didn't stop Republicans from painting him with a Stroger brush.

In a GOP mailer sent across the district, Walker's picture is featured next to those of Stroger and Blagojevich. They are surrounded by newspaper headlines about the sales tax hike.

Walker says that just means he has to work harder to convince voters he isn't like Stroger despite running under the same party label.

Walker is running against Christine Prochno to fill the seat of retiring state Rep. Carolyn Krause in the Elk Grove Village and Arlington Heights area.

"My strongest attribute is that I've talked to so many people and knocked on so many doors," he says.

For his part, Stroger concedes the sales tax hike has become a significant campaign issue across the suburbs, but he mostly blames the media.

"When the media picks on one object and they want to bang it on people's heads, then yes it does become something that candidates can run against," Stroger said recently.

Stroger, though, defends the move even though it put the Democratic Party's suburban expansion at risk.

"The sales tax," he said, "is a necessary evil."