He’s already a former Cook County assessor and a former Cook County Democratic Party chairman, and now Joe Berrios could be looking to add another political gig to the former list: the ward post he’s held for decades.
As of Tuesday, Berrios had not yet filed his nominating petitions to run for re-election for committeeperson of the Northwest Side’s 31st Ward, his base of power since 1987.
Berrios still has until Monday to file, but shortly before county offices closed for the day on Tuesday, his protégé, freshman Ald. Felix Cardona Jr., did file to run for the party post.
That means either Cardona, who worked for Berrios in the assessor’s office, plans to run against the man who helped him get elected alderman, or Berrios is handing over the reins of power.
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Neither Berrios nor Cardona returned messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Berrios, 67, has been a fixture of Cook County politics for decades. An old-school pol, he made headlines for hiring family members when he ran the assessor’s office from 2010 to 2018.
In defending his former office’s hiring practices, Berrios once likened his family to Democratic Party royalty: The Kennedys.
“Look at a great president that we had, President Kennedy. Who’d he appoint attorney general? You know? Same thing,” Berrios told the Chicago Sun-Times after testifying in a Senate committee in Springfield in 2012.
Berrios was responding to a Sun-Times report that found 13 members of his family had landed on Cook County and state payrolls.
“You’re saying Bobby Kennedy wasn’t fit for the [U.S. attorney general’s] job? He appointed his brother,” Berrios continued, referring to John F. Kennedy. “And in government, people help many people. This is part of the process.”
But in the 2018 election, Berrios wound up having more in common with George McGovern than John F. Kennedy.
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In last year’s primary election, Berrios was soundly beaten by Fritz Kaegi, who went on to win the office in last November’s general election. Throughout the election, Berrios was hammered for studies that showed the county’s property tax system gave greater breaks to the owners of more expensive homes than it did to owners of lower-value homes.
Berrios — who Mayor Lori Lightfoot once described as the “poster child for bad government — was elected chair of the Cook County Democratic Party in 2007.
After Berrios lost the 2018 primary for assessor, he stepped down as party chairman, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle took over.
The county party’s first Latino chairman, Berrios was credited with boosting the number of minority candidates by 76 percent and slating twice as many women for countywide office as his predecessor.
A former state representative, Berrios also spent 22 years serving on the county Board of Review before being elected assessor.
