Who will be the Democratic Party nominee to replace Kimm Foxx, the widely applauded, verbally attacked and surely controversial State’s Attorney of Cook County for the last seven years!
Are the “Times a changin.”
Can Chicago and Cook County be saved from the continued skyrocketing crime that has plagued residents and businesses for the last five years of the Kim Foxx regime?
Do the Dem Primary State’s Attorney candidates differ markedly in experience and the likely impact of their views on how to fix Chicago’s major crime problems?
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To answer these and other questions, watch video clips (nine minutes) of the Cook County State’s Attorney Dem Primary candidate debate and eleven minutes of vigorous questioning of the candidates at the post-game pressers that followed the debate.
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The ABC7 Chicago hosted Democrat Cook County State’s Attorney primary full debate with candidates Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke (Ret.) and Clayton Harris III took place on February 8 and ran 60 minutes.
The debate includes questions from ABC7 Chicago’s chief political correspondent Craig Wall, ABC7 Chicago Eyewitness news anchors Ravi Baichwal and Judy Hsu, and Univision Chicago’s Mariano Gielis, News Anchor and reporter.
The press conferences include questioning from ABC7 Chicago’s Craig Wall, chief political correspondent; Public Affairs’ Jeff Berkowitz, host and producer of the longest running, one-on-one weekly political interview show in the Chicago Metro area and Chicago Bureau Chief of the Illinois Channel; and other Chicago Metro news correspondents.
The Cook County primary election day is March 19 but there will be the usual Cook County, Illinois early voting and mail-in voting.
The candidates discuss their vastly different career experiences and backgrounds and debate and discuss their visions for the Cook County State’s Attorney office, whose seven-year incumbent, Kim Foxx, has garnered a national reputation and controversy- that includes being named as a George Soros “Rogue Prosecutor,” by Charles Stimson and Zack Smith, authors of the recent book titled “Rogue Prosecutors, how radical Soros lawyers are destroying America’s communities.”
Stimson, Smith and many others allege State’s Attorney Foxx has contributed to large increases in Chicago and Cook County violent crime by her unwillingness and incompetence to prosecute crime vigorously and competently during her tenure as State’s Attorney.
Although Foxx announced last year she would not seek re-election, she in a sense is on the ballot as the candidates are constantly asked, as they were at the ABC7 Chicago debate and post-debate press conferences last week, how much they agree or disagree with Foxx’s lenient approach to dealing with (1) rampant Cook County wide shoplifting and (2) the big increases overall in the last five years in major crimes in Chicago (characterized by Wirepoints as 60%) as well as in much of the rest of Cook County, and including homicides, armed robberies, car jackings and motor vehicle theft, as well as other crime categories.
The candidates were also questioned at the Debate and press conferences about whether the Cook County State’s Attorney office, under their leadership, would more vigorously seek pre-trial detention of the accused who are perceived as dangerous to the community and significant jail and prison time for such individuals if convicted than has been the case under State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Additional questions at the debate and press conferences last week included how to fix the widely acknowledged poor morale at the State’s Attorney office, how to upgrade the prosecutorial and trial skills of the Cook County Assistant State’s Attorneys, the importance of significant, real trial experience of the State’s Attorney candidates for overseeing the management, training and inspiration of the prosecutors in the Office and the recent campaign controversy over the handling by O’Neill Burke of the prosecution of an eleven year old boy for the 1993 murder of 83 year old Anna Gilvis when O’Neill Burke was an Assistant State’s Attorney in Cook County for ten years in the 1990s.

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