Tuesday’s Illinois primary will be a test of the “Vallas effect.”
Paul Vallas, the tough-on-crime Chicago mayoral candidate and public schools CEO, suffered a surprise defeat last year to Brandon Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner.
Throughout that campaign, Vallas was dogged by charges that he shared offensive, right-leaning material on social media. Though he ran as a Democrat, Vallas received massive political donations from Republican and conservative interests. He took heat for his ties to John Catanzara, the inflammatory president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police chapter. Vallas was accused of being a “Democrat in name only.” In this deep-blue political territory, that can be fatal.
Now comes the race for Cook County state’s attorney. The winner of the Democratic primary is virtually assured to be elected to replace Kim Foxx as the county’s lead prosecutor. The two leading candidates offer extensive legal and management credentials. Eileen O’Neill Burke is a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney and criminal defense attorney and was a judge in the county’s circuit and appellate courts. Clayton Harris III is also a former prosecutor, and he was chief of staff to Rod Blagojevich when Blagojevich was governor and ran the Illinois International Port District. The other candidates in the race are Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski and Republican Bob Fioretti.
Harris said he will seek a balance between crime fighting and criminal justice reform. O’Neill Burke, like Vallas, has been pushing a tough-on-crime approach. Harris has charged that O’Neill Burke is also a “Democrat in name only” and is influenced, even controlled, by Republicans.
As of Friday, Harris had raised a little more than $1.1 million from labor organizations, business owners and finance executives, legal professionals and Democratic political committees, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis. O’Neill Burke has hauled in more than $3 million from sources that include attorneys, trade unions, and business executives and leaders. Conservative donors in the financial industry have dropped six-figure donations into O’Neill Burke’s coffers, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
That includes “$236,200 from frequent Republican donor Daniel O’Keefe, who helps lead the investment management firm Artisan Partners” and “another $175,000 from Gerald Beeson and Matthew Simon, executives of Citadel LLC, a hedge fund founded by billionaire GOP donor Ken Griffin, lifting to $195,700 the total from their families to her. Beeson, like Griffin, has funded numerous Republican campaigns.”
Shades of Vallas.
Harris and his supporters warn that conservative interests are backing Democratic candidates such as O’Neill Burke to defeat progressive causes.
“It’s very extreme-right funds … and that’s what’s troubling,” WTTW-Ch. 11 quoted Harris as saying. “It should trouble everyone. It highlights extremism in my opponent.”
O’Neill Burke responded: “Every day I’m hearing the same thing. That people are afraid. People are afraid to come downtown — those are the people supporting me. Some of those are business leaders. Nobody asks your political leanings before they come and carjack you.”
She also argues that the charge is “sexist.”
Meanwhile, Catanzara recently released a video that offered a full-throated endorsement of O’Neill Burke. He makes it clear that he despises Foxx, and while he said Harris would be a “step up” from her, he adds that, “there is a much better chance to save this city and this county and get back to what everybody seemed to remember, being law and order and accountability.”
Catanzara urges a “simple, commonsense approach to criminal behavior and holding people accountable.”
The FOP is not taking a position “publicly,” he said, but he exhorted his members to vote for O’Neill Burke in the Democratic primary, even if they are Republicans. “Hold your nose if you have to. But make sure you do it,” Catanzara said.
Catanzara was one of Vallas’ most vocal and visible cheerleaders. The FOP endorsed Vallas for mayor, and Vallas was an unpaid adviser to the union during its contract negotiations.
In response to the video, the O’Neill Burke campaign gave this statement to WTTW: “Given the working relationship between the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Police Department, it was inappropriate for the FOP to issue this political statement.”
Catanzara has been a fierce defender of the police. That is his job. But he often strays into the scorched-earth path of bigotry. Isn’t that appropriate? He resigned from the Chicago Police Department in 2021, “while facing potential termination by the Chicago Police Board — which adjudicates police misconduct cases — for inflammatory social media posts, insubordination and filing a false report,” Crain’s Chicago reported last year.
“A vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, Catanzara was previously disciplined for advocating for Trump while on duty and standing next to a squad car in a video posted to social media.”
And “Catanzara initially downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building and later apologized after he compared the city’s vaccine mandate to living in ‘Nazi Germany,’” Crain’s reported.
O’Neill Burke can’t control what Catanzara says, but she has not spoken out against it.
Is it “inappropriate” for a person who wants to be the county’s next top prosecutor to be embraced and backed by the likes of Catanzara?
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
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