Jussie Smollett Case Looms Over Campaign for Chicago’s Top Prosecutor

CHICAGO—The primary campaign for Chicago’s top prosecutor has been a fight over bail reform, gun control and when to press charges against shoplifters, but the race might come down to one issue: Jussie Smollett.

A trio of Democrats vying for the job have hammered incumbent Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx for months on her record. But a focus on her handling of what authorities say was Mr. Smollett’s bogus claim of a hate crime have contributed to a drop in her polling numbers and threatened to upend her re-election. 

In January of last year, Mr. Smollett, an actor from the Fox television show “Empire,” claimed two men attacked him while using pro-Trump, racist and antigay slurs. The story soon unraveled as investigators determined Mr. Smollett knew the alleged attackers. He was charged with 16 counts of disorderly conduct—counts that were ultimately dropped by Ms. Foxx’s office.

Since then, a special prosecutor was assigned to reinvestigate both Mr. Smollett and Ms. Foxx’s handling of the case.

What's News

A digest of the day's most important news to watch, delivered to your inbox.

Last month, the special prosecutor reindicted Mr. Smollett on six counts of disorderly conduct. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The investigation into Ms. Foxx is ongoing. She has been criticized for talking with a member of the Smollett family and connecting them with police investigators soon after he made his claims, actions which led her to recuse herself from the case. She was criticized again when her office dropped the charges against him, leading to allegations she hadn’t actually recused herself.

Ms. Foxx has said she “fell short” on handling of the case by not communicating her decisions to the public, but defended her record more broadly.

“I feel like the voters of Cook County have the opportunity to look at the entirety of my record; and those who have concerns about this case, we’ve tried to answer them the best that we can,” Ms. Foxx said in an interview. “This is one case out of thousands that we have handled.”
 

The Cook County sate’s attorney is one of the most high-profile prosecutor’s offices in the nation with more than 700 lawyers on staff responsible for misdemeanor and felony crimes in Chicago and the surrounding areas.

Ms. Foxx took office in 2016 with a slate of priorities including changing the bail system, decriminalizing marijuana use and prosecuting fewer gun-crime and shoplifting cases in a city known to be one of the most-violent in the country.

During her tenure, Ms. Foxx has prosecuted fewer gun crimes, has cut her use of cash bail and has effectively raised the threshold to $1,000 from $300 for the amount a person must shoplift before they are prosecuted as felons. 

Opponents say Ms. Foxx’s decisions have led to more dangerous streets as fewer gun arrests go to trial, as alleged criminals are put back on the streets before their trials and as shoplifters are emboldened.

During her tenure shootings have fallen 33% according to the Chicago Police Department, but in the past month gun crimes have increased sharply, giving her opponents fodder. In 2020, there have been 253 shootings compared with 195 in the same period last year.

But it appears the race might come down to a single issue.
 

“There’s only one thing that will define her legacy and that’s Jussie Smollett,” former city alderman Bob Fioretti, one the candidates challenging Ms. Foxx in the March primary, said in an interview.

The incumbent’s main challenger is Bill Conway, a Navy veteran and former Cook County assistant state’s attorney whose self-funded campaign has caused the cost of this year’s primary to skyrocket.

Mr. Conway currently has nearly $6 million on hand largely thanks to his father, William Conway, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group hedge fund. The elder Mr. Conway has thus far donated $7.5 million to his son’s campaign, according to Illinois Sunshine, which tracks money in state politics.

Mr. Conway and his campaign didn’t respond to requests for an interview or comment.

Ms. Foxx’s re-election committee has $2.5 million on hand, but she has also been supported by a political-action committee funded by a $2 million infusion from billionaire George Soros’s Democracy PAC.

Ms. Foxx said Mr. Conway’s high-dollar campaign hurts Cook County by skewing the conversation toward what he wants to focus on in commercials, which is often Jussie Smollett.

Ms. Foxx holds a slight lead over Mr. Conway in the most-recent polling on the race, conducted last month by ALG research, a Democratic public-opinion firm.

Mr. Conway has surged over the past three months, in part as his name recognition rises and as all the candidates continue to hammer Ms. Foxx on her record, particularly her handling of the Smollett case. The same poll found that 57% of primary voters gave her a negative job rating on the case and only 25% gave her a positive rating.

“I’ll end the special treatment for the rich and well-connected,” Mr. Conway says in one television ad, as an image of Mr. Smollet flashes on screen.

The Democratic primary is March 17. Whoever gets the nomination will then face a general election challenger in an area that has long been a Democratic stronghold.

Write to Ben Kesling at benjamin.kesling@wsj.com