(The Center Square) – The major party candidates for Illinois attorney general are showing stark contrast for voters heading into the final weeks of the Nov. 8 election.
Hosted by the Illinois Associated Press Media Editors, incumbent Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Republican challenger Thomas DeVore recently met virtually. They answered questions about a variety of issues the office is involved in.
The two candidates already have a history. Raoul defended Gov. J.B. Pritzker in court over multiple lawsuits brought by DeVore challenging COVID-19 executive orders. Raoul said they were trying to save lives with unilateral mandates.
“And that’s what emergency powers are meant to do, to save lives,” Raoul said. “So I would do nothing different from what we had done.”
DeVore said Raoul as attorney general should have defended the people from excessive overreach.
“If our attorney general would have stood up and said that this is an excessive use, like [Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow] did, calling it the evil that the law was intended to protect the people against, we wouldn’t have had to go down this path,” DeVore said. “But we went down this path, not because of the policies, but because of the excessive nature that the executive branch was disregarding the legislature.”
Among other issues the two addressed was how the office should handle public corruption in Illinois.
Raoul said his office does have public corruption cases they are prosecuting.
“We have charged 24 public integrity cases during my tenure and we have 11 current public corruption cases,” Raoul said.
Raoul’s office didn’t respond to The Center Square last month when asked for a list of official misconduct cases he’s pursued while in office. The office didn’t respond to a request for that information Wednesday.
DeVore said with the federal government prosecuting statehouse officials with crimes, parallel charges should be brought by the Illinois attorney general
“We as a people in Illinois should be doing that, investing them ourselves and making those determinations one-by-one specifically of whether or not there’s official misconduct going on by our public officials,” DeVore said.
Early voting for the Nov. 8 election is underway.
