Four years ago Maria Pappas was an unknown Gold Coast lawyer waging an uphill campaign for Cook County commissioner.

For her part, Pappas professes indifference. “There are two other candidates in that race,” says Pappas, referring to a pair of candidates so obscure they rarely attend local endorsement sessions. “I’m not worried about what’s-his-name.”

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This is the first time commissioners are being elected from single-member districts–a change long urged by reformers who felt the old system hindered accountability. As reformers constantly note, the County Board is a powerful entity that oversees a billion-dollar empire, funding the jail, hospital, and state’s attorney’s office. It’s one of the last great pools of patronage, something County Board president Richard Phelan happily discovered when, after running as an independent, he got to win over Democratic ward committeemen by doling out do-nothing jobs.

In a 1990 referendum, voters overwhelmingly approved a measure calling for commissioners to be elected from single-member districts. Last summer a new county map was drawn dividing the county into 17 districts. The tenth runs between the lake and Ashland Avenue, from Kinzie Avenue on the south to Pratt on the north, and shoots west to take in Lincolnwood.

Which he’s performed admirably, most observers will attest, overseeing the tendentious and often tedious appeals of orders to revoke or suspend liquor licenses. For his efforts, he makes about $36,000 a year and has heard nearly 400 cases. After four years he wants to move on.

From the start Pappas–like Stroger, who is running in a south-side district–has been vulnerable to a series of embarrassing questions, the chief among them being: why is she running for two different offices at once?

Indeed, Phelan and his top aides are notoriously difficult to reach for reporters and average citizens. And the constraints of running two campaigns have made Pappas tough to reach as well. To arrange a brief phone interview, for instance, I called the campaign office, where an aide directed me to a publicist at another number, who sent me to a schedule coordinator at yet another number, who said that Pappas was too busy to talk to me for at least four days.