With mail-in ballots pouring in after Election Day, the Democratic primary race for Cook County state’s attorney remained razor-thin Wednesday as both candidates eschewed declaring victory or conceding defeat and called for restraint as election officials continued to tabulate votes.
Both retired Appellate Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III stayed out of the public eye hours after both greeted supporters at their election night parties to acknowledge the day had ended without a clear resolution. Both are vying to replace outgoing top prosecutor Kim Foxx.
O’Neill Burke began Wednesday with a narrow lead of roughly 9,400 votes over Harris as tens of thousands of mail-in ballots remained to be counted across the city and suburbs and results from roughly 20 city precincts were still outstanding. By Wednesday evening, her lead had dropped to 8,800 votes as nine of those 20 precincts reported their results.
“It ain’t over!” Harris’ campaign said in an email to supporters Wednesday morning. “The margin between us has been consistently shrinking. We’re still parsing the data and waiting for updates from the (Chicago) Board of Elections on the outstanding ballots, and we will keep you updated as we know more. We’re going to make sure every single vote is counted, and that your voices are heard.”
O’Neill Burke shared a similar message.
“It was a long night, and we’re still waiting for final precincts and mail ballots to come in,” she said in her email to backers. “We carried the lead in votes all night, and we’re cautiously optimistic that will remain. It’s critical that we allow our democratic process to continue.”
The 20 precincts in Chicago were unable to report their results from in-person voting on Tuesday, Chicago elections spokesman Max Bever said. Ballot scanner cards from those precincts were being retrieved Wednesday and would be counted later in the evening or possibly Thursday morning, he said.
The 11 remaining missing precincts were scattered across the city but most were in wards that leaned heavily for Harris.
Whoever wins in heavily Democratic Cook County will have a major advantage in November’s general election. The winner will face former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti, an attorney who previously ran for the post as a Democrat but this year is running as a Republican. Cook County voters have not elected a Republican as state’s attorney since 1992.
How much could outstanding mail-in votes swing things?
In Chicago, 176,195 mail-in ballots were sent out to registered voters, Bever said. Of those, 66,399 were sent back by Monday and counted as part of Tuesday night’s results. That left just shy of 110,000 ballots that had not been mailed back.
Bever said he does not expect all of those ballots to be returned, but estimated, based on returns of mail-in ballots in previous elections, somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 will arrive over the next two weeks. However, some of those ballots will not be Democratic primary ballots and those that are may not have votes cast in the state’s attorney’s race.
While election officials must wait two weeks for mail-in ballots to be returned, Bever said he expects a “big drop of vote-by-mail ballot results to be added to the unofficial results” on Thursday.
Between 40% and 60% of outstanding mail ballots have been returned in the two most recent Chicago elections, according to a Tribune analysis, so it is possible the return rate is closer to about 55,000 for Chicago alone. However, given the historically low voter turnout in this election, that number could be even lower.
In suburban Cook County, 46,000 mail-in ballots were still outstanding on Wednesday and not all of those are expected to be returned, either.
How did the vote break down across the city?
Generally, Harris’ progressive campaign captured more votes in Chicago, while O’Neill Burke’s tougher-on-crime approach resonated with suburban Cook County voters.
But even throughout the city, there were some considerable margins between the two candidates.
Harris won big on the South and West sides, with his widest lead in the 8th Ward and 21st Ward, both on the South Side. In those areas, which encompass parts of Burnside, Avalon Park, Chatham, Washington Heights, Roseland and Auburn Gresham, Harris secured close to 80% of the vote.
O’Neill Burke, meanwhile, performed better on the Far Northwest Side, Southwest Side and Near North Side.
A native Northwest Sider who grew up in a family of police officers, O’Neill Burke received nearly 85% of the vote in the Far Northwest Side’s 41st Ward, which covers Norwood Park and Edison Park. In the 13th Ward, the onetime Southwest Side base of power for now-indicted former House Speaker Michael Madigan, she secured 77% of the vote.
In two wards — the 1st, which includes Wicker Park, Bucktown and parts of Logan Square, and the 46th, which includes Uptown — the vote was split about evenly.
Search by ward or hover over the map to see which candidate won each region of Chicago and their respective vote share.
The breakdown of voting preferences in the race for suburban Cook County is expected to be released later this week.
The primary vote between O’Neill Burke and Harris is not only a referendum on Foxx’s tenure over the last two terms but also for the county’s Democratic Party, which endorsed Harris. He has tried to balance Foxx’s focus on reversing wrongful convictions and deprioritizing low-level offenses with demands from some in the criminal justice system to more forcefully prosecute carjackings, thefts and gun crimes.
“Throughout this campaign you have heard me talk a lot about safety and justice. That’s what this campaign has been about. … This is not an either-or proposition, this is an ‘and’ proposition,” Harris told supporters Tuesday night.
Harris “will continue the effort to be sure that those who come into the courtroom, whether they’re alleged perpetrators or victims, will be treated fairly,” county Democratic Party chair and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle told reporters Tuesday night. “There’s a lot at stake in this race. That’s why we took a strong position.”
O’Neill Burke has tacked toward a tougher-on-crime approach that criticized Foxx’s leadership, often pointing to attrition and low morale in the office. She promoted creating a felony prosecution bureau to attract hard-charging trial attorneys alongside a separate restorative justice bureau for juvenile, drug and mental health-related cases.
“We want illegal guns and assault weapons off of our streets. We want less crime and safer communities, not by locking everybody up, but by turning people around,” O’Neill Burke told supporters Tuesday night. “The state’s attorney’s office has a noble mission: a mission to represent victims, a mission to uphold the law.”
Tribune reporters Megan Crepeau and Sam Charles contributed.
