Democrat Eileen O’Neill Burke and Republican Bob Fioretti are competing to become the next Cook County State’s Attorney. [O’Neill Burke photo by Michael McDevitt/Fioretti campaign photo]

Although Eileen O’Neill Burke is favored to win the Cook County State’s Attorney race in a county that regularly votes for Democrats, the former judge told The Daily Line she’s not taking anything for granted as polls open countywide.

Early voting began in Chicago Thursday and begins in suburban Cook County next week, and former Ald. Bob Fioretti is hoping his appeals to law enforcement, crime victims and suburbanites spooked by Chicago violence leads to an upset in the race to replace State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

O’Neill Burke, a former county appellate court justice in the First District, worked as an assistant attorney in the state’s attorney’s office handling felony appellate cases, juvenile cases and felony review work before she became a criminal defense attorney and was later elected to the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2008. She was also previously president of the Illinois Judges Association. 

The former county judge eked out a close victory in the Democratic primary against Clayton Harris III after nearly two weeks of vote-counting. In the primary, O’Neill Burke separated herself from Harris on the key issue of retail theft.  O’Neill Burke said she would reverse Foxx’s decision to raise the threshold for prosecuting retail thefts as felonies from $300 to $1,000, Harris would have kept the threshold the same.   

Fioretti, who most recently ran for county board president as a Republican in 2022, used to be a Democrat. In 2020, he lost to Foxx in the Democratic primary, and in 2018 he unsuccessfully tried to primary Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. 

Fioretti’s experience includes trying civil rights cases and serving as a senior supervising attorney under the city of Chicago’s Corporation Counsel during former Mayor Harold Washington’s administration.    

O’Neill Burke is promising to seek detention for violent and gun-related crimes and create a restorative justice bureau to steer people charged with non-violent felonies and lower-level offenses to drug, mental health or veterans' courts.  

The former judge said seeking detention for violent crimes committed on public transit is key to improving safety on the system. 

“We can change the behavior by enforcing the law, and that's what we'll do,” O’Neill Burke said.

One of her signature campaign proposals is to set up a “choice protection unit” that specializes in preparing for lawsuits filed by anti-abortion groups and in prosecuting protesters that threaten and intimidate people seeking abortions. O’Neill Burke also said the pursuit of public corruption cases would be a focus of her office. 

She said one of the challenges in all areas the office deals with is a shortage of staff, from having enough staff members to pore over video evidence from a CTA train car to having enough victim witness coordinators for the office, a role that involved connecting crime victims to resources and keeping them abreast of their court dates. 

O’Neill Burke plans to create a more robust training program for new employees and new police officers and sheriff’s deputies that includes training both the attorneys and officers on what to expect in that dynamic in a courtroom. 

“The goal is not just to start getting state attorneys and police officers to work together right from the get-go, but we are going to have the best trained state attorneys on the law in the entire country,” O’Neill Burke said. “What if we could have the best trained police officers in the law? That's a game change.”

Fioretti said his campaign is focused on restoring the mission of the state’s attorney’s office and “break this cycle of crime and corruption that we have.” 

While Fioretti believes in pursuing detention for violent crimes and alternatives to jail for non-violent offenders, he has opposed the elimination of cash bail and hasn’t been convinced by a study that showed the Pretrial Fairness Act hasn’t led to an increase in crime and that people out on bond have not tended to reoffend. 

Fioretti said he believes more time is needed to determine the effect of the law, adding that’s he’s “talked to judges” that have said the law is having the opposite effect. “Cash bail is an entity to ensure that people return to trial for their trial,” he said. 

Both candidates also said they saw their roles as liaising with the business community that’s been worried about property crime and violent crime.

O’Neill Burke said she wants to keep an open line of communication with business leaders in Chicago and across the county to become aware of new crime trends as soon as they appear.  

“It's very important to me to make sure that I stay in contact with business leaders from all over the county, not just here The Loop, but from all over the county, to see exactly what they're seeing,” she said. 

Fioretti also said he would interface with the business community on a regular basis and worries about businesses that are leaving Black and brown communities across Chicagoland because of crime. He said a state’s attorney that’s “aggressive” about supporting police and the community can restore confidence in businesses. 

Fioretti said that under him, the state’s attorney’s office would work to reestablish itself as on the side of victims, police and communities. He portrayed the current office as one that favors criminal defendants and demonizes police.

“As state’s attorney I will be out in our communities, building coalitions [of] …pastors, faith-based communities and neighborhoods to restore trust with the police department,” Fioretti said. Additionally, as part of that restoration of trust, Fioretti plans to ask former prosecutors that he says have left the office due to a lack of professionalism in the office to return.