A security camera inside the Lyons Township government office in Countryside captured Township Clerk Elyse Hoffenberg being kissed by Bridgeview Mayor Steve Landek after hours, and that footage has now landed squarely in the middle of a bitter Cook County Board campaign. Hoffenberg, a Democrat running for the open District 17 seat, says the moment was a lighthearted, friendly exchange between colleagues, not anything romantic. Her Republican opponent, former Commissioner Liz Gorman, has filed an open-records request for a copy of the video and says it raises questions about Hoffenberg's judgment.
The footage and the fight over who has seen it, who leaked it, and why were first detailed by the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that Hoffenberg told Landek the kiss was inappropriate and that he apologized to her afterward. Hoffenberg has previously described the encounter as a peck, and she has released images to select media outlets in an apparent effort to control how the moment is characterized publicly. Landek is identified in the report as Lyons Township's Democratic committeeman, a former state senator, and the sitting mayor of Bridgeview.
Hoffenberg is challenging Gorman for the District 17 seat being vacated by Republican Commissioner Sean Morrison, who chose not to seek re-election, leaving one of the board's few competitive GOP-held seats up for grabs, according to Ballotpedia. Gorman is no stranger to the office: per Wikipedia, she previously represented District 17 on the county board for 13 years, from 2002 until her resignation in July 2015, and also chaired the Cook County Republican Party from 2007 to 2008. Hoodline reported on the shape of this general-election matchup back in March in its Cook County Board primary coverage.
Accusations of Leaks, Deletions and Extortion
The dispute has grown far beyond a single clip of security footage. Per the same Sun-Times account, Hoffenberg has accused Lyons Township Supervisor Chris Getty of trying to delete the video and of leaking it to Gorman. She has also accused unnamed political opponents of extortion, alleging they threatened to release the footage unless she ended her county board campaign — an accusation Gorman has flatly denied, telling the outlet she had no involvement in any harassment or extortion attempt.
Gorman's stated concern, as relayed in the report, is narrower: she says the episode speaks to Hoffenberg's judgment in using a government office for what appears to be a private matter. Gorman's attorney has separately asked Lyons Township to preserve any video connected to the incident, and Gorman says she still has not received everything she requested from the township. Hoffenberg, for her part, has said she intends to stay focused on her campaign rather than get pulled deeper into the dispute.
A Township Already at War With Itself
The video's public emergence did not occur in a vacuum. Just days earlier, three Lyons Township trustees called an emergency meeting for August 24 to vote on an independent investigation into alleged surveillance, harassment, and political retaliation involving Getty, according to La Grange Patch. That meeting was canceled, and Hoffenberg filed a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Bureau over the matter. Township officials have also discussed hiring a politically connected Chicago law firm to investigate, a step that could ultimately be funded by taxpayers, on top of the fact that the surveillance cameras that captured the kiss were themselves installed at Hoffenberg's Countryside office at taxpayer expense.
Getty's attorney, Burt Odelson, who represents the supervisor on governmental and political matters, said his client neither leaked nor tried to delete the video. La Grange Patch reports that Odelson's law firm has contributed roughly $95,000 over the years to Getty's campaign committees for township supervisor and village mayor. Getty is currently running as the sole independent candidate for Illinois' 4th Congressional District, aiming to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, a bid Hoodline covered in its report on Byron Sigcho-López's ballot fight. Getty was first elected mayor of Lyons in 2009 at age 26, making him the youngest mayor in Illinois at the time, and he took office in the shadow of his late father, former Mayor Ken Getty Sr., who was convicted of federal mail fraud in 1998 in a municipal bid-rigging scheme.
Records Requests and Open Questions
Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, public bodies are generally required to respond to records requests within five business days, with an optional five-business-day extension available under specified conditions, according to the Better Government Association. That statutory clock is now central to Gorman's push to obtain the full video and to her claim that Lyons Township has not turned over everything she has sought. Government records are generally accessible to members of the public upon request to a public agency, but it remains unclear how the footage was accessed, preserved, and ultimately disseminated to select outlets.
Whether any formal investigation — state ethics review, law enforcement inquiry, or the township's own independent probe — will move forward remains uncertain. The uncertainty echoes past scrutiny of Lyons government: federal agents raided Lyons Village Hall and Getty's private insurance office in September 2019 as part of a broader multi-suburban corruption investigation tied to the federal probe of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, though no charges were ever brought against Getty, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark reported at the time.
For now, the video sits at the intersection of at least three overlapping political contests: Hoffenberg and Gorman's fight for the county board's District 17 seat, Getty's independent congressional campaign, and Landek's own standing as a Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointee to the Illinois Finance Authority board, a post he was reappointed to in July 2025 through 2028, according to the Illinois Review. How — or whether — the underlying footage becomes fully public through the FOIA process may determine how much further the story travels before November.
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