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COOK COUNTY — Democrat Eileen O’Neill Burke has been elected as the next Cook County state’s attorney.
The AP declared O’Neill Burke the winner with 59 percent of votes counted.
O’Neill Burke secured 64.8 percent of the vote compared to 30.8 percent for Republican Bob Fioretti. Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski had garnered 4.4 percent, coming in a distant third.
“We all want to live in a community where we do not have a mass shooting on a regular basis. We all want to live in a community where people and businesses can thrive, where they are unencumbered by fear of being victimized,” O’Neill Burke said in remarks shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday. “We all want to live in a community where children can go outside and play regardless of what zip code you live in. We all want that.”
O’Neill Burke will take over the office from outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx next month. Her supporters gathered at an election party Tuesday night at Moe’s Cantina in River North, where they snacked on appetizers and enjoyed an open bar.
A prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office early in her career, O’Neill Burke also worked as a criminal defense attorney before she was elected as a Cook County Circuit Court judge in 2008. In 2016, she was elected judge of Illinois’ First District Appellate Court, a role she held until stepping down to run for state’s attorney last year.
Speaking to Block Club this spring, the retired judge pledged to “uphold the law” while promoting restorative justice programs if elected. In an interview last month, O’Neill Burke touted her experience across the justice system and said she had already begun planning to take over the state’s attorney’s office.
“Cook County itself is bigger than 26 states. It is an enormous office. There is not one part of Cook County government that doesn’t impact the state’s attorney’s office or touch on the state’s attorney’s office in one way or another,” O’Neill Burke told Block Club last month. “So that being said, we are making plans on how to take over this enormous apparatus.”
O’Neill Burke said her immediate focus as state’s attorney would be prosecuting gun crimes, specifically anyone found in possession of illegal “switches” that are used to turn a handgun into an automatic weapon.
The incoming state’s attorney has also been vocally supportive of the pre-trial provisions included in the SAFE-T Act, specifically the removal of cash bail.
Under that system, O’Neill Burke plans to use her authority as state’s attorney to push for more pre-trial detentions for gun crimes, as well as those who commit violent offenses on the CTA.
“We will seek detention each and every time an assault weapon is used, including a switch or an extended magazine,” she said. “We will seek detention each and every time someone has used a gun in a violent felony — armed robberies, carjackings. We will seek detention each and every time someone threatens someone with a weapon and commits a violent crime.”
O’Neill Burke has also pledged to prosecute retail thefts of $300 or more as felonies in Cook County, in line with a state threshold. That would reverse Foxx’s 2016 decision to charge most retail thefts under $1,000 as misdemeanors, not felonies.
O’Neill Burke became the Democratic candidate for state’s attorney in March after narrowly defeating opponent Clayton Harris III in the primary by only about 1,600 votes. Harris had won the support of the Cook County Democratic Party, which ultimately backed O’Neill Burke in the general election.
Throughout the Democratic primary, and to a lesser extent during the general election, O’Neill Burke was dogged by attacks from her opponents and questions from reporters over her involvement in a juvenile murder case she prosecuted in the mid-’90s.
In 1994, O’Neill Burke won the conviction of an 11-year-old Black boy who told a police officer he had murdered his elderly white neighbor in Marquette Park. That detective’s work in another case involving two young Black boys led to those charges being dismissed, according to WBEZ and the Tribune. That prompted a federal judge to throw out the 11-year-old boy’s arrest and confession, saying it had been coerced.
O’Neill Burke staunchly defended her role as prosecutor this spring.
“The Appellate Court affirmed the conviction, the [Illinois] Supreme Court denied review of it eight years later, the case went to federal court and federal court found that [the juvenile’s] attorney was wrong in not trying to challenge that confession. Not that the confession was in error but that his attorney was wrong in not challenging it,” she told Block Club. “Neither that court or any other court has ever questioned my conduct in that case, or in any other case.”
As state’s attorney, O’Neill Burke plans to continue operating the office’s wrongful conviction unit, which under Foxx’s tenure has overturned hundreds of cases. She also wants to create a “choice protection unit” to train prosecutors to “protect women’s access to abortion services and reproductive healthcare,” according to her website.
Tuesday’s election marked the latest failed campaign for Fioretti, a former Chicago alderman who in the past decade has twice run unsuccessfully for mayor, Cook County state’s attorney and Cook County Board president, as well as other positions.
A former Democratic, Fioretti switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2022.
Speaking to Block Club last month, Fioretti said his values have stayed the same over the years but that the Democratic Party “left me.”
“I was accused of being a Republican when I first ran. I don’t see how [Democrats] approach law and order. Their view is, quite frankly, that the criminal defendants are good guys, the police are the bad guys and the victims don’t count,” he said.
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