Retired Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke has defeated former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti in the race to replace Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the Associated Press projects.
Foxx opted not to run for a third term in office, with O’Neill Burke narrowly defeating Clayton Harris III in the 2024 Democratic primary.
The retired justice has now defeated Fioretti, along with Libertarian candidate Andrew Charles Kopinski, in the race to determine Cook County’s top prosecutor.
O’Neill Burke stepped down from the bench to jump into the State’s Attorney’s race, vowing to beef up staffing in the prosecutor’s office, along with pursuing harsher penalties for those convicted of committing violent crimes with the use of firearms.
O’Neill Burke worked in the SAO for a decade, and also spent parts of her legal career as a criminal defense attorney and circuit court judge before ascending to the appellate courts in Illinois’ First District.
Fioretti is a former Chicago alderman who served until May 2015 after his ward’s boundaries were redrawn. He ran for mayor of Chicago, in both 2015 and 2019, and also launched unsuccessful bids for Cook County Board President and the State’s Attorney’s Office in the intervening decade.
Fioretti, formerly a Democrat, switched his party affiliation after the 2022 Cook County Board presidential race, and was the lone Republican to run in the 2024 primary.
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The race was hotly contested due to competing visions over how to move forward from Foxx’s administration of the office. She has faced a slew of criticism during her time in office, both for issues in retaining prosecutors but also for her handling of several high-profile cases, including the Jussie Smollett case, with the SAO’s office dropping charges in the case.
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