Who Are the Cook County Board of Review Candidates

Incumbents in two Cook County races often overshadowed by other political contests that nonetheless sway Chicago real estate markets are facing tough competition in the March 17 Democratic primary, campaign fundraising data indicates.

Cook County Board of Review Commissioners George Cardenas and Samantha Steele, who oversee the property tax appeals process, are both facing strong primary challengers.

“The Board of Review is a very overlooked but tremendously important body of government that can fundamentally shift the fairness of property taxes in Cook County,” said Chicago Alderman Daniel La Spata, who chose to endorse challenger candidate Jaunita Irizarry.

Irizarry will face Cardenas in the primary while challenger Liz Nicholson will face incumbent Samantah Steele. Cardenas currently represents the board’s District 1, which covers much of the western end of the county, and Steele represents District 2, which covers the northern end. Steele is being challenged by Liz Nicholson, a first-time candidate who’s been an advisor to the National Democratic County Officials political organization.

Property taxes have been a major flashpoint in Cook County for the past several years, especially after the pandemic rocked Chicago’s office market.

Incumbent Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi — who is also up for re-election and facing primary challenger Pat Hynes — has long derided the Board of Review for slashing his appraisals, particularly for commercial property owners. For every property owner who wins an appeal, other property owners end up taking on more of the county’s overall tax burden.

As a result, candidates for both the assessor’s office and for positions on the Board of Review have been campaigning on the rising commercial-versus-residential real estate tension brewing in the county.

Irizarry, in her race against Cardenas, is running on a platform “to make big corporations pay their fair share in property taxes and to deliver real relief for working families,” her campaign materials state.

She has raised about $167,000 total and raised $100,000 of that in the last quarter of 2025 alone, records show.

La Spata, who represents much of the Logan Square area, endorsed her over incumbent Cardenas.

“She is skeptical in the best sense of the word, someone who really digs into the numbers and the facts and the data to get at the truth,” La Spata said. “I think that is counter to her opponent, who looks more to his campaign contributors than to the facts of what a building is worth.”

Cardenas has raked in $240,000 so far, including from prominent property tax appeals firms like Crane & Norcross, Fitzgerald Law Group and Hetler & Associates among others. The Real Deal reached out to his campaign and several donors for comment on his campaign but did not receive responses as of press time.

Commercial property owners have been particularly aggressive in pursuing lower assessments in recent years.

Landlords of about 97 percent of properties worth more than $5 million in central Cook County, which includes the urban core, appealed to the Board of Review in between 2020 and 2022. Of those appeals, 88 percent were granted reductions in their value and this their tax bills, an independent study commissioned by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle found.

But commercial property owners claim that Kaegi, who took office in 2019, has been using improper methodology and issuing inaccurate assessments that need corrections, especially in light of pandemic-related losses in value for properties like office buildings, hotels and certain retail spaces.

Lending and new development has decreased dramatically in Cook County and real estate players have pointed fingers at Kaegi for producing unpredictable assessments that make creditors hesitant to dole out financing and investors reluctant to place bets.

Several megaprojects across Chicago including The 78, Lincoln Yards and Bronzeville Lakefront have hit major snags and multifamily construction is at historic lows. Chicago’s NFL team, the Bears, has also threatened to decamp to Indiana if it doesn’t get legislation offering property tax certainty on a $5 billion stadium-oriented campus the team has proposed building in Arlington Heights.

Unlike the assessor’s race, in which major real estate developers like Magellan CEO David Carlins and Riverside Investment CEO John O’Donnell are making big donations to challenger Hynes, the same tier of industry players have stayed on the sidelines in Board of Review races.

Still, Nicholson, who is challenging District 2’s Steele, has secured dozens of high-profile endorsements, including from current Board of Review members Cardenas and Rogers, and U.S. Representatives Mike Quigley and Jan Schakowsky.

Nicholson also has a long list of trade unions backing her and current members of local government like City Clerk Anna Valencia, Preckwinkle and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas.

Nicholson and donors to her campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Her support is likely boosted by a string of controversies that have plagued Steele since she was elected in 2022.

In 2024, Steele fired one of her employees after local news radio station WBEZ reported that he had previously pleaded guilty in federal court and testified in a separate corruption trial against his brother in Indiana.

“He was let go because there were quality of work issues and then that was the end of that,” Steele said. “The media wanted to make a big deal about it because his brother was indicted but those two were not connected.”

Later that same year, she was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol in Chicago, and police body camera footage revealed that when she was asked to exit her vehicle, she responded by saying, “you don’t want that. I’m an elected official.”

Steele said she is fighting the DUI charge in court.

“I’m very confident that I will not be convicted,” she said.

But trouble didn’t end there for Steele.

Last year, Cook County paid out a $180,000 settlement to a different former employee of Steele’s office, Frank Calabrese, who sued her, the agency and her chief of staff in a federal whistleblower lawsuit.

Calabrese had a long record of performance issues within the office, she said.

“A lot of election officials told me to find someplace else for him … That’s what happens. People who are not qualified get pushed around and they fail at the taxpayers’ expense. I’m not that kind of person,” she said. “He was allowed to go to the [Office of the Inspector General] and complain before he was formally terminated.”

Support for her campaign hasn’t entirely dried up. She has raised about $100,000 so far including donations from political action committees for Chicagoland Operators Joint Labor-Management, the local Teamsters union and the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

She also said she refused to take donations from property tax attorneys.

“My opponent has accepted thousands of dollars from property tax appeal attorneys, the same people that are profiting from our broken system,” she said. “The voters are disillusioned with the old machine guard in Cook County and they want someone who is willing to say, ‘yes, I’m a human, I’m not perfect, but I’m qualified for the job.’”