Madigan
CHICAGO (Legal Newsline) - Incumbent Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan appears to be coasting to an easy victory over Republican challenger Steve Kim.
With 57 percent of precincts reporting, Madigan has 67 percent of the vote to Kim's 29 percent.
Kim, a former adviser to Gov. Jim Edgar, is the first Asian-American Republican candidate for statewide office in Illinois.
Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, was first elected as the state's top cop in 2002.
In that election, she won more than 50 percent of the statewide vote, making her the state's first female attorney general. In 2006, she was handily re-elected with 74 percent of the vote against Tazewell County State's Attorney Stewart "Stu" Umholtz.
Her father, Michael Madigan, has been in the state House of Representatives since 1971. He's been the Speaker of the House since 1983, excluding a two-year period from 1995-1997. Lisa was born five years before Michael was first elected to the House.
In addition to working in the Edgar administration in the 1990s, Kim has held executive positions with the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, AT&T and Time Warner Cable.