Cook County Recorder of Deeds Jesse White and Orland Park Police Chief Timothy McCarthy awaited the voters’ verdict Tuesday night after a contentious Democratic primary campaign for the nomination for Illinois secretary of state.
On the Republican side, attorney Al Salvi of Wauconda and state Rep. Robert Churchill of Lake Villa were waiting to learn whether gun-rights groups were successful in their effort to make the GOP contest more a referendum on gun control than about issues such as replacing license plates.
The primary winners will face off in the November general election for the office, which is viewed as a steppingstone to higher office.
Early unofficial returns showed that with about half of the vote counted, White held a small lead over McCarthy.
On the GOP side, Salvi held the lead.
Elsewhere on the ballot for the state’s constitutional offices, state Sen. Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) held an early, narrow lead in the Republican comptroller’s race against businessman Harry Seigle of East Dundee.
Attorney Daniel W. Hynes of Chicago, son of former Cook County Assessor Thomas Hynes, was unopposed on the Democratic side of the ballot.
In the treasurer’s race, Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova trailed Orland Park Village President Daniel J. McLaughlin in the Democratic race for treasurer.
McLaughlin had 59 percent of the vote with about half of the ballots tallied.
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The winner will face Republican incumbent Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka in the fall.
Poignantly missing as a candidate in the Democratic secretary of state’s race was the late state Sen. Penny Severns, the Decatur resident who died of cancer on Feb. 21, days after McCarthy got her tossed off the ballot by successfully challenging her nominating papers.
Severns’ death left McCarthy in the uncomfortable position of having to defend his decision to challenge the nominating petitions of the popular lawmaker, whose supporters vowed revenge at the polls.
White, 63, did everything he could to capitalize on that bitter sentiment, including wearing a pink ribbon on his lapel during the remainder of the campaign season after Severns’ death to symbolize the fight against breast cancer.
It also gave White the jolt his campaign needed.
He and McCarthy opened the campaign as two candidates who were more familiar to voters because of their past heroic deeds than because of their deeds in office.
McCarthy, 48, a former Secret Service agent, was shot and wounded in 1981 during the failed assassination attempt on former President Ronald Reagan.
White, a former 16-year state lawmaker and educator, is the founder of the acclaimed Jesse White Tumbling Team, which has offered an athletic oasis to hundreds of disadvantaged youths from Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods.
McCarthy opened his first radio commercial with the sound of a gunshot even though he initially said he did not plan to play up his White House connection.
After the commercial aired, White was quoted in a St. Louis newspaper as saying that McCarthy was nothing more than a “bystander” during the assassination attempt.
White had to defend himself for the statement, saying he absolutely believed McCarthy to be a hero.
It wasn’t until after Severns died that White found his new campaign theme.
On the Republican side, Salvi, 37, and Churchill, 50, argued more about gun control than about how to control drunken drivers on the state’s highways or how to come up with money to replace the thousands of aging license plates on 9 million registered vehicles in Illinois.
Gun-rights advocates jumped on the Churchill bandwagon as a sort of payback to Salvi, who moderated his views on gun control after his failed bid for the U.S. Senate two years ago.