Update: Will County Sheriff: Jim Reilly gains 289-vote lead over Mike Kelley, unofficial results show

Unofficial vote totals as of 10 p.m. Tuesday showed Will County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Reilly leading incumbent Will County Sheriff Mike Kelley in the race for Will County sheriff.

Reilly, a Republican Will County sheriff’s deputy, went head-to-head against Kelley, the two-term Democratic sheriff, for a second time since the 2018 election. Kelley has been with the sheriff’s office for 35 years. Reilly said he’s been in law enforcement for 20 years.

Reilly had 110,424 votes and Kelley had 110,135 votes as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to unofficial vote totals from the Will County Clerk’s Office.

The results are based on all 310 precincts reporting in the county.

Reilly said he was extremely happy with the results. He said he wanted to thank the voters of Will County and all those who work in law enforcement and who are first responders who supported his campaign.

“Clearly this victory is because of them. Me and my new administration are anxious to get to work,” Reilly said.

Kelley said he was not ready to concede yet and he was waiting on the provisional and vote-by-mail ballots.

“He won tonight but I’m going to wait and see. There’s still a lot of votes to be counted,” Kelley said.

Kelley said he went through a similar situation in 2014 against former Will County Sheriff Ken Kaupas.

In that election, Kaupas had more than a 240 vote lead over Kelley. Later, a final count was done and Kelley gained a 471-vote edge in that count.

In the months leading up to the election, the criminal justice reform law in Illinois known as the SAFE-T Act became a key issue between Republicans and Democrats. State Sen. Darren Bailey, the Republican challenger to Gov. JB Pritzker, claimed in September that crime increased under Pritzker and blamed it on the SAFE-T Act.

In Reilly’s second bid for Will County sheriff, he has appealed to voters concerned about crime by criticizing the SAFE-T Act. He also claimed Kelley refused to publicly speak out against the act or the “current liberal political movement that is destroying law enforcement.”

In response, Kelley said he’s spoken about his concerns about the SAFE-T Act to state officials long before it became law and urged Pritzker to veto the legislation. Kelley said he’s worked with state lawmakers on trailer bills to amend the law.

“Basically, what he’s saying is because I’m not publicly on Facebook telling everybody I hate [the SAFE-T Act], that I’m not doing anything. It’s just a flat-out lie,” Kelley said.

As sheriff, Reilly said he wants his administration to select the most qualified people for upper management, reduce costs and increase efficiencies in the sheriff’s office, use a plainclothes tactical unit to target high-crime areas, and implement an intelligence database.

For his third term, Kelley said he wants to improve recruitment and retention of correctional officers at the Will County jail, replenish the sheriff’s office fleet with newer vehicles and continue to work on obtaining funding for substance-abuse prevention initiatives.

Reilly said Kelley treats his public office as a part-time job.

“This has resulted in low morale and a lack of general direction within the sheriff’s department,” Reilly said.

Kelley said Reilly’s claim is “made up.” He said there’s only a small percentage of people at the sheriff’s office who are not happy.

“Most of those are the people I had to discipline for one reason or another,” Kelley said.