The 2024 race for Cook County state’s attorney will soon have a new contender: a recently retired justice who stepped away from the bench to run for the top prosecutor’s spot.
Eileen O’Neill Burke earlier this month retired from her position as a justice of Cook County’s 1st District Appellate Court to run for the seat being vacated by two-term Democrat Kim Foxx, according to a spokesperson for O’Neill Burke’s campaign.
O’Neill Burke is expected to officially kick off her bid for the office during a rally at the Plumbers Union Hall in Chicago later this month and she is planning to pitch the Cook County Democratic Party for its endorsement next month, the party’s executive director confirmed.
“Eileen believes we need to put resources into juvenile, veterans, drug, and mental health courts, to help people get back on the right path and build stronger, safer communities,” a bio provided by her campaign stated.
The bio noted O’Neill Burke supports “thoughtful reform and restorative justice, to ensure that the system focuses on safety and fairness, not jailing people indefinitely because they are poor or mentally ill.”
[ Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx says she will not run for reelection ]
The only other declared candidate in the race is Clayton Harris III, an attorney and lecturer at the University of Chicago who has the support of Cook County Board President and Cook County Democratic Party Chairwoman Toni Preckwinkle, a longtime Foxx ally.
It’s likely other candidates will emerge — petition passing to get on the primary ballot does not begin until September and the primary election is not until March 19.
Foxx announced in April that she would not seek a third term after a bruising tenure as the county’s chief prosecutor in which she pursued a series of systemic reforms and garnered some resistance to her prosecutorial policies during a rise in crime.
According to her bio, O’Neill Burke worked as an assistant state’s attorney for 10 years handling felony appellate cases, working in juvenile court and in felony review.
She then worked as a criminal defense attorney and, in 2008, was elected as a judge in Cook County where she was in the circuit court’s law division. She was elected an appellate court justice in 2016 and presided over both civil and criminal cases, according to her campaign bio.
The bio notes O’Neill Burke, who is 58, has been married for 33 years and has four young adult children. Born and raised on the Northwest Side, she now lives in the South Loop.
Though no Republicans have officially declared their intentions to run for state’s attorney, Preckwinkle predicted last month that the race would be a difficult one for Democrats to win.
Foxx “got treated pretty brutally for the work that she tried to do to reform our criminal justice system,” she said.
