Sandra Lee Jackson (née Stevens; born September 14, 1963) 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.
She is the ex-wife of former U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and erstwhile daughter-in-law of Jesse Jackson. Her candidacy for the city council of a major city was part of national news stories in The New York Times, and thoughts of her running for a position in the United States House of Representatives were noted in Time.
Jackson has also been a longtime political consultant through her solely owned consulting firm J. Donatella & Associates.
Personal life Born in Kittery, Maine, Jackson grew up in Akron, Ohio. She is an alumna of Buchtel High School in Akron. Her mother, Sarah Stevens, who is from Atlanta, Georgia, worked three jobs cleaning homes to raise Jackson and two other children. Later Jackson helped her mother clean homes to pay her way through Bowling Green State University, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1985. Jackson's father, Robert Stevens, was from Akron.
Jackson met her future husband while still a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. He convinced her to transfer to be with him at the University of Illinois College of Law, where she earned her Juris Doctor in 1992. The couple married on June 1, 1991. The Jackson family keeps two homes. They own one in the South Shore community area, which is within both the Illinois's 2nd congressional district that Congressman Jackson represented in the United States House of Representatives and within the seventh ward that Sandi Jackson represents on the Chicago City Council. The South Shore home serves as an election base. This home was the featured renovation on an HGTV Hidden Potential episode, first aired on March 24, 2009. They also own a home in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., which served as the family home and base for his service in Congress prior to her election. Prior to being elected, Jackson resided four days a week in Chicago and three days a week in Washington D.C.
The Jacksons have two children, Jessica Donatella Jackson (born March 13, 2000) and Jesse Louis Jackson, III, who is nicknamed "Tre", (born September 19, 2003). Sarah Stevens accompanies the family on commutes between Chicago and Washington. Jessica attended school in the Washington Metropolitan Area before Jackson's service on the city council. After Jackson was elected to serve as a full-time politician in a local legislative body in Chicago, she and her husband decided to have their children attend school in Chicago starting in the fall of 2007. Later, however, the family decided to keep their base in Washington. The family's residential choice has been a campaign issue as well as fodder for a local op-ed discussant.
Jackson had suffered multiple miscarriages before the birth of her two children. In a highly publicized medical case, she lost a boy who was born four months premature at University of Utah Medical Center in 1998. Complications arose while the couple was attending a youth leadership conference in Deer Valley 20 miles east of Salt Lake City, Utah. Jackson survived a three-hour surgical removal of a benign tumor from her neck on May 7, 2008. During the 2008 Christmas holidays, the family suffered a fire and was forced to spend the holiday season in a downtown hotel. In 2001, Jackson had a chili recipe published in "The Barking Gourmet," the St. Albans School family cookbook.
On July 14, 2016, Jackson's husband filed for divorce from her in Cook County, Illinois. They reached a settlement in April 2018.
Early political experience Early in Jackson's political career she served as press secretary for United States Congressman Mickey Leland. After the 1988 Democratic National Convention, she began working for Michael Dukakis who had become the Democratic party's nominee for United States President in the 1988 United States presidential election.Jackson and Watkins, pp. 36-7
Jackson's political career prior to her election as 7th Ward Alderman included the following positions: Deputy Director of Training for the Democratic National Committee, Director of Scheduling Operations for Rev. Jesse Jackson, Vice President of Congressional and External Affairs for the Export-Import Bank of the United States (appointed by Bill Clinton), Director of VIP Relations for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, National Outreach Coordinator for the Clinton/Gore 96 Campaign, and campaign manager and chief political strategist for many other politicians.
During the 2000 presidential election, Jackson was listed as an Illinois state co-chair of GoreNet. GoreNet was a young-Americans focused group that supported the Al Gore campaign with a focus on grassroots and online organizing as well as hosting small dollar donor events.
While Jackson was serving as the Export-Import Bank's director of congressional affairs, she lobbied in opposition of her husband's proposal to tighten the restrictions on the activities in Africa of the Export-Import Bank. She did so successfully, as her husband's amendment failed.
Jackson considered running for public office during the 2003 Chicago municipal elections. At the time, Jackson, Jr. discouraged his wife from running for public office. However, he felt his wife should be eligible to run for Alderman, despite the controversy surrounding such a candidacy.
2007 election
Campaign In 2006, William Beavers announced that he would resign his 7th ward aldermanic seat to pursue the Cook County Board seat being vacated by John Stroger, after Stroger was forced to resign following a stroke. Beavers requested that Mayor Daley appoint his daughter to replace him, in order for her to have the incumbency advantage in the February 27, 2007 municipal elections. The deal also allowed for Todd Stroger to replace his father John as the president of the County Board and Beavers to surrender his ward seat after presiding over Mayor Daley's 2007 City Council budget hearings. In July 2007, when it first became public that Sandi Jackson was considering running for the 7th ward alderman seat, which would disrupt all the backroom dealings between the Strogers and the Beaverses with Daley's approval, Jackson, Jr. encouraged her to run. In the November 2006 elections, William Beavers won the County Board seat while Stroger won the County Board President's office that had been part of the dealings. On December 5, 2006, Jackson officially filed paperwork with state election officials. On December 12, Mayor Daley appointed Darcel Beavers to succeed her father until the Spring municipal elections. Then, on December 18, which is the filing deadline for petitions, Jackson filed 5,000 petition signatures to run for alderman.
Jackson carried numerous endorsements including The Chicago Tribune and numerous labor unions. Jackson was not endorsed by the Cook County Democratic Party.
The Jackson family (Sandi, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.) have occasionally not seen eye to eye with Mayor Daley. In fact, Congressman Jackson was considering contesting Daley for Mayor until the Democratic Party success in the 2006 fall elections made it clear he could be very productive by remaining in Congress because of his party's majority. Sandi Jackson, who is credited with encouraging Jackson, Jr. to run for Congress, had been supportive of the idea of him running for mayor. William Beavers had been a longtime Daley ally. However, Jackson says she has good relations with the Daleys, especially Bill Daley.
Jackson took leave from her position as deputy political director of training for the Democratic National Committee to run and her husband bought up the billboards in the ward to post an image of the couple. Jackson, Jr. had acquired the rights to 1,800 billboards in the city in preparation for his own possible mayoral candidacy. He relinquished the rights to all but those useful to his wife in her ward and a few candidates that he endorsed. Jackson, Jr. invested US$200,000 in his wife's campaign to pay for billboards, mailers, phone banks, a campaign manager and other professional staffers. William Beavers was unimpressed with the spending and had his employees remind voters that Jackson did not live in the Ward and his daughter did. William Beavers attempted to make Jackson's Washington residence an issue, and there was mudslinging in the public press between the Beaverses and the Jacksons. Jackson campaigned for the 7th ward alderman position based on the issues of economy, education, and public safety. She also described the lakefront ward as prime commercial real estate ripe for development.
Results Darcel Beavers 4004 (33.50%) Ron David 951 (7.96%) Eric Brown 216 (1.81%) Jackson 6783 (56.74%) Beavers was one of only four incumbents on the 50-member City Council to lose during the municipal elections. Five new alderman supported by organized labor and Jackson Jr. won seats.
Aldermanic career The city of Chicago is divided into fifty wards that are each represented by an alderman in the Chicago City Council. The northern portion of Chicago's seventh ward is adjacent to the Lake Michigan lakefront, and the ward includes portions of the South Shore, South Chicago, Calumet Heights, and South Deering community areas.
Jackson's aldermanic career began inauspiciously when she complained to the Chicago Sun-Times, one of Chicago's major daily newspapers, that she was caught off-guard by the need to pay office start-up expenses up front. This provided fodder for a columnist in the Chicago Tribune, the other major daily, and anonymous on-line commenters on the Chicago Sun-Times web site made light of the issue. At the time, Jackson was considered by one local political writer as the most closely watched of the nine newly elected aldermen that were sworn in on May 21, 2007 and by another as the "star" of the incoming class of nine freshman aldermen.
Her first political statement as an alderman was disappointment in Mayor Daley's decision to force his affordable housing ordinance through the council with nine lame duck councilmen during the week before the new class was sworn in because new alderman would be "forced to live by" the new ordinance. Meanwhile, her husband propounded a 10-point ethics reform that would give the city's inspector general power to investigate aldermen; reduce the number of City Council committees to 10; limit municipal campaign contributions for each election cycle; and strip the mayor of the authority to appoint replacements for aldermanic vacancies.
Upon assuming office, she stated that she would emphasize economic development as her primary goal for her ward. One of her goals has been to redevelop the landfill on the site of the former U.S. Steel mill into a lakefront community.