Political career
Schwiebert first ran for political office when he entered the February Municipal Primary for Rock Island City Council. He won the nomination for one of the three open seats on the City Council. Schwiebert ran a door-to-door grassroots campaign. After a month of hard work campaigning, Schwiebert and his small but well organized staff brought him to victory. He came out of obscurity to become one of the top vote getters in Rock Island History. Out of the three seats up for election he emerged first place defeating three well known incumbents.
In November 1984, the City of Rock Island passed a referendum having City Aldermen run for office in individual wards and establishing staggered elections. In April, 1985, Alderman Schwiebert became the first 6th Ward Alderman, defeating Rock Island High School English Teacher Earl Strupp by a 2–1 margin. In 1987, Alderman Schwiebert was reelected to a third term on the City Council, defeating his challenger by a slimmer margin than in 1985. In 1988, he declared his candidacy for Rock Island City Mayor.
He won the February 1989 primary, defeating his nearest challenger 43% to 18% of the official vote. In his only contested primary for Mayor, Schwiebert was the top vote getter, easily defeating four other well known contestants including two Alderman, a County Board Member, and the City Clerk. He then went on to win the April general election by the largest victory ever achieved by a first term mayor in Rock Island. Defeating 1st Ward Alderman James Kerr 72% to 28% of the vote. He went on to four more overwhelming victories in 1993, 1997, 2001, and 2005, never once falling below 82% of the vote. In September, 2008, he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2009.
It had been rumored for years that the Mayor had intentions for running for U.S. House. In March, 2006, when U.S. Representative Lane Evans announced his retirement after the primary election had been held, Mayor Schwiebert was the second candidate to declare his candidacy to succeed the Congressman. Schwiebert said that due to his close work with the Congressman and his determination to fight to keep the Rock Island Arsenal open he was the best choice to succeed Evans. In a series of debates and forums, Schwiebert made mention of his five terms as Mayor stating that the city made progress in re-development and other economic and social issues. However, he failed to gain the support needed of the Democratic precinct committeemen making the selection of Evan's replacement and ended third place in their voting.
Throughout his 20 years as Mayor of Rock Island, Schwiebert won numerous awards and recognitions. He won the Spiritual Aims Award; Lay Person of the Year; Iowa-Illinois District Kiwanis, 1989; Distinguished Service Award - Rock Island Jaycees, 1990; Illinois Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce Intergovernmental Cooperation Award, 1990; named a Paul Harris Fellow, Rock Island Rotary, 1992; Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Augustana College, 2003; U.S. Army Commander's Award for Public Service, 2009; Isaak Walton League Civic Award for Environmental Leadership, 2009; and Sustainability Leadership Award from the City of Rock Island, 2009. In 2010, Schwiebert Riverfront Park on the Mississippi riverfront was named for him. He is a member of the American, Illinois, Iowa, and Rock Island County Bar Associations and serves on the Board of the Figge Art Museum, Augustana College, and Unity Point Health/Trinity (chairman).
Schwiebert also co-produced a C.D. on the Stations of the Cross in 2007 (The Stations: A Contemporary Setting); as well as published a book of poetry (Pilgrim Footsteps, 2013) and an environmental murder mystery (The Template: A Parable of the Environment, 2016). In 2015 he established the Schwiebert Fund for Environmental Studies to further research and education concerning the environment and climate change.
The Quad Cities is a region of cities in the U.S. states of Iowa and Illinois: Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline in northwestern Illinois. These cities are the center of the Quad Cities metropolitan area, a region within the Mississippi River Valley, which as of 2023 had a population estimate of 467,817 and a Combined Statistical Area (CSA) population of 474,019, making it the 90th-largest CSA in the nation.
Lane Allen Evans was an American attorney and politician who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 until 2007, representing the 17th District of Illinois. Evans announced that he would not seek reelection in November 2006 and retired at the end of the 109th Congress, due to the increasingly debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease.
David Duvall Orr is an American Democratic politician who served as the Cook County Clerk from 1990 to 2018. Orr previously served as alderman for the 49th ward in Chicago City Council from 1979 to 1990. He briefly served as acting Mayor of Chicago from November 25 to December 2, 1987, following the death of Mayor Harold Washington. Orr retired from the office of Cook County Clerk in 2018, opting not to run for an eighth term.
The Cook County Democratic Party is an American county-level political party organization which represents voters in 50 wards in the city of Chicago and 30 suburban townships of Cook County. The organization has dominated Chicago politics since the 1930s. It relies on an organizational structure of a ward or township committeeperson to elect candidates. At the height of its influence under Richard J. Daley in the 1960s when political patronage in employment was endemic in American cities, it was one of the most powerful political machines in American history. By the beginning of the 21st century the party had largely ceased to function as a machine due to the legal dismantling of the patronage system under the Shakman Decrees issued by the federal court in Chicago. The current Chair is Toni Preckwinkle, who is also the elected Cook County Board president.
Philip Gary Hare is an American politician who was U.S. Representative for Illinois's 17th congressional district, serving from 2007 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district was based in Illinois's share of the Quad Cities area and included Rock Island, Moline, Quincy, Decatur, Galesburg and part of Springfield.
Rock Island High School, also known as "Rocky", is a public four-year high school located in Rock Island, Illinois, United States. Rocky is within the Rock Island–Milan School District 41, and the school colors are crimson and gold.
Sandra Lee Jackson is an American politician. She was elected to the Chicago City Council as an alderman of the 7th ward of the City of Chicago in the 2007 municipal elections held on February 27, 2007. She succeeded Darcel A. Beavers who had been appointed by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley after the 2006 November elections to succeed her father William Beavers, Jackson's rival, as alderman of the 7th Ward. Jackson resigned from Chicago City Council, effective January 15, 2013. On February 20, 2013, Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of filing false tax returns, and on August 14, 2013, was sentenced to one year in prison.
Robert William Fioretti is an American attorney and politician who served as an alderman in the Chicago City Council for the 2nd Ward, which included portions of Bronzeville, East Garfield Park, Illinois Medical District, Little Italy, Loop, Near West Side, Prairie District, South Loop, University Village, Westhaven, and West Loop. Fioretti first won election as alderman in 2007 and was re-elected in 2011. He also served as 2nd Ward Democratic Committeeman for two terms, which is a position in the Cook County Democratic Party.
Toni Lynn Preckwinkle is an American politician and the current County Board president in Cook County, Illinois, United States. She was elected to her first term as president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the executive branch of Cook County government, in November 2010, becoming the first woman elected to that position.
Deborah L. "Deb" Mell is an American politician from Chicago. She is a Democrat and was formerly a member of the Chicago City Council, representing the 33rd ward. She previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 2009 to 2013.
Ward Committeepeople and Township Committeepeople are political party officials who serve many standard committeemen duties on behalf of their political party in Cook County, Illinois.
Proco Joe Moreno III is an American politician who served as alderman from the 1st ward in the Chicago City Council starting in 2010 when he was appointed to replace Manny Flores on March 26, 2010. His term ended on May 20, 2019, after his loss to Daniel La Spata in the 2019 Chicago aldermanic elections. The 1st Ward of Chicago incorporates areas including: Wicker Park, Bucktown, East Village, Ukrainian Village, Logan Square and the southeastern tip of Roscoe Village.
Kelly Cassidy is an American politician from Chicago. She is a Democrat and a member of the Illinois House of Representatives. She was appointed to represent the 14th district, on Chicago's North Side, in April 2011 following incumbent Harry Osterman's election to the Chicago City Council. She took office on May 16, 2011. Most notably Kelly Cassidy was the chief sponsor of House Bill 1438, making Illinois the first state to legalize the Adult-Use of Cannabis through legislature as opposed to a ballot measure.
Cheryl Lea Bustos is an American journalist, healthcare executive, and politician who served as the U.S. representative from Illinois's 17th congressional district from 2013 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman elected to Congress from her district in the northwestern part of the state, anchored by the Illinois side of the Quad Cities and partially including Peoria and Rockford. In 2019, Bustos became chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
The Chicago mayoral election of 1989 saw Democratic nominee Richard M. Daley win election to the remainder of an unexpired mayoral term with a 14% margin of victory. This marked a return for the Daley family to the office of mayor. Daley was elected over Alderman Timothy Evans, the nominee of the newly formed Harold Washington Party, and the Republican nominee Ed Vrdolyak.
Jesús G. "Chuy" García is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Illinois's 4th district since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners, as well as in the Illinois Senate and on the Chicago City Council before his election to Congress. He was also a candidate for mayor of Chicago in 2015 and 2023. Throughout his career in Chicago and national politics, he has been described as a progressive.
The 2015 Chicago aldermanic elections happened on February 24, 2015, to elect the 50 Aldermen that represent Chicago in the City Council. The elections were non-partisan and if no candidate received an absolute majority, a runoff would be held between the top two finishers on April 7, 2015.
Raymond Anthony Lopez is an American politician who is currently a member of the Chicago City Council serving as alderman of the 15th Ward in Chicago, Illinois.
Dorsey Ryan Crowe was an American politician who served as alderman of Chicago's 21st ward from 1919 to 1923 and upon its redistricting into the 42nd ward from 1923 to his death. A Democrat serving most of the Near North Side, he represented such affluent constituencies as the Gold Coast and Streeterville as well as such poor areas as Cabrini–Green and Goose Island. At the time of his death he was the Dean of the Chicago City Council, as well as the last alderman from the era of partisan aldermanic elections and when wards elected two aldermen each. An alderman for 43 years, and the last to have served under a Republican mayor, he is as of 2018 the third-longest serving alderman in Chicago history, behind Ed Burke of the 14th ward and John Coughlin of the 1st.
Chasity Wells-Armstrong is an American politician, the first African-American to serve as mayor of Kankakee, Illinois, the county seat of Kankakee County.
