What started out with a kiss between two Democratic officials in a local township office has devolved into a southwest suburban political soap opera with the potential to reshape competitive races for Congress and the Cook County Board.
The vehicle for that reckoning is, of all things, a Freedom of Information Act request — the bureaucratic tool the public can use to obtain police reports and zoning records — now being deployed by a Republican politician trying to obtain surveillance video proving her Democratic opponent engaged in a kiss that the Democrat acknowledges occurred, though not in a romantic way. The ensuing fight has resulted in dueling accusations, a canceled emergency meeting and a scramble over the video footage, which was shared with the Tribune late Thursday.
Even by the standards of Lyons Township, where a corruption investigation that ensnared several local officials served as a side story to the federal probe that ultimately brought down former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the current conflict among local officials is rife with accusations and head-spinning subplots.
At the center of the controversy is security camera footage from the office of Lyons Township Clerk Elyse Hoffenberg that captures a kiss between her and Bridgeview Mayor Steve Landek, the longtime township Democratic Party boss and a former state senator. Hoffenberg, a Democrat, is running for a Cook County Board seat against Republican Liz Gorman, who filed FOIA requests for the video footage.
But the squabble doesn’t stay along party lines. Hoffenberg has insinuated that fellow Democrat Chris Getty, the Lyons Township supervisor, improperly accessed the video and had a hand in leaking information about the footage to Gorman. Both Gorman and Getty, who is mounting an independent campaign for Congress, have denied those allegations.
Though she acknowledged Landek kissed her, Hoffenberg denied having an inappropriate relationship with him and described the kiss as merely a “peck” that Landek apologized for, according to the local news website Patch, which first reported the controversy. Hoffenberg and Landek met frequently to discuss the township’s internship program and events that took place at Bridgeview’s SeatGeek Stadium, she said in an interview with the Tribune.
Late Thursday, Hoffenberg shared with the Tribune a two-hour surveillance video that, at one point, shows Landek and Hoffenberg entering the frame in mid-conversation. Seconds later, Landek places his hands on both sides of Hoffenberg’s face and gives her a kiss that lasts about two seconds. Hoffenberg is seen in the video smiling as the two continue their conversation and walk out of frame.
In an accompanying statement, Hoffenberg said she was “releasing a video clip publicly that has generated some attention.”
“My political opponents attempted to extort me regarding this video, saying they would drop their threats to release it if I end my campaign. I am certain that our community will find this kind of old school politics of harassment abhorrent, and I won’t be bullied,” she said in the statement. “While the video lacks proper context to make it clear what is happening, what it shows is a lighthearted, friendly and non-romantic moment among colleagues. I am staying focused on my campaign to bring strong leadership to this community, and I look forward to continuing this work.”
Gorman, reached later Thursday, said she had not received a copy of the video from Hoffenberg.
Hoffenberg noted she’s running against Gorman for the battleground 17th District County Board seat now occupied by the only Republican officeholder left in Cook County’s elected government, Sean Morrison, who is not running for reelection in November. Gorman held the seat before Morrison. The bracket-shaped 17th District wraps around the county’s western edge from northwest suburban Elk Grove Village down to southwest suburban Orland Park.
Landek did not respond to requests for comment.
Before sharing the video with the Tribune, Hoffenberg said her greater concern was who might’ve been monitoring the surveillance feed and whether government resources were used for a political end.
The fuse was lit on the issue in early August when Gorman filed the FOIA with the township. As clerk, Hoffenberg was responsible for handling the open records request, even though it was clear the FOIA was intended to obtain video of her. Gorman also copied Getty on her FOIA requests, both said.
Gorman told the Tribune that her campaign received an anonymous tip advising her team to request video footage from security cameras in Hoffenberg’s office. If the video proved a “romantic” kiss, it would be evidence of “poor decision-making of elected officials in a township government office,” Gorman told the Tribune. “And how do you expect to make good ones to make higher office?”
Hoffenberg denied Gorman’s initial request as too burdensome, and last week Gorman responded with a narrower request. The response to that request was due Tuesday, but that deadline came and went without the footage being handed over at that time.
Hoffenberg exercised her office’s right to take a five-day extension, stating in a letter to Gorman that the video footage is “stored in whole or in part at other locations” and would “require examination and evaluation” to determine whether any portions are exempt from disclosure under the law. Hoffenberg’s letter said her office could not fulfill the request by Tuesday’s deadline “without unduly burdening or interfering with the operations of the Township.”
Hoffenberg had maintained the video would prove the kiss was not amorous.
“The best way to make all these allegations go away is turn over the FOIA,” Gorman said.
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One person who agreed with Gorman was Getty, who told the Tribune that he encouraged Hoffenberg to turn over the video footage ever since he was first copied on Gorman’s initial request.
“I’ve advised her all along: You must comply with producing these public documents, and I view these as public documents,” he said.
When it comes to Hoffenberg’s relationship with Landek, “I steer clear of the clerk’s personal business,” Getty said. “They have a personal relationship, and I just think that that should be conducted away from the township building and the township offices.”
Getty’s involvement in the situation provided another twist, as GOP candidate Gorman’s decision to copy the longtime Democrat on her FOIA requests raised eyebrows about political allegiances. Getty, however, said, regarding the insinuation that he tipped off Gorman to the video’s existence: “There’s no truth to that at all.”
Still, Getty is running as an independent candidate in the 4th Congressional District, challenging his party’s nominee, Patty García, who herself is running amid controversy after incumbent U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García used an old-school maneuver to help secure her an uncontested spot on the March 17 primary ballot.
Getty is not only the supervisor of Lyons Township, but he’s also the mayor of the village of Lyons, a post he attained at the age of 26 in 2009. And he comes from a family entrenched in Lyons and southwest suburban politics, and is no stranger to scrutiny himself.
His father, Kenneth Getty, who died last year, was convicted and sentenced to federal prison for bid-rigging stemming from his time as mayor in the 1990s. And Chris Getty’s five terms as mayor in the village of about 10,500 residents have been mired in controversy, from appointing his father to a seat on the local planning and zoning board in 2011, to a 2019 investigation from the Illinois Answers Project and WFLD-Ch. 32 detailing official village actions that benefited Getty’s family and insurance business, to a federal raid on Village Hall later that year as part of a sweeping corruption probe that brought down mayors and other officials in several nearby suburbs.
Despite bucking the local party structure to run for Congress as an independent, Getty said he remains on good terms with Landek.
“Because I’ve been busy running for Congress, we don’t talk nearly as much as we did at one time, and I’ve been just focused on the campaign,” Getty said.
Beyond pushing for the release of the footage to Gorman, Getty said he asked the security camera company to provide copies of the videos she requested.
According to emails provided to the Tribune by Hoffenberg, as the deadline to respond to the FOIA request neared, Hoffenberg asked IT officials to try to dig up the videos after learning that Getty “downloaded and then deleted” them. Getty replied in the same email thread that he “downloaded camera positions,” but when he “realized none of that material related to my office … it was subsequently deleted.”
Getty told the Tribune he had received links to the video files from the security camera company but mistakenly thought the video had been deleted.
The footage was taken by cameras installed in June in the nonpublic portion of the clerk’s office, Hoffenberg said, after she initially requested additional security following an earlier incident with an activist that frightened her staff. But Hoffenberg told Patch she didn’t know other people outside her office “would have access to surveillance of its interior.”
Getty insisted Hoffenberg knew about the placement of the cameras, saying she “directed them to install those cameras in her office, and there was nobody else involved in choosing the locations but her.”
Amid word getting out that Getty was involved in the FOIA request, other Lyons Township trustees called — and then abruptly canceled — an emergency meeting this week “to preserve Township records and potential evidence, secure Township information and surveillance systems, prevent the potential loss, alteration, destruction or further unauthorized disclosure of Township records” and to discuss potential “unauthorized disclosure of Township records.”
Another item listed on the meeting agenda: “Targeted harassment of an elected Township official by another Township official.”