By Illinois Review
Former Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau may have fled Illinois following his humiliating landslide defeat last year, but sources tell Illinois Review that the Republican has not left southwest suburban GOP politics behind.
Pekau left office after the April 2025 loss and, according to legal documents reviewed by Illinois Review, now resides in Parker, Colorado.
Multiple sources familiar with southwest suburban Republican politics say he has continued working from there to undermine former Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, the Republican nominee for the 17th District Cook County Board seat.
Pekau’s involvement represents the latest chapter in a years-long political feud with Gorman — one that has repeatedly put the former GOP mayor at odds with fellow Republicans.
Orland Park voters overwhelmingly rejected Pekau in April 2025, electing Jim Dodge by nearly 16 points. Official Cook County results showed Dodge winning 57.78 percent to Pekau’s 42.22 percent. Pekau’s entire slate was also swept from office.
On election night, Pekau acknowledged the scale of the defeat himself.
“I got shellacked,” he said.
Pekau’s 2025 defeat followed several earlier political setbacks. In 2023, Orland Park voters rejected a referendum backed by Pekau by 31 points, while candidates aligned with him lost nine of 10 races.
Illinois Review also previously reported, based on public records obtained through FOIA, that Pekau and village trustees used government email accounts and Village Hall resources in connection with his 2022 congressional campaign.
The pattern has helped cement Pekau’s reputation as a deeply divisive figure in southwest suburban Republican politics — one whose candidates and political initiatives have repeatedly been rejected by voters.
Sources also tell Illinois Review that Pekau has been helping Democratic nominee Elyse Hoffenberg behind the scenes from Colorado — placing the former GOP mayor in the unusual position of working against his own party’s nominee while assisting the Democrat seeking to defeat her.
The feud stretches back years. Pekau has also been politically aligned with outgoing Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison, another longtime Gorman rival.
Morrison has also drawn criticism from conservatives in recent years, including for joining a unanimous County Board vote to reallocate $70 million from migrant health care to food service for new illegal immigrant arrivals in Chicago.
Gorman previously represented the 17th District on the Cook County Board for more than a decade and is now the Republican nominee to return to the seat as Morrison prepares to leave office.
She faces Democratic nominee Elyse Hoffenberg, the Lyons Township clerk whose campaign has suddenly become embroiled in controversy surrounding an after-hours encounter inside a government building.
Patch reported Monday that Gorman said she had been told surveillance footage shows what was described to her as a “romantic kiss” between Hoffenberg and Bridgeview Mayor and former Democratic State Sen. Steven Landek.
Hoffenberg, who is married, acknowledged that a kiss occurred but characterized it as a “peck.” She said she immediately told Landek the interaction was inappropriate and unprofessional and that he apologized.
The controversy has triggered an extraordinary political fight over the surveillance footage and an emergency Lyons Township meeting that was later canceled.
Yet even as Hoffenberg faces questions surrounding the incident, sources say Pekau remains engaged from more than 900 miles away in Parker, Colorado, working against longtime political rival Liz Gorman.
The unusual alignment places the former Republican mayor on the side of the Democratic nominee in a competitive Cook County Board race.
But Pekau’s political backing has hardly been a guarantee of success: his endorsed candidates and initiatives have repeatedly been rejected by voters in recent years.
