By Illinois Review
Safe Suburbs USA PAC founder Kevin Coyne has spent the last two years criticizing the SAFE-T Act, which passed both chambers of the Illinois legislature with unanimous Democratic support back in 2022 – arguing that the law is “dangerous” and would “undermine law enforcement’s ability to protect public safety.”
But in a list just released by Coyne’s PAC highlighting the candidates the pro-public safety and pro-law enforcement organization will be endorsing during the 2024 election cycle, one name sticks out: Chicago Democrat Eileen O’Neill Burke who is running for Cook County State’s Attorney – who not only endorsed the controversial SAFE-T Act, but said, “The passage of the SAFE-T Act exemplifies a significant step towards reforming our laws to prioritize fair outcomes over systemic biases.”
In an opinion piece published in the Patch in August 2022, Coyne alerted local Naperville residents – where he resides, to “Please sound the alarm on the SAFE-T Act,” noting that the law “undermines law enforcement’s ability to protect public safety.” Coyne also highlighted the fact that “100 of Illinois’ 102 elected State’s Attorneys have publicly condemned this law.” The Safe Suburbs USA PAC founder then concluded his article with,
“To all of Naperville elected leaders, please send a loud and clear message that the City of Naperville values public safety as its highest priority and that the numerous problematic provisions within this bill (notably free bail) should be removed from this widely condemned law.”
In August of 2021 – the year Coyne founded the Safe Suburbs USA PAC, he gave an interview with the Chicago City Wire where he discussed the SAFE-T Act and how it favors the criminals, saying, “You look at repeat criminals and they are not being held accountable and that’s partly because a lot of legislation seems to embolden law breakers. People are very upset about crime and want to see something different.” And the goal of the new PAC, according to Coyne, was to “push and support as many pro-public safety candidates for office as the group can.”
But the endorsement of O’Neill Burke – a Chicago Democrat, runs contradictory to the mission of the PAC. On September 15, 2023, the Cook County State’s Attorney candidate released a video message reiterating her support of the SAFE-T Act, saying,
“The SAFE-T Act is a seminal piece of legislation. It’s also known as the Pretrial Fairness Act. What it does is it changes the way we detain people pretrial…We cannot fail in its implementation, and that’s why the role of the state’s attorney and this election is so vitally important.”
This past April, after clinching the Democratic nomination for State’s Attorney, O’Neill Burke said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, that she was “unfairly cast as the tough-on-crime candidate.”
“I think a lot of the concern was unfair that I was going to be very hard on crime. I want to be effective. That doesn’t mean we’re going to lock everybody up.”
O’Neill Burke is running against Republican nominee Bob Fioretti in the November election. In addition to the endorsement of Burke, the PAC has included the following list of candidates that have received their endorsement:
Mary Cole for Lake County State’s Attorney
Aaron Porter for State Representative, 81st District
Gabby Shanahan for State Representative, 97th District
Kenton Skarin for Appellate Court, 3rd District
Jennifer Sanalitro for State Representative, 48th District
Chuck Maher for Will County Executive
Raquel Mitchell for Will County Recorder of Deeds
Vince Logan for Will County Board, District 7
Cindy Cronin Cahill for DuPage County Board, District 1
Nicole La Ha Zwiercan for State Representative, 82nd District
Patty Gustin for DuPage County Board, District 5
Baron Leacock for DuPage County Board, District 3
Nicole Prater for DuPage County Recorder
Regan Deering for State Representative, 88th District
Eric Weis for Kendall County State’s Attorney
Joe Soto for DuPage County Board, District 6
Matt Prochaska for Kendall County Circuit Clerk
Laura Hois for DuPage County Board, District 2
Dave Scriven-Young for Will County Board, District 10
Eileen O’Neil Burke for Cook County States Attorney
Robert Berlin for DuPage County States Attorney
James Glasgow for Will County States Attorney
Jamie Mosser for Kane County States Attorney
Dennis Reboletti for State Representative – District 45
Lance Bell for Kane County Board Chairman
Martin McLaughlin for State Representative – District 52
Katie Dean-Schlottman for Illinois Senate – District 49
Heather Brown for Illinois Senate – District 25
Annette Corrigan for DuPage County Board – District 4
Patricia Bonk for State Representative – District 30
Tosi Ufodike for State Representative – District 51
Jeff Castle for DuPage County Forest Preserve – District 4
On Sunday, this publication revealed that Coyne had some harsh words for presumptive Republican nominee for president Donald Trump – calling the former president “political poison” and a “disaster,” and suggesting in a bizarre social media post that a majority of GOP voters don’t support the 2nd Amendment.
Coyne then went on X to call the article a “trash piece,” posting, “We never called Trump poison and we never said most R voters oppose 2A but keep yapping IR halfwits.” He even posted a gif calling this publication “fake news.” Unfortunately for Coyne, IR had the receipts and the article included screenshots of his posts.
But less than an hour after the article was published, Coyne was in full panic mode – deleting all of his posts, including his post slamming this publication, to cover up the evidence. Coyne even blocked this publication on X, including the owners. And sources confirm with this publication that area Republicans are now canceling their events that featured Coyne and his PAC after his comments about Trump and the 2nd Amendment were revealed.
