Sandoval’s problems translate to headache for Democrats

It’s too bad we can’t get state Sen. Martin Sandoval to “translate” for us the meaning of Tuesday’s raids on his offices by federal investigators.

He might be good at it.

For many years, the Chicago Democrat has had a side gig providing “translation services” under a contract with the town government in Cicero.

He also used to have a similar deal with the village of Melrose Park, although in recent years his Melrose Park contract has been replaced by one with the North Berwyn Park District.

I can translate that much: the political powers-that-be in those towns were so eager to stay in the good graces of Sandoval and the Latino voters they share that they put him on the payroll, probably at his request, if not insistence. Even better than a job, they gave him a contract, which eliminates any concerns about being fingered as a ghost payroller.

Sandoval’s deal with the North Berwyn Park District seems to have started not long after the senator helped the agency land a $1.2 million state grant to build a new water park.

Would it surprise you to know Sandoval is most often associated in Springfield with the phrase, “What’s in it for me?”

In that regard, Sandoval is known as something of a throwback, his power plays lacking the subtlety of the state representative from his district, House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times

Although Sandoval’s demands are often couched in the language of diversity and fairness, seeking contractual set-asides to benefit Latinos, it’s always a little suspect coming from him.

Yet for all that, the raids on Sandoval’s offices in Cicero and Springfield took us as much by surprise as they did him.

It’s not that he wasn’t already high on everyone’s list of Most Likely to Get Caught on an FBI Wiretap. His fellow legislators would have put him on the top of the list.

It’s just that his name hadn’t really surfaced so far in the recent federal probes of Chicago Democrats at City Hall and the state Capitol.

Now that it has, the truth is that we don’t really know what has brought Sandoval under the suspicion of federal prosecutors, only that he obviously is, in much the same way as we still haven’t really figured out what’s at the root of the investigation of Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), who was similarly left exposed by a very public raid in June.

Sometimes it takes a while for these things to sort themselves out. Sometimes they never go any further.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Sandoval, who was re-elected to a new four-year term in 2018, has survived other federal investigations since coming to the Legislature in 2003.

One probe involved him handing out five college scholarships to students who all claimed to live in the home of one of his campaign aides. This appeared to be nothing more than a ruse to enable him to award the government-paid tuition waivers to individuals outside his district, evading one of the program’s few restrictions.

Then there’s his involvement in the much investigated Hispanic Democratic Organization, which had to disband after taking so much heat for its role in the Hired Truck and City Hall patronage scandals under Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Sandoval, though, survived, as did his good friend and political ally Victor Reyes. It was Reyes who was caught on wiretap in an embarrassing, though not necessarily illegal conversation soliciting legal business from former Ald. Danny Solis, the cooperating informant behind the investigation of Ald. Edward M. Burke and presumably others.

John O’Connor/AP

What has to concern Illinois Democrats right now is Sandoval’s very prominent role as a chief negotiator of the state’s newly enacted $45 billion infrastructure improvement program — and the gas tax increase and pork barrel projects that go with it.

They’re counting on that money, and the expected political benefits that go with the projects.

The last thing they need is for the problems of one of its architects to put a stink on the whole program — and them along with it.