Sheriff Greg Tony may be new to politics, but his politics is as old as voting.
Tony is starting to mirror fabled veteran pols by using tax money to help his political career.
That is something the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley did.
So did the late Sunrise Mayor John Lomelo.
Daley was the political strongman of Chicago from 1955 to 1976. He was nicknamed “The Boss,” which just about says it all.
At one time, Daley’s name was everywhere from the arrival lounge at Chicago O’Hare Airport to downtown streets. Even today it remains on city buildings.
Convicted of extortion, Lomelo’s name was largely erased from city and Democratic Party history. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s, a Sunrise voter couldn’t escape John Lomelo.
His name was plastered all over Sunrise. Lomelo even had a bust of him placed in the lobby of the Sunrise Musical Theater. The bust was removed around the time he went to prison.
It is that use of tax money to further his political future is something that Tony is learning to do.
