Sean Morrison drops the ball fighting for Cook County Republicans
Republicans in suburban Cook County will not have to worry about wasting a lot of time to vote because the most popular candidate on Republican Ballots is a candidate named “No Candidate,” slated through the incompetence of Cook County Republican Chairman Sean Morrison, the beleaguered 17th District Cook County Commissioner who can’t stop himself from stepping into controversy. Morrison has failed to build a Suburban Republican organization and has instead weakened it giving Democrats a stronger voice and wider base.
By Ray Hanania
Sean Morrison was first named Chairman of the Cook County Republican Organization in 2013, but ever since that appointment the Republican Organization has been in steady and steep decline. He has done little to promote the Republican Party, mainly promoting himself.
What is ironic is that Morrison has been spending more time attacking Republicans like Elizabeth “Liz” Doody-Gorman, his predecessor who backed him to take a seat on the Cook County Board in 2015 when she went into private practice. Gorman, a solid Republican, was later named by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner as the Executive Director of the Illinois Tollway Authority, a job she held until she was removed by Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Morrison was the head of the Republican Party at a time when the Republican Party has been at its worst, and yet in all of his misleading and exaggerated campaign literature, Morrison has accused Gorman of failing to be a Republican.
One thing is for certain, Gorman is a solid Republican. She was ousted from the Illinois Tollway Authority by Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker because she was a strong Republican. Under Gorman, the Republican Party worked to build up the Republican Party.
Under Morrison’s “leadership,” the Republican Party has been disintegrating to the point where the presence of one Republican member of the Cook County board is now in jeopardy. At issue is who is strong enough to prevent the Republican Party from going into oblivion. Gorman can easily hold the 17th District Cook County seat against any Democrat in November.
Morrison, on the other, barely held on to the County Board seat in the 2018 elections, almost losing by 1,377 votes to an unknown Democrat at the time, Abdelnasser Rashid. (Rashid is running a formidable challenge to State Rep Mike Zalewski in the Democratic Primary election.)
Morrison’s weak performance int he election has to do with the many controversies that have surrounded his tenure as a political office holder.
In 2013-2014, Morrison’s primary representative for his business, Morrison Security, was arrested and charged with sexually harassing a 14-year-old girl. It happened at Morrison’s Home at a pool party he was hosting. Morrison then begged the judge who was preparing to sentence him to be lenient and argued he needed him to run his company, Morrison Security. Only 19 days after sending the letter, the Morrison Senior Vice President Anthony Martin, who Morrison said was essential to his business, was re-arrested soliciting another 14-year0old girl in even more raunchy terms than the first. Martin was on business representing Morrison Security at the time in Colorado. But the 14-year-old was in fact an undercover Colorado police investigator.
Morrison has been attacking Gorman accusing her of being a “RINO,” Republican in Name Only. But the truth is Morrison is the real RINO. Morrison has one job as County Chairman, to slate Republicans for the many County election offices.
But the most popular candidate running for 100 different Cook County offices on Morrison’s slate has been a candidate named “No Candidate,” the placeholder that appears 53 times on the ballots in the June 28 Republican Primary election.
More than half of the positions are vacant.
Morrison couldn’t find one judge to run. Only one Republican is running for three seats on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board, and he is running without Morrison’s support.
There are no candidates running for the Cook County Board of Review’s three district seats.
The last time Morrison slated candidates was last year when he backed a candidate for Orland Township offices that had an outstanding arrest warrant, a candidate who claimed to be a lawyer but had not yet received his law degree, and a village trustee candidate who is a Democrat.
Why? Because Morrison only cares about himself. He is running in the 17th Cook County District, a seat handed to him by Gorman in 2015 when she took a private sector job and was later named by Rauner to head the Tollway. After seeing Morrison’s disastrous leadership of the Republican Party, Gorman decided to run to take the Republican seat on the Cook County Board back.
It’s a certainty that only one Republican has a chance to defeat a Democrat in November to maintain at least one Republican on the Cook County Board. That’s Gorman.
Morrison has been a failure as a Republican, and has been mired in all kinds of controversies from the letter defending a sex predator (go to www.Hanania.com to read that letter and the court documents) to the most recent controversy in which it was disclosed by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times that Morrison received an average of at least 60 formal Police Security Checks on his Palos Park home during his seven years on the Cook County Board.
Worse is that he can’t find any Republican talent to run for any offices. He has become a minion for Keith Pekau whose political organization is more like a political cult than a political party. Morrison slated Cindy Katsenes, a subservient Pekau ally, to run for Orland Township Committeewoman, the post that Gorman now holds and has held since 2003.
If you are a Republican in Cook County wondering why the party is disintegrating, all you have to do is look at Morrison’s pathetic record. He has done nothing except help himself, write a letter of support for a convicted sex predator who worked for him, and got more security treatment from the local police than any of this Palos Park neighbors. Click here to read my column in The Regional News on that Morrison Controversy.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter. A political analyst and CEO of Urban Strategies Group, Hanania’s opinion columns on mainstream issues are published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. His Middle East columns are published in the Arab News. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at rghanania@gmail.com.)
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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