• Michael McDevitt
    APR 01, 2024
    rating
    UNLOCKED

    O’Neill Burke notches razor-thin victory in Democratic state’s attorney primary

    article-image
    Eileen O'Neill Burke files her candidacy for Cook County State's Attorney in December 2023. [Michael McDevitt/The Daily Line]

    After ten days of vote tabulation, former Illinois Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke declared victory in the Democratic primary for Cook County State’s Attorney late Friday afternoon with a razor-thin margin over her opponent, former prosecutor and University of Chicago lecturer Clayton Harris III, who conceded after the Associated Press called the race.

    She will face former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, and Libertarian candidate Andrew Charles Kopinski this November. She is favored to win in the county that typically sides with Democrats.

    O’Neill Burke, who promises to be tougher on retail theft and gun crimes than outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, defeated Harris, the candidate backed by the county Democratic Party, by 1,556 votes and earned 50.1 percent of the vote share compared to Harris’ 49.8 percent, according to unofficial vote totals through Friday. Any remaining ballots will still be counted through Tuesday.

    The close race came down to mail-in and provisional ballots counted over the last two weeks, but O’Neill Burke said the result was “worth the wait” in a campaign news release sent out Friday. 

    “Across every neighborhood and every town in Cook County, people told me the same thing: we want a fair criminal justice system that works for everyone,” O’Neill Burke said in a statement. “We want a professional and effective State’s Attorney’s Office. We want illegal guns and assault weapons off our streets. We want less crime and safer communities, not by locking everyone up, but by turning people around.” 

    Harris said he called O’Neill Burke to concede Friday evening and congratulated her on her victory.

    “After months of organizing, meeting and talking with people from all across this county, and waiting for every vote to be counted, we’ve fallen a bit short of our goal,” Harris said in a campaign news release. “I said throughout this campaign that I would continue to push forward on the urgent work of criminal justice reform. That remains my commitment.”

    While the two Democratic candidates shared many similar policy positions, they notably differed on prosecutions for retail theft. While O’Neill Burke has said 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. 

    O’Neill Burke promises to prioritize detention for violent crimes and gun offenses but would also create a restorative justice bureau to intercede on behalf of offenders of non-violent felonies and other lower-level offenses for redirection to drug, mental health or veterans' courts. She is also championing the creation of a “Choice Protection Unit” that would train attorneys in the office to mount legal defenses from groups seeking to challenge and undermine abortion access. 

    O’Neill Burke previously 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. She was elected to the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2008 and previously served as the president of the Illinois Judges Association.

    Fioretti is an attorney who also served under the city of Chicago’s Corporation Counsel during former Mayor Harold Washington’s administration.

Be the first to comment

Comment here

Or sign in with email

    To comment on our website please login or join

    Please check your e-mail for a link to activate your account.