O'Neill Burke widens fundraising lead in state's attorney race

Conservative donors in finance are dropping six-figure political donations on Cook County state’s attorney candidate Eileen O’Neill Burke this week, helping her open a gaping lead in fundraising for the March 19 Democratic primary.

With more than two weeks before balloting ends, O’Neill Burke has reported nearly $1.92 million in donations, more than twice the $750,000 reported by her opponent, university lecturer Clayton Harris III, who won the Cook County Democratic endorsement and has relied more on labor unions, frequent donors to the party and local elected officials.

O’Neill Burke, a former Illinois appellate judge, on Thursday night reported $236,200 from frequent Republican donor Daniel O’Keefe, who helps lead the investment management firm Artisan Partners, raising his family’s total for her to $250,000. O’Neill Burke reported another $175,000 late Thursday 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 donations from their families to O’Neill Burke. Beeson and Simon, like Griffin, have both funded numerous Republican campaigns.

The lopsided warchests could provide O’Neill Burke a “shock and awe” advantage, allowing her to dominate the airwaves, social media feeds and other outlets and overwhelm undecided voters with her message, said John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

“It’s just sort of human nature, when … one candidate is out with ads and messages repeatedly, and the other isn’t, you develop this assumption that the candidate that you’re hearing more from is running an aggressive, confident campaign, and you just tend to maybe gravitate more towards the person with resources than you might otherwise,” Shaw said.

Shaw also said the size of O’Neill Burke’s take could signal to savvy political players that she is the candidate to beat and encourage more support to her side.

“The political class,” Shaw said, often sees money “as a barometer of success and successful candidacies.”

But O’Neill Burke’s advantage — despite her opponent’s backing by the local Democratic Party — is not unprecedented and not necessarily “fatal” to Harris, Shaw said, predicting Harris would try to turn O’Neill Burke’s haul against her.

On Friday afternoon, Harris did just that. “Eileen Burke’s campaign is being bankrolled by dangerous, right-wing donors — the same people who fund Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, Kelly Loeffler and worse,” he said in a written statement. “As we stare down the barrel of a potential second Trump administration, the last thing we need are local leaders who are beholden to extremists who don’t share our values.”

O’Neill Burke did not immediately comment on what her conservative backing in the race says about her candidacy.

Contributions and loans by O’Neill Burke’s family have now exceeded $100,000, which means the race’s contribution caps are lifted for all candidates. An Illinois filing on Tuesday listed loans totaling $100,000 she made in recent days to her campaign, as well as $6,900 donated last fall by her husband, attorney John Burke.

The race’s financing so far remains a fraction of what the top Democrats raised in the 2020 state’s attorney primary, when challenger Bill Conway received periodic six- and seven-figure infusions from his father, investor William E. Conway Jr., while Foxx’s reelection bid netted steady support from the party’s establishment and $2 million a few weeks before Election Day from a super PAC connected to New York billionaire George Soros.

Chip Mitchell reports on policing, public safety and public health.