Cook County Recorder of Deeds Jesse White defeated Orland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy Tuesday night for the Democratic nomination for Illinois secretary of state.
On the other side of the ballot, attorney Al Salvi of Wauconda beat state Rep. Robert Churchill of Lake Villa for the GOP nomination, which is viewed as a steppingstone to higher office.
Salvi and White will meet in the November general election.
Elsewhere on the ballot for the state’s constitutional offices, state Sen. Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) defeated businessman Harry Seigle of East Dundee in the GOP race for comptroller.
Unofficial returns showed that with nearly all the vote counted, Lauzen had 52 percent compared with 48 percent for Seigle. Lauzen will face unopposed Democrat Daniel W. Hynes of Chicago in the fall.
In the treasurer’s race, Orland Park Village President Daniel J. McLaughlin defeated Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova in the Democratic race for treasurer. McLaughlin won 58 percent of the vote with most of the vote counted.
He will face GOP incumbent Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who did not have a primary opponent, in November.
In accepting the nomination, White said he believed a backlash by women voters was pivotal to his victory.
Many of those women initially had been supporters of Penny Severns, the former state senator from Decatur who died of cancer just days after McCarthy successfully had her name removed from the primary ballot due to faulty nominating petitions.
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“Time and time again people told me that they were thinking about supporting McCarthy, but they decided to support me because of what happened to her,” White said.
According to unofficial but nearly complete results, White won with about 55 percent of the vote.
The anti-McCarthy backlash also gave White the jolt his campaign needed. He and McCarthy had opened the campaign season as two candidates more familiar to voters because of past 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 perhaps better known as the founder of the Jesse White Tumbling Team, which has offered an athletic oasis to hundreds of disadvantaged youths from Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods.
McCarthy originally said he would not try to play up his background at the White House. But after McCarthy opened his first radio ad with the sound of a gun shot, White was quoted as saying that McCarthy was nothing more than a “bystander” during the assassination attempt.
The next few days, White said he was misquoted and added that there was no doubt McCarthy was a hero.
After Severns died on Feb. 21, White found a new campaign theme.
On the GOP 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 supported Churchill as a payback to Salvi, who moderated his views on gun control after his failed bid for the U.S. Senate two years ago.
Salvi, who garnered 53 percent of the vote, conceded that his new views on guns cost him some support, but he attributed his victory to his proposals for running the secretary of state’s office.