Democrat Monica Gordon will win a special election for Cook County Clerk with 65% of the vote, The New York Times projected Tuesday night with data from the Associated Press.
Gordon faced Republican candidate Michelle Pennington and Libertarian candidate Christopher Laurent in the race to fill the remainder of the late Clerk Karen Yarbrough’s term.
After Yarbrough died in April with more than two years left in office, the Cook County Democratic Party nominated Gordon, who said she considers Yarbrough a “mentor,” to run for the position in the fall.
As county clerk, Gordon’s responsibilities will include overseeing suburban county elections, issuing real estate taxes and managing countywide records including marriage, birth and death certificates.
Gordon told WBEZ she aims to encourage more people to vote, make more documents accessible online and use AI technology to free up clerk’s office employees for other tasks.
Pennington, who received 31% of the vote, centered her campaign on increasing security and transparency in elections, bringing back five-day work weeks for employees and ending “the culture of nepotism” within the office.
Laurent, the chair of the 14th Police District Council, received 4.3% of the vote when the election was called at 8:38 p.m. He ran on a platform that included increasing digitization, transparency and property rights protections.
“As a member of the Libertarian Party, basically showing on the ballots is always a success,” Laurent told The Daily. “We’re still waiting to see what the final vote count looks like, to see if we meet the thresholds where we can establish ourselves in the Cook County races in the future.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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