As early voting kicked off across Chicago Monday, intra-party attacks on the progressive credentials of both Democratic candidates for Cook County state’s attorney heated up.
Clayton Harris III joined several backers — including pastors, elected officials, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Anjanette Young — at Federal Plaza Monday for a news conference highlighting an influx of campaign cash to his primary opponent Eileen O’Neill Burke, suggesting the support made her a “Democrat in name only.”
University lecturer Harris and retired appellate judge O’Neill Burke — both former attorneys from the office — are the sole candidates on Democratic primary ballot seeking to replace outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. The winner of the Mar. 19 primary will face Republican Bob Fioretti and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski in November.
But heavily Democratic Cook County has not elected a Republican to be its top prosecutor for 32 years, meaning the winner of this race is likely to be the one running the office by this time next year and the Republican moniker can do significant damage at the ballot box.
In the waning weeks of the campaign, O’Neill Burke has highlighted her own family’s union background and her proposal to create a dedicated pro-abortion rights unit in the office as strengths in campaign ads and mailers, while painting Harris’ previous work as a corporate lobbyist for Lyft and CH2M Hill and a past donation to an anti-abortion candidate as demerits. Harris also taught at the University of Chicago after working in several public sector posts at the city and state.
Harris on Monday said a Friday flood of big dollar campaign contributions to O’Neill Burke should give voters pause because several donors have backed Republicans in the past.
“You should be overly concerned about where these dollars are coming from and why they are gravitating to one area and not another,” Harris said with the offices of Citadel in the background, where he said “we have extreme-right conservatives bankrolling” O’Neill Burke.
She has two major donors from Citadel — Gerald Beeson and Matthew Simon. Both have given to both Democrats such as Paul Vallas and Rahm Emanuel locally and Republicans nationally. Beeson has contributed to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Kelly Loeffler and Thom Tillis in recent years, while Simon has given to the John Bolton Super PAC.
Beeson previously told the Tribune “There is no candidate better qualified to reduce gun violence and make Cook County safer for everyone.”
O’Neill Burke’s largest donor to date, Daniel O’Keefe, a managing director of global investment firm Artisan Partners, has given thousands to Republicans in national races in recent years, including U.S. Senate candidates Herschel Walker, Dr. Mehmet Oz and J.D. Vance in 2022 and Kelly Loeffler in 2020.
“Eileen O’Neill Burke has only ever run and been elected judge as a Democrat. She’s only ever voted in Democratic primaries. Claims to the contrary are patently false,” her campaign said, highlighting endorsements from fellow Democrats and “more than a dozen labor unions.”
After Friday’s flood of donations from business leaders came in, she received a combined $137,000 from two PACs for electrical workers and operating engineers. In all, she has raised more than $2 million, while Harris has raised just over $830,000.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, also the head of the county’s Democratic Party, joined Harris Monday and was more blunt in her assessment of O’Neill Burke.
“You don’t take money from these folks with these kinds of principles and values unless you share those principles and values,” Preckwinkle said. She also said O’Neill Burke had a “disastrous” presentation to county Democrats last summer. The party endorsed Harris.
O’Neill Burke’s campaign shot back that Harris contributed to Ethan Hastert, an “anti-abortion radical.” Harris gave $250 in 2009 to Hastert, who was seeking to fill his father, Dennis Hastert’s former seat. Harris is a supporter of abortion rights, and his campaign said it was a “cherry-picked” contribution “from 20 years ago” that pales in comparison to O’Neill Burke’s donor pool.
An ad from her campaign also claims while at Lyft, Harris “directed tens of thousands of dollars in political donations to anti-choice Republicans in Illinois”
Harris’ camp says that’s false: Lyft’s donations were steered by a nominating and corporate governance committee and approved by the company’s policy officer, not by lower-level employees like Harris was at the time.
Harris also highlighted Monday what he said was O’Neill Burke’s refusal to “admit any wrongdoing whatsoever” in the prosecution of an 11-year-old who a judge later found was wrongly convicted of murder, saying it was a sign that she is “too extreme.”
Preckwinkle agreed. “We live in a county and in a state where there are tremendous numbers of wrongful convictions — the present state’s attorney has found more than 250 people wrongfully convicted,” she said. “We can’t go back to a time when wrongful convictions were standard operating procedure in Cook County, and where 10-year-old boys were convicted of murdering elderly women who outweighed them three times. It’s just ridiculous.”
aquig@chicagotribune.com
