Illinois Attorney General Republican hopeful Erika Harold made a stop in Jacksonville yesterday evening.
Harold met and spoke with a number of local residents at an event organized by the Morgan County Republicans. Also in attendance was State Representative C.D. Davidsmeyer, Morgan County State’s Attorney Gray Noll, as well as Appellate Judge candidates Judges Thomas Harris and John Schmidt.
After visiting with local residents for about an hour, Harold spoke to the crowd briefly to discuss her political principles and campaign platforms. Harold explains the type of message she hopes to get across.
“My core messages won’t change because I entered this race wanting to give the people a choice, and to focus on issues like combating political corruption, putting the people’s interests over partisan interests, making sure that the office is focused on enforcing the law as opposed to imposing any particular political or ideological agenda. And that has been resonating with people on both sides of the aisle because it’s not about using the office to target one party or the other, it’s about holding both parties accountable, so that message won’t change,” Harold says.
With Illinois’ current Attorney General Lisa Madigan announcing several months ago that she did would not seek re-election, Harold hopes to fill the pending void as the state’s chief legal officer. Harold talks about how she hopes to address political corruption on both sides of the aisle.
“People thro ughout the state are very concerned about the sense that politicians play by one set of rules and everyone else plays by another. That impacts people not only from the sense that the government isn’t fair, but in terms of competing fairly for jobs, contracts, grants and other opportunities. Right now, the Attorney General’s office has authority under the State Ethics Act to address political corruption, but I will also be calling for the legislature to give the Attorney General additional tools as it relates to being able to convene certain types of grand juries and use subpoena power to be more proactive,” says Harold.
Harold also discusses the notion of implementing Veterans Courts and drug courts in Illinois.
“I’m talking to state’s attorneys throughout the state to see the types of approaches that are having the best impact in their communities. I don’t know that there’s a ‘one size fits all’ approach for the entire state because the problems vary;the opioid epidemic that is effecting parts of the state, you have other issues that are effecting other parts of the state, and you have resource differences. So my goal is to talk with the different state’s attorneys to see what the measures are that have been successful and what we can promote broadly,” Harold says.
Harold is a native of Champaign-Urbana. She attended the University of Illinois prior to graduating from Harvard Law School. The general primary election takes place on March 20, 2018.