Erika Harold, a former Miss America winner, won the Illinois Attorney General GOP Primary on Tuesday.
The Harvard Law School graduate edged out Burr Ridge mayor Gary Grasso with 59 percent of the vote with 66 percent of precincts reporting statewide, NBC Chicago said.
"I'm truly humbled by your support and excited to be voted the Republican nominee for Illinois' Attorney General," Harold said in statement on Twitter. "Thank you for everything so far; our work is just beginning!"
Harold came under fire during the election for an alleged 2000 pageant remark that she would rather place a foster child with known child abusers than same-sex couples, Fox News reported. However, she denied memory of making the comment.
Harold works as an attorney and serves a Commissioner on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism while also sitting on the national board of directors of Prison Fellowship, according to her website.
"The first person who I actually saw vote for me was my grandmother, who's 96 years old, and she said how proud she was to have lived to see the ability to vote for me," Harold said, according to WLS-TV.
"And she's African American and being able to vote this morning and to think about the fact that she was born at a time when voting running for office, running for attorney general would not have even been a possibility makes me really take this moment in."
Meanwhile on the Democrat side, Sen. Kwame Raoul declared himself the victor, promising to "expand on" Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s work, Fox News said.
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