Pritzker antagonist Thomas DeVore and repeat candidate Steve Kim square off in GOP primary for attorney general

The Republican primary for Illinois attorney general pits a loquacious southern Illinois civil attorney who approaches folk hero status among some on the political right against a soft-spoken North Shore attorney making his third bid for statewide office.

Thomas DeVore entered the public consciousness early in the coronavirus pandemic as he launched unrelenting, if largely unsuccessful, legal challenges to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders.

Steve Kim, a partner in a boutique international law firm based in Chicago, has little name recognition outside political circles after two failed bids for statewide office, including a 33-point loss to incumbent Democrat Lisa Madigan in the 2010 race for attorney general.

And despite financial backing from the state’s wealthiest resident — billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin — Kim, of Deerfield, has run a low-key campaign since entering the race in January, joining members of the slate that includes Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who’s running for governor, in small meet-and-greets around the state.

Conversely, DeVore, who lives outside Sorento, a rural town of fewer than 500 residents 50 miles northwest of St. Louis, started gaining notice even before his campaign began, appearing at anti-mask events over the past two years and keeping up an unfiltered online presence.

DeVore, 52, uses his Facebook account to remark on developments in his many ongoing lawsuits and the mundane details of campaigning, and to share commentary and memes on controversial topics of the day.

Like Republicans up and down the ballot this year, both Kim and DeVore have made the state’s problems with crime and corruption a key component of their campaigns.

For Kim, 51, it’s a theme that dovetails with the messaging of other candidates on the Griffin-backed slate, which also includes state Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon, who’s running unopposed in his bid to take on Democratic state Treasurer Michael Frerichs in November, and McHenry County Auditor Shannon Teresi, who also is unopposed in the primary and will face Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza in the general election.

While DeVore has hammered the issues of crime and political corruption, his main pitch has been his opposition to what he sees as executive overreach and the lack of action from Democrats and the “Republican establishment” to protect “the people” from “tyranny.”

DeVore’s social media-driven campaign, stoked by anti-mask, anti-vaccine fervor, has brought him name recognition during the pandemic, but Kim’s better-funded effort figures to raise his profile considerably by Election Day.

“The Griffin money is going to swamp all possible other money,” said Chris Mooney, an expert on state politics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “And so the only thing people are going to see much on TV are these Griffin candidate ads over and over again.”

Also on the GOP primary ballot is David Shestokas, 70, an Orland Park attorney who has not reported receiving any campaign contributions and has promoted former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election.

Whoever wins the Republican primary will face a tough contest this fall with Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a former state senator from Chicago who is seeking a second term. A Republican hasn’t won an election for Illinois attorney general since Jim Ryan was elected to a second term in 1998.

The major Republican candidates both say there’s plenty in Raoul’s record to criticize, and for DeVore, that begins with Raoul’s office’s efforts to defend Pritzker’s COVID-19 mandates.

DeVore, whose prior experience in elected office was a two-year term on the Bond County Board a decade ago, first gained statewide attention in April 2020, when he represented then-state Rep. Darren Bailey, who’s now a state senator running in the GOP primary for governor, in a lawsuit challenging Pritzker’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order. After initial victories in a southern Illinois court, a ruling in Bailey’s favor was tossed out by Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow in December 2020.

A little over a year later, however, Grischow issued a ruling that has become DeVore’s major claim to success in his battle with Pritzker, a temporary restraining order blocking the governor’s school mask mandate.

The case eventually made it to the Illinois Supreme Court, but in the interim, a legislative panel declined to renew Department of Public Health rules that served as part of the basis for the mask mandate. The Supreme Court vacated Grischow’s order but sent the case back to the lower court without ruling on the merits of the arguments, allowing both DeVore and Pritzker to claim victory.

DeVore has touted his role in ending the school mask requirement, but said in a recent interview that assessing his record against the governor’s mandates in terms of wins and losses in the courtroom isn’t the proper frame of reference.

“As far as getting to an ultimate decision on the propriety of the governor’s use of executive power, which is where most of these conversations lie, none of those cases have been taken all the way through the courts on a final ruling,” DeVore said.

Where he’s been victorious, he said, is in his efforts to get people engaged with government.

“I think the outcomes to be achieved, for the most part, are getting people involved in their government, in the process of government and how things happen,” DeVore said. “I think that we’ve been extremely successful in that regard.”

DeVore said he thinks that message resonates well beyond his Downstate rural home, particularly with moms in the Chicago suburbs, who are expected to be a key voting bloc in the November general election.

“The suburban soccer moms that people like to call them, they are not particularly pleased with the way that Attorney General Raoul has attacked their children through supporting 100% the governor’s use of his executive power for the last two years,” DeVore said.

While Kim agrees that Pritzker overstepped his authority in shutting down businesses and requiring masks and vaccinations, he offered a blunt assessment of the arguments and reasoning in the cases brought by DeVore.

“He didn’t win,” Kim said. “It wasn’t successful.”

Kim finds larger faults with Raoul’s handling of crime and corruption during his more than three years in the attorney general’s office. In meeting with county prosecutors and law enforcement officials around the state, Kim said he’s heard repeatedly that local officials need more support from the attorney general’s office.

If elected, Kim said he would go through a process similar to a performance audit he conducted for former state Treasurer Dan Rutherford after the Chenoa Republican was elected in 2010.

“I would bring in law enforcement officers, I would bring in civil rights leaders, bring in community leaders and have discussions and ... find ways so that office can improve when it comes to dealing with both corruption and crime,” said Kim, who ran for lieutenant governor as part of Rutherford’s failed bid for the GOP nomination for governor in 2014.

Kim, who was an aide to former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar in the 1990s and also a former appointed member of the Illinois Human Rights Commission, repeated the Republican refrain that the solution to addressing violent crime involves listening to rank-and-file police officers.

“It’s hard to build a better police force and its relationships with the community when you’re not engaged with the rank-and-file police officers, listen to them, cooperate and collaborate with them and really ... kind of be their voice out there,” Kim said.

DeVore points to his endorsement from the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police State Lodge as evidence of strong backing from law enforcement, calling it “the only endorsement that was really important to me.”

If DeVore or Kim were to win in November, they would oversee the implementation of a federal consent decree aimed at reforming the Chicago Police Department. The consent decree followed a U.S. Department of Justice report in 2017 that found the city police engaged in a “pattern and practice” of excessive force.

Kim said he does not support the way the consent decree is structured “because, again, it’s my conversations with rank-and-file police, and how they were not part of the process.”

“You’ve got the community and law enforcement, and one side is not engaged and they don’t feel that they own this process and they don’t feel that they’ve been listened to and they are part of this process, it’s just not going to work,” Kim said. “You just have words on a paper rather than actions on the street.”

DeVore said his FOP endorsement wouldn’t prevent him from fairly considering the interests of both Chicago residents and police officers in overseeing the decree.

Police “will get the same treatment from me (as) if they would have endorsed one of my other primary opponents,” he said.

The attorney general also plays a key role in monitoring elections in Illinois. Both Kim and DeVore said they voted for Trump in the past two elections, and both hedged when asked whether they believe his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Joe Biden is the president of the United States,” Kim said. “I don’t think there’s been any proven — proven is the key word, right? — proven facts that doesn’t make him the president of United States.”

Kim pointed to his experience as a volunteer election monitor in Ukraine as evidence of his belief in the importance of “election transparency, election integrity.”

DeVore, who recently attended an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, said that when people ask him if he thinks the 2020 election was stolen, “if I’m being honest, intellectually honest, I have to look at them and say, ‘I don’t know.’”

“Do I think that there were improprieties? Do I think people did things unlawfully? Certainly, I think that happens,” he said. “Does that happen to the point that it actually caused that election to be changed? My honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’”

DeVore, who has lent his campaign $28,500, raised another $26,470 in contributions of $1,000 or less in the first three months of the year. He ended the period with about $26,000 in the bank, state records show.

Since April, he’s reported raising a little more than $9,000 in large-dollar contributions.

Kim has been the beneficiary a wave of cash connected to Griffin.

Citizens for Judicial Fairness, an independent expenditure committee that previously had been involved in state Supreme Court races, last month reported spending more than $200,000 on advertising in support of Kim. Griffin had restocked the committee’s fund, which ended the first quarter with less than $45,000 in the bank, with a $6.25 million contribution about a month earlier.

The committee’s spending on Kim lifted limits on contributions to all candidates in the race under state campaign finance law ostensibly written to assist candidates running against independently wealthy opponents.

Independent expenditure committees are prohibited by law from coordinating directly with candidates’ campaigns.

A few days after the committee reported the cap-busting spending in support of Kim, the Irvin campaign, which to date has received $50 million from Griffin, transferred $300,000 to the attorney general candidate’s campaign fund. Irvin followed up with another $200,000 transfer two weeks later.

Asked about the support from Citizens for Judicial Fairness, Kim said, “I believe my message is resonating.”

Kim said he doesn’t have much of a relationship with Griffin, who recently gave $6,000 directly to his campaign. “I’ve seen him at events,” Kim said.

The recently appointed chairman of Citizens for Judicial Fairness, D.J. Eckert, did not respond to requests for comment.

A Griffin spokesman, meanwhile, denied any connection between the billionaire’s contribution to the independent committee and his support for Kim’s campaign.

“Mr. Griffin is not involved in the decision-making by Citizens for Judicial Fairness,” spokesman Zia Ahmed said.

dpetrella@chiagotribune.com