O’Neill Burke builds on her lead over Harris as vote count for state’s attorney enters second week

For the first time since Election Day, Eileen O'Neill Burke widened her lead - by 39 votes - over Clayton Harris III in the Democratic primary race.

For the first time since Election Day, retired Appellate Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke has widened her lead over university lecturer and former government official Clayton Harris III in the hotly contested Democratic primary race for Cook County state’s attorney.

The results came after another taxing day of ballot processing, as the Chicago Board of Elections and Cook County clerk added another 2,257 Democratic votes to the unofficial count. By the end of the day, O’Neill Burke gained 39 votes over Harris. Though not a lot, it is the first time O’Neill Burke has seen her lead grow since late precincts and mail-in ballots began being counted.

With the race entering its second week, O’Neill Burke has received 263,527 votes to Harris’ 261,890 votes for a 1,637-vote margin.

Included in Wednesday’s new totals were approximately 1,800 city ballots collected by election judges in the lead up to Election Day from registered voters who are permanently disabled, incapacitated or are residents of licensed nursing homes or care facilities. Those ballots, which have been locked away since March 19 and counted at the Chicago board on Wednesday, are significant because as valid mail-in votes have dwindled in recent days, that batch was expected to be among the largest cluster to be counted.

Harris had been managing to secure a majority of the daily vote counts from outstanding precincts and mail-in ballots in both the city and suburbs. Also a former prosecutor, Harris had cut O’Neill Burke’s 10,000-vote lead on election night by about 84% to a 1,598 vote margin on Tuesday. On Wednesday, however, O’Neill Burke secured more than half of the city’s Democratic ballots and about 54% of the other 155 that were added to the suburban tally.

Although Harris lost ground for the first time, his campaign said Harris would wait until all the votes are counted.

“Given the evolving dynamics in this race since Election Day, it is important to wait and ensure every vote is counted through the April 2 deadline,” spokeswoman Joanna Klonsky said in a statement.

More vote counting is expected through the end of the week and likely through Tuesday, which is the final day ballots can be tallied.

Judges at the Chicago Board of Elections on Wednesday worked to process nearly 2,000 provisional ballots and will tabulate ones they deem valid on Thursday. Some provisional ballots won’t be counted until Tuesday, however, to give election judges time to double-check that a voter didn’t cast both a provisional and a mail-in ballot.

But Thursday’s count could be the final day of returns in which the vote count reaches above 1,000. With each day that passes, fewer valid mail-in ballots are arriving — they must be postmarked by Election Day, March 19 to be valid — and any remaining provisional ballots are also being processed but those numbers are not massive. An estimated 69,500 Democratic ballots were requested but have not yet been returned to city or suburban election authorities. Neither campaign nor either election authority expects them all to be sent back, or sent back on time.

Still, neither candidate has conceded defeat nor declared victory. The Associated Press also has not called the hard-fought race that began last year to succeed outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Cook County’s top prosecutor since 2016.

Harris had the backing of the Cook County Democratic Party and several of the county’s most progressive labor organizations. A prosecutor in the office at the start of his career, he touted his management experience and policy credentials on the campaign trail. O’Neill Burke won endorsements from more moderate Democrats who praised her career in the courtroom. She out-raised Harris 3-to-1 in the race’s final months, largely from the city’s business leaders while also stressing that she’d take a tougher-on-crime philosophy to the office if she was elected.

Whoever wins the primary will be the expected front-runner in the November general election. Cook County hasn’t elected a Republican prosecutor since 1992. The winner will be running against Republican nominee Bob Fioretti, a former Chicago alderman who ran for state’s attorney as a Democrat four years ago, and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski.

Already one of the most closely watched primary races in the Chicago area, the contest between O’Neill Burke and Harris has been significantly ramped up amid the lengthy ballot tabulation process and the potential for a recount.

Since last week, poll watchers and attorneys from Harris’ and O’Neill Burke’s campaigns have been closely monitoring the post-Election Day counts. That scene was repeated again Wednesday as bipartisan election judges for the city election board counted the ballots in the basement of the government building at 69 W. Washington St. Election officials counted the smaller number of suburban ballots at a Cook County Clerk office in Cicero.