Democratic incumbent Kim Foxx, Republican challenger Pat O’Brien face off in a Cook County state’s attorney’s race defined by extraordinary climate of 2020

In a year rocked by both violent unrest and streets brimming with protesters against racial injustice, Cook County voters will have a say this November in what they want in their top prosecutor: the progressive agenda of first-term incumbent Kim Foxx, or the law-and-order program of her Republican opponent Pat O’Brien.

Foxx, a Democrat elected as state’s attorney in 2016, must make the case to keep her post in one of the most closely watched local races in the county. A darling of criminal justice reform groups who is endorsed by several high-profile Illinois politicians, Foxx beat Anita Alvarez during her first election as the city reeled from the video release of the Chicago police murder of Laquan McDonald.

O’Brien, a former Democrat who served as a Cook County Circuit Court judge and assistant state’s attorney before switching parties, is mounting a campaign in a deep-blue county that could be fired up to vote out President Donald Trump. He is relying on Foxx’s baggage from her handling of the Jussie Smollett case as well as alarm over rising gun violence and this summer’s multiple rounds of looting in Chicago.

He outraised and outspent Foxx during the third quarter, which runs from July 1 until Sept. 30, pulling in $401,851 compared with her $232,786 total. During that period, he spent $207,679 to her $73,776. Since then, O’Brien’s filled his coffers with another $208,973, a figure that includes $75,000 of his own money, compared with $14,300 in contributions for Foxx. In an emailed statement on Friday, Foxx’s campaign said it had taken in an extra $220,000 this week.

Also running is attorney Brian Dennehy, a Libertarian candidate who wants to “question the use of police and a cage as a means to solve that problem” of low-level offenses, according to his campaign’s Facebook page.

All three are campaigning in a tense climate across America after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who gasped, “I can’t breathe,” as a Minneapolis police officer dug his knee into his neck in May. University of Chicago political science professor John Mark Hansen said the resultant unrest, which hearkens to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, could drive more interest in the Foxx-O’Brien race than usual.

“On one side there are very strong complaints about bias in policing and bias in prosecution … and by the same token, concern on the other side about civil order being broken down,” Hansen said. “So, in some ways we’ve sort of come around again to 50 years ago.”

Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.

O’Brien’s core message is what he described as a lack of safety during a year when fatal shootings are up 42% in Cook County compared with this period last year, according to the medical examiner’s office. A Chicago Tribune analysis found Foxx’s office dropped felony cases including murder charges and other serious offenses at a higher rate than Alvarez’s and had an overall lower conviction rate.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who endorsed Foxx this year, also has implicitly knocked prosecutors following the Aug. 10 lootings by warning them against letting suspects cycle through the system without consequences. Foxx countered by announcing her office approved 90% of felony charges for more than 300 arrests related to civil unrest following Floyd’s death.

“People are generally upset by her not being the chief law enforcement officer or acting as it for the county,” O’Brien said in a phone interview. “The community needs to be safe. I don’t think she’s providing that. Victims need to have a voice. I know that she’s not providing that.”

Foxx said she isn’t worried about O’Brien’s focus on rising crime, dismissing it as a “Donald Trump strategy” in a nod to the president’s messaging this summer that cities run by liberal politicians such as Chicago have reared out-of-control chaos.

“Pat O’Brien has been unapologetic about echoing the sentiments that are coming from a deeply flawed president who has a message of divisiveness, and no, I don’t think that the voters of Cook County will fall for that,” Foxx said on the phone. “Just as it won’t be successful for Donald Trump, it won’t be successful for Mr. O’Brien.”

Righting the inequities that poor, Black and Latino communities bore in Cook County is a hallmark promise of Foxx’s. Her office raised the bar on felony shoplifting charges and backed Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ sweeping bail reform by no longer opposing the release of some detainees held on nonviolent offenses because they cannot pay and recommending certain defendants charged with minor offenses be released pending trial.

Then during the polar vortex in January 2019, then-Chicago-based actor Smollett allegedly staged a shocking hate crime against himself that would come to haunt Foxx for the next year and a half.

After his initial allegations of the alleged racist and homophobic attack, Smollett was charged with disorderly conduct, only to later see prosecutors mysteriously drop the charges against him.

Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed former U.S. attorney Dan Webb as special prosecutor to examine the case and, following a grand jury again indicting Smollett, Webb issued a report in August finding the state’s attorney’s office engaged in “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures” but did not commit any crimes.

“It still is a valuable and important reason why I’m running,” O’Brien said. “She tried to cover up the fact that it was a political favor for somebody who was connected.”

Foxx said she accepted responsibility by acknowledging her office “could have handled the case better” but argued “it is also indicative of the fact that we have been a very transparent office.”

The fallout from the Smollett case has also contributed to Foxx becoming a prime target of certain law enforcement groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, which endorsed O’Brien in August while giving him $57,800, the maximum campaign contribution a political fund can give. Chicago police’s largest union was planning to start door-knocking on the campaign’s behalf this weekend, mainly focusing on the Northwest and Southwest sides as well as the suburbs, FOP President John Catanzara said, framing the race as a choice of “civilized society against chaos.”

Foxx has spun that allegiance into doubt over whether O’Brien can be counted on to prosecute law enforcement misconduct.

“I have been very clear on this: You have to be able to hold police accountable. We work with them. We are partners with them, but it’s a checks-and-balances system,” Foxx said. “Mr. O’Brien, who has the backing of the FOP, who has also endorsed Donald Trump, has to be able to answer — can he hold them accountable?”

O’Brien’s record also has been condemned by Foxx, who amped up attacks on Tuesday in a digital ad highlighting four men wrongfully convicted in a 1986 murder prosecuted by him. They were held in prison for about 14 years before their convictions were vacated in 2001, and two other men later connected to the sex slaying through DNA evidence pleaded guilty in 2004.

O’Brien has said he believed the four men were guilty at the time and that his procedure was based on available confessions and testimonies. He’d be happy to go toe-to-toe with Foxx on the specifics, he said, but she won’t debate him anymore.

“There was never any credible allegation that I had done anything wrong, and given the evidence that was before me, I essentially did what a prosecutor should do,” O’Brien said. “The situation is this: Kim Foxx has failed. I’m not surprised she’s trying to divert attention from her failures.”

ayin@chicagotribune.com

———

©2020 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.