Mix & Match?
Are you kidding? It’s savvy style — and prudent politics.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle draws her immense power from running county government and the Cook County Democratic Party. She’s known for her restrained yet clearly commanding presence, typically sporting a rather conservative, sensible, no flair look.
On the flipside, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’s political power is fed by mingle mania, crowd crush, group gatherings, spontaneous combustion and two weekly WVON radio shows offering property tax tips.
And she regularly reports to work in oh-my-gawd colorful, flashy jackets.
You guessed it.
Merry Christmas, Toni! Sneed hears Maria just gave you her OMG pizzazzz “Evil Eye” jacket as an early Christmas gift.
Quoth Maria: “I thought Toni could use some Pappas style this Christmas.”
Quoth Toni: “Well, Maria is known for her fabulous jackets, and she’d love me to wear one … and I will be grateful for her help and hard work on behalf of the [Democratic] ticket, especially electing Clayton Harris III to replace Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx!!”
Let’s call it Ms. and Match! Toni the Tiger working in tandem with Maria, the Greek thunderbolt! What a curious combo of clout!
Ooopah!
Cuba to Chicago! …
A few words tell it all.
Once upon a time, a young Rosalynn Carter and her adoring husband, Jimmy, who would become the 39th president of the United States decades later, spent an overnight in Cuba — minus a hotel reservation.
“So where did you stay?” one of their children later asked.
“We danced,” said Rosalynn, who would fly home to Georgia with her husband the next morning.
“We danced.”
Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the family matriarch who died last month, was known for her hard work during her tenure at the White House. But she knew how to enjoy life.
Chicago PR guru Rick Jasculca, who began working for Jimmy Carter in 1975 during the Georgia Democrat’s run for the Oval Office, and for Rosalynn in 1977, has a few stories to tell.
“They were a magical couple, comfortable together, and we became family,” he said.
Jasculca, who runs the Chicago-based public relations firm JT & Associates, continued to work for the Carter Center after President Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Two of Jasculca’s children, Andrew Jasculca and Lauren Foley, helped arrange two funeral services in Atlanta this past week for Mrs. Carter.
“She was a woman who shook everyone’s hand, insisting on shaking the hands of 800-plus people in attendance at a New York event in 1979 … and insisting I keep track of each hand she shook!” Rick Jasculca told Sneed.
Then there was the time the Carters celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in squalid Chicago style.
“They refused to stay in a hotel or someone’s private home while in town 37 years ago to build homes for their ‘Habitat for Humanity’ cause in Garfield Park,” Jasculca said.
“Instead, they chose to stay in an old abandoned place, the historic Guyon Hotel, which was in the process of being renovated for affordable housing on the West Side,” he added.
They stayed in a roach infested room furnished with only a couch and a milk crate, cleaning it up with their Secret Service detail, then leaving every day to build houses.
“And that’s where they slept on their 40th wedding anniversary,” Jasculca chuckled.
“Three days later, Rosalynn asked my wife, Judy, for the location of a laundromat to wash their dirty work clothes,” he remembered.
“‘No, no, no,’ my wife, Judy, insisted. ‘I’ll wash them at our house.’”
Mrs. Carter argued against it, but wound up “washing her load of laundry in our basement,” he said.
Then there was the stuffed animal kerfuffle, when Amy Carter, the Carter’s then young daughter, forgot her stuffed toy lion as they were leaving a Rome hotel. Jasculca retrieved it, but forgot “Stuffy” was still under his arm during a photo shoot with the Carters and Italy’s president.
Once again, the quietly somber town of Plains, Georgia, is on a deathwatch for former President Carter, 99, still in hospice care in the couple’s small, ranch style home.
To many Americans, the former president has become a moral compass.
Surely, Rosalynn was his shining star!
Sneedlings…
Congrats to Wendi Taylor Nations, a partner with the Hawthorne Strategy communications firm in Chicago and a former chieftain at World Business Chicago, on being named chief marketing officer of The Conference Board, a leading non-profit think tank in New York. … Condolences to Louis J. Mirabelli, 93, on the recent death of his beloved wife, Elvira M. Mirabelli, 89. … Saturday birthdays: Britney Spears, 42, and Lucy Liu, 55. … Sunday birthdays: Amanda Seyfried, 38; Bendan Fraser, 55; Daryl Hannah, 63; Tiffany Haddish, 44; and Julianne Moore, 63.
