Nearly everyone who is involved in the Kane County state’s attorney’s race has been holding news conferences of late, saying they want to put all of the dirty politics of the last few weeks aside and get back to the issues of who is best for the job.
But even as the candidates say that, they seem to be peeling off the gloves and giving as good as they’re getting.
Meg Gorecki, who is hot on incumbent State’s Atty. David Akemann’s heels as the March 21 Republican primary draws near, held a news conference Tuesday to counter reports that she suggested to a job-seeker a year ago that county jobs could be bought with campaign contributions to County Board Chairman Mike McCoy.
She said she was not about to let dirty tactics derail her message and her campaign and, even though no one in either Akemann’s or Sheriff Ken Ramsey’s office has admitted leaking the report, Gorecki unleashed a blazing accusation at Akemann.
“This is a desperate act by a desperate man,” she said, then added she would not answer any more questions about the issue until after the primary.
Ramsey released a statement Tuesday denying that anyone in his office was involved in leaking the report.
Akemann also held a news conference Tuesday afternoon, during which he read from an affidavit he signed, swearing that he was not the source of the leaked report.
“Opponent Gorecki has accused me of leaking the report in question and otherwise running a smear campaign. These are absolutely false charges,” Akemann said, reading from his prepared statement.
Gorecki accused Akemann of orchestrating the creation of a police report, filed by sheriff’s office employee Jane O’Neil, and of seeing that it was leaked to local newspapers late last week.
In the report, according to Gorecki and published reports, O’Neil alleges that she asked for Gorecki’s help last year in securing a county job for her husband, Eric O’Neil. The report claimed that Gorecki left a message on O’Neil’s answering machine suggesting that her husband’s chances of a job might be helped by a fat contribution to McCoy’s campaign fund.
Apparently the exchange never went further than that. No contribution was made. No job was offered. Gorecki said she did speak to McCoy briefly on Eric O’Neil’s behalf but that nothing ever came of it.
Gorecki said the report–and the timing of its filing one month before the primary–was a politically orchestrated attempt to “derail” her campaign.
“I am not going to be threatened, intimidated, coerced or blackmailed,” she said.
But in a carefully worded press release earlier Tuesday, Gorecki tiptoed around the substance of the report. She denied ever detailing amounts of money that should be paid to a campaign fund in exchange for a job. But she was non-committal about whether she ever told O’Neil that a job might be tied to campaign contributions.
“I do not remember tying employment with the county to making campaign contributions to anyone,” she said in a written statement. “However, if that is the case, it was both incorrect and a lapse of judgment on my part. I certainly have no knowledge of any job ever being awarded under those circumstances. Nor have I ever secured a county job for anyone.”
Meanwhile, McCoy said he’s trying to climb out of the mud wrestling pit that the race has become. But the Aurora Republican had already tossed some mud of his own, saying publicly on Monday that he would seek to use outside counsel–instead of the state’s attorney’s office–to defend the county in cases in which he is named individually as a defendant.
“I’m worried about confidentiality,” he said. McCoy also said that he is rescinding his official support of Akemann’s bid for a third term, but is not endorsing Gorecki.
“I will work with whoever is the next state’s attorney,” he said Tuesday. “But I really don’t care who the state’s attorney is.”
McCoy held his own news conference Tuesday to deal with questions about the Gorecki accusations that involve him.
McCoy said that he has never solicited, received or been offered a bribe. And he added that he cannot afford to get tangled up in the prosecutor’s race.
The race’s third candidate, Joe Grady, is hoping that his underfunded campaign will profit from both sides of the mudslinging. On the one hand, he said, the timing of the release of the sheriff’s report reeks of politics. On the other hand, if it’s true, the report raises serious questions about Gorecki’s conduct, he said.
