Dan Pogorzelski, left, was leading Elizabeth Joyce Thursday in the race for a two-year term on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. [provided/Facebook]

Nine days after the June 28 primary, just one Chicago-area race remained too close to call on Thursday, but a late batch of mail-in votes tilted the result toward a clean sweep for the Cook County Democratic Party’s candidates for the $1.2 billion agency responsible for wastewater treatment and flood mitigation all over Cook County.

If Daniel Pogorzelski clings to his nearly 2,000-vote lead over Elizabeth Joyce through the end of ballot-counting next week, party-backed candidates will have successfully beaten back an insurgent slate led by an ousted former commissioner who argued he and his allies are more diverse and qualified than the party picks.

A disgraced former Chicago alderman was sentenced to four months in federal prison on Wednesday as a judge denied his request for probation. And a Chicago police oversight agency launched an investigation into a Park Ridge incident allegedly involving a Chicago Police officer who pinned a 14-year-old boy to the ground.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago Department of Transportation Comm. Gia Biagi, Ald. Pat Dowell (3) and other city officials cut the ribbon on the new Motor Row Streetscape project along Michigan Avenue Wednesday. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and city transportation officials on Wednesday used the unveiling of streetscape improvements meant to bolster pedestrian and driver safety on the Near South Side and tout the city’s larger strategy of widening sidewalks, cutting vehicle lanes and improving crosswalks to promote safer streets and reduce traffic crashes.

Private lot booting is currently legal in about two-thirds of Chicago, but some aldermen want to expand it to the entire city [Quinn Myers/Block Club Chicago]

This article was first published in Block Club Chicago.

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-April, Wicker Park resident Tess Syriac planned to make a quick stop for beers and burgers to bring home to some friends hanging out at her house.

She had already placed an order online at Small Cheval, 1732 N. Milwaukee Ave., and said she planned to stop at the Garfield’s Beverage Express liquor store across the street right after.

Ald. James Cappleman (46) at a City Council meeting in February 2020. [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Ald. James Cappleman (46) will not run for a fourth term in the City Council next year after more than a decade at the helm of Uptown’s radical transformation, he announced in a note to constituents on Tuesday.

The news comes as three contenders have already lined up to succeed him — including one challenger who came within a hair’s breadth of unseating him in 2019.

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42), right, talks to Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38) during an April 2022 City Council meeting.

A new proposal backed by a cluster of powerful Chicago aldermen aims to crack down on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration’s semi-regular habit of introducing new legislation for an immediate vote with little or no notice.

Chicago’s Jackson Park [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Voters in three precincts in the city’s 5th Ward cast votes on Tuesday overwhelmingly in favor of preserving trees in Jackson Park and the South Shore Cultural Center Park instead of turning the land over to a controversial golf course expansion backed by Tiger Woods. The advisory question likely served as a bellwether on communities’ feelings about the golf project and other recent developments and proposals in the parks.

Real estate appraiser Samantha Steele, left, appears to have unseated Cook County Board of Review Comm. Michael Cabonargi in one of Tuesday’s biggest upsets.

Updated July 1, 9:45 a.m. For the first time in decades, voters have simultaneously ousted two sitting members of the Cook County Board of Review — an earth-shaking blow to the county’s tax assessment orthodoxy that could have far-reaching consequences for property owners from Barrington to Calumet City.

But one of the incoming commissioners has little time to celebrate as she works to fend off an explosive lawsuit from a fired campaign strategist that has already cast a cloud over her victory.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the process for choosing a new 12th Ward alderman once the current one leaves for a new elected position will mirror previous transitions. Community activists called on the mayor to name members of a new civilian oversight commission. And Lightfoot decried a new U.S. Supreme Court decision that limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to fight climate change.

Ald. George Cardenas (12) speaks during the Cook County Democratic Party slating event in December 2021.

More than a half-dozen Chicago elected officials asked voters last night for promotions that would have lifted them out of city government and given Mayor Lori Lightfoot the power to heavily reshape the composition of the City Council and its committees.

The candidates went one-for-seven. Few of the races were close.

Only 20 percent of registered voters in Chicago cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary election [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

Despite the pristine weather offered by Illinois’ later-than-usual June Primary Election Day Tuesday, only 20.1 percent of registered voters had turned out and had their ballots counted by the time polls closed on Election Day.

A truck blocks a bike lane in Logan Square. (Erin Hegarty/The Daily Line]

The day after Chicago transportation officials announced a sweeping plan to add concrete barrier protections to all existing protected bike lanes by the end of 2023, the department is hosting the first meeting of a new forum meant to help collect public input on bike and pedestrian issues.

From left: Metropolitan Water Reclamation District candidate Patricia Theresa Flynn, judicial candidate Tom Nowinski, judicial candidate Diana Lopez, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, judicial candidate Rena Van Tine, judicial candidate Tracie Porter and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle speak at a Cook County Democratic Party news conference and voting event in Kenwood on Tuesday. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

Fritz Kaegi declared victory Tuesday night in his bid for a second term as Cook County Assessor, calling his modest but decisive win against challenger Kari Steele a sign that voters want him to stay on his mission to recalibrate the county’s property tax burden from homeowners onto downtown businesses.

Meanwhile, Cook County Board of Review Comm. Tammy Wendt (D-1) and Comm. Michael Cabonargi (D-2) both appeared on paths to defeat, heralding a shake-up on the appeals board charged with checking Kaegi’s math.

Anthony Quezada gives a victory speech at a watch party in Portage Park after winning a five-way race for Cook County Board of Commissioners 8th District. [Erin Hegarty/The Daily Line]

The Cook County Board of Commissioners’ left flank is set to be shored up next year as Anthony Quezada, a Northwest Side political organizer and longtime right hand to Chicago Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35), jumped ahead of a crowded field to unseat two-term Comm. Luis Arroyo, Jr.

At the same time, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative took his place as the Republican Party’s nominee to succeed the retiring moderate Comm. Pete Silvestri (R-9), setting the stage for deeper polarization on the Democrat-dominated board responsible for setting the county’s $8 billion budget.

Clockwise from top-left: Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and her challenger Richard Boykin; Assessor Fritz Kaegi and his challenger Kari Steele; Board of Review Comm. Tammy Wendt and her challenger Chicago Ald. George Cardenas (12) [Facebook]

Midterm elections can be low-profile affairs in Chicago, especially without a competitive gubernatorial primary at the top of Democratic ballots. But Tuesday’s election will mark a critical juncture for Cook County, offering a referendum on its controversial public safety strategy and its messy tax assessment regime.

Some powerful county executives, like county Clerk Karen Yarbrough, Treasurer Maria Pappas and Board of Review Comm. Larry Rogers (D-3), will face no competition in the polls this week. Neither will 10 of the 14 incumbent Cook County commissioners who are running for reelection.

Still, the range of competitive races could set the stage of a potential Republican resurgence on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. And the results will offer the latest indication of the Cook County Democratic Party’s power to swing races up and down the ballot.