Foxx-O’Brien race breaks down along city, suburban lines

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Not long ago, it was fairly common for the vote in Cook County to break down largely along racial and geographic boundary lines, so much so that you couldn’t see the result until you had the full picture.

We moved away from that for a while, but the race for Cook County state’s attorney between Democratic incumbent Kim Foxx and former Judge Pat O’Brien threatened to take us back to those days.

O’Brien jumped out to a surprise early lead Tuesday based on incomplete suburban returns before Foxx wrested it back when the city vote rolled in more quickly.

When the picture finally cleared, Foxx was so far on top that O’Brien was forced to concede, which he did shortly after 10:30 p.m.

A summer of social turmoil created a difficult re-election climate for Foxx, who came into the campaign already facing accusations of being soft on crime because of the reform agenda on which she was elected.

Barely two months after Foxx survived a tough Democratic primary in which she’d been hammered about her office’s mishandling of the Jussie Smollett case, protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis led to disturbances and looting here that heightened public anxieties about crime and safety.

By the time another wave of looting hit in August, many white voters in particular were looking for somebody to hold responsible, and it didn’t help Foxx when Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Supt. David Brown cast some of the blame in the state’s attorney’s direction over her handling of the earlier incidents.

With that dynamic, some Democratic officials told me going into Tuesday they were expecting a close race, despite the fact Foxx was elected with 72 percent of the vote just four years ago.