Goon Peraica not fit to run for state's attorney

September 14, 2007
RICH MILLER capitolfax@aol.com

What do you do with a guy after he's arrested for slashing tires on cars owned by a bunch of Catholic nuns?

Why, you put him on your campaign payroll, of course.

And what do you do if the same guy also has a prior conviction for telephone harassment and apparently likes to get drunk early in the morning?

Well, it's only obvious that you'd "encourage" him to call a political opponent to "urge" her to cooperate with you.

Not a good idea, you say? Pretty stupid? Downright idiotic, even?

Meet Tony Peraica.

As the Sun-Times' Steve Patterson reported this week, Peraica brought Fred Ichniowski onto his campaign staff after his law firm represented Ichniowski in the nun tire-slashing case. Lately, Ichniowski has allegedly been making very nasty, harassing phone calls to Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, who has been on the outs with fellow commissioner Peraica for months. Ichniowski told the coppers that Peraica had encouraged his supporters to call Gorman's office and admitted that he was drunk when he phoned Gorman at 9 a.m. one day.

"Whenever [Peraica] and I were on opposite ends of an issue, the calls would come," Gorman told Patterson. "Tony's name always came up."

If this were an isolated incident, then nobody would take much notice. But it reinforces the image of Peraica as a goon squad leader just as he's starting his bid for Cook County state's attorney.

Peraica has proved to be his own worst enemy.

His bizarre election-night antics last year, for instance, gave Todd Stroger one of his biggest political breaks.

As we all remember, the live count showed that Stroger, a Democrat, was leading the Republican Peraica in the Cook County Board president's race. But Peraica suspected something amiss, so late in the evening he left his "victory" party with a bunch of drunken revelers and marched them through the city streets.

For a brief moment, I thought the TV news was running stock footage from old Frankenstein movies, replete with angry peasants brandishing torches as they scoured the countryside in search of the monster. Alas, it was all too real.

After a wrong turn, Peraica's feckless mob finally reached the County Building, where they demanded entrance, ripped open boxes containing election results, and generally made a mess out of things and fools out of themselves.

From then on, it was tough to take Peraica seriously on just about anything. He had run as a reformer, and was popular with reporters and pundits, but leading that mob to the County Building, fairly or not, sparked memories of the extreme (white) overreaction to Harold Washington. It was downright creepy.

If he had behaved himself, and shown just a little maturity, he would have been a much more credible counterweight to Todd Stroger, who has stumbled all over himself this year. Instead, Peraica was rightly marginalized.

And just when that crazy night was starting to fade from memory a little, everything blew up again. It never ceases to amaze me how often the Republicans form circular firing squads in this state. Commissioner Gorman also chairs the Cook County Republican Party. What possible good can come out of turning your alcohol-soaked goons loose on her, no matter what the disagreement?

The only logical way to answer that is to assume Peraica is every bit as much of a goon as the thugs who surround him appear to be.

And somebody with that unfortunate character trait should be kept as far away from the state's attorney's office as possible.

Peraica has proved to be his own worst enemy.