At least three spots on the Cook County Board are opening up, with North Side Commissioner Bridget Degnen announcing she will not seek a third term.<\/p>\n
Once rumored to be thinking about running for board president if incumbent Toni Preckwinkle stepped down, Degnen instead said she would serve the remainder of her term through December 2026, and then consider her next career move.<\/p>\n
Commissioners Kevin Morrison and Donna Miller are also not running for reelection to the board. Morrison is running to fill<\/a> U.S. Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi\u2019s seat and Miller for U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly\u2019s seat in Washington, as both members of Congress seek the open Senate seat being vacated by Dick Durbin.<\/p>\n The board has seen significant turnover in recent months. Dr. Kisha McCaskill replaced Monica Gordon, who was appointed Cook County clerk<\/a>. And Jessica Vasquez replaced Anthony Quezada on the board when he became<\/a> 35th Ward alderman.<\/p>\n Petition passing to get on the March primary ballot begins next month. Degnen said to \u201cstay tuned\u201d for a future potential endorsement. Her district includes some of the city\u2019s wealthiest neighborhoods, including River North, Wicker Park, Bucktown, Lincoln Park, Roscoe Village, Lincoln Square and Portage Park.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom expanding paid family leave, to passing common sense ethics and governance reforms, embedding mental-health professionals in our 911 call centers, and advocating for employees in our health and hospital system, I\u2019m overwhelmed with pride at all we\u2019ve accomplished,\u201d as well as work on abortion access, she said in an early Monday release.<\/p>\n Degnen told the Tribune she was especially proud of the number of events she was able to hold for constituents, and still wants to work on consolidating suburban mosquito abatement districts before she leaves.<\/p>\n Degnen was previously a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, environmental engineer, and attorney for the state\u2019s Department of Public Health, a stint that included regulating medical marijuana dispensaries.<\/p>\n She garnered a reputation on the board for being a stickler with near-perfect attendance who peppered officials with questions in briefings and during board meetings.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done a good amount of work in the last eight years and I feel like at this point, I\u2019ve kind of done what I can do,\u201d she said in an interview with the Tribune. \u201cI\u2019m sure I can do more work but I just feel that eight years is a good amount of time and at this point I have \u2014 not to say that I wouldn\u2019t run for office again, I\u2019m just going to take a break for a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Degnen says she has mixed feelings about leaving. \u201cI still have a year and a half left,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve worked really hard to get here and be super credible and push forward an agenda and it\u2019s a little bittersweet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least three spots on the Cook County Board are opening up, with North Side Commissioner Bridget Degnen…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":80631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5404,90,5386,1818,1370,50,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-80630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114891298592746193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}