With only four Cook County Circuit Court seats open for countywide election in the March 2026 primary, Cook County Democratic Party committee people met last week to evaluate 29 judicial candidates seeking their endorsements at the IBEW union hall in Bronzeville.
Party chair and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she couldn’t recall an election cycle with fewer countywide judicial vacancies.
“It makes it more challenging to make our decisions,” she told Injustice Watch.
The party chose to back Michael Cabonargi and D’Anthony “Tony” Thedford — both of whom were recently appointed to the bench on a temporary basis by the Illinois Supreme Court — as well as Ava George Stewart and Luz Toledo.
Cabonargi spent a decade as a commissioner on the Cook County Board of Review before being appointed by President Joe Biden as Midwest regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He resigned from the position after the inauguration of President Donald Trump and briefly served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
Thedford is a former criminal defense attorney who was a public defender for eight years and then in private practice for more than a decade. Stewart is a solo practitioner with a firm focused on criminal and civil cases. Toledo has spent her career in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, most recently in the real estate litigation division.
Preckwinkle, who has made it a point during her tenure as party chair to back non-white candidates in an effort to increase the diversity of the judiciary, touted the backgrounds of the slated candidates.
“It’s a very diverse slate, it includes two African Americans, one person from the Latino community, one person from the white community,” Preckwinkle said. A third of the candidates seeking the party’s endorsement were Black women.
Circuit Court Judge Judith C. Rice, who currently presides over the domestic violence division, was slated for the sole First District Illinois Appellate Court vacancy for Cook County voters. It was created by the recent death of 77-year-old Judge Thomas Hoffman, who was just elected to a new 10-year term last year. Rice would be the first openly lesbian woman to serve on the appellate court. Judge Sanjay Tailor, now temporarily assigned to the appellate court, and circuit court judges Sandra Ramos and William Sullivan were selected as alternates.
In a departure from the last election cycle, when the party slated all of the supreme court’s appointees, the committeepeople snubbed Judge Linda Sackey, a former clerk to Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis, who was appointed to a circuit court vacancy in January.
Preckwinkle said the decision was based on Sackey’s negative ratings from the Chicago Bar Association and LAGBAC (Chicago’s LGBTQ+ Bar Association), which evaluate judicial candidates’ qualifications.
“The decision was made by the group, given our emphasis on having good bar ratings, to substitute Ava George Stewart for her,” Preckwinkle said.
But the party still puts weight in the supreme court’s appointees, Preckwinkle said, explaining why Cabonargi and Thedford, who had not previously sought the party’s support to run for judge, were slated in front of candidates who have put in their time courting committeepeople in previous election cycles.
“We all remember that the supreme court justices who appoint people to fill vacancies are people that we vetted and we supported as well,” Preckwinkle said. “There’s an inclination to trust them on my part — I can’t speak for anybody else.”
Toledo, who was also a newcomer to slating, had the full-throated support of the party’s Latino caucus. “Luz has been found qualified by the bars that have rated her,” said the caucus leader, 22nd Ward Ald. Michael Rodriguez. “She came before myself and others and knocked it out of the park as far as her experience, her demeanor. The Latino committeepersons were looking to rally behind someone, and she made that very easy.”
The party also announced a list of nine alternates — candidates who the party will slate in the order they appear if more countywide seats open as a result of judges’ retirements, resignations, or deaths through Nov. 3.
Many of the candidates who appeared Thursday have sought the party’s endorsement before — including perennial judicial hopefuls Deidre Baumann and Steve Demitro as well as Chicago city attorney Steve McKenzie, public defender Kevin Ochalla, private practitioner Ashonta Rice, and Cook County labor relations attorney Torrick Ward. With the event running well behind schedule, party bosses did not pepper the round robin of candidates with the usual questions about their commitments not to run against slated candidates and their willingness to contribute $45,000 to the party campaign pot.
The dearth of countywide judicial vacancies this year presents a financial challenge to the party’s campaign activities in an election cycle that will include the governor’s race and what might be a heated race for U.S. Senate. While judicial races are the least expensive to run, the multitude of candidates is key to the party’s war chest; last cycle, the 16 slated judicial candidates contributed more than half a million dollars to the party.
The Democrats “will have to be very strategic about what we do to support the people on our slate,” Preckwinkle said.
Some of the candidates who presented themselves at the slating event will be able to run for judge in their local subcircuits, which were redrawn as of the 2024 election and increased from 15 to 20. Currently, the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts has certified 20 vacant judicial seats in the subcircuits. The Cook County Democratic Party does not endorse candidates in subcircuit races, though individual committeepeople often do. Candidates must reside in the subcircuit to run for a seat there.
The party’s slate of candidates will begin circulating petitions to collect voters’ signatures to get on the ballot in August.
Circuit court
Slated candidates:
- Michael Cabonargi
- D’Anthony “Tony” Thedford
- Ava George Stewart
- Luz Toledo
Alternates:
- Steve McKenzie
- Mischelle Luckett
- Nisha Dotson
- Kevin Ochalla
- David Badillo
- Gregory T. Mitchell
- Mark Javier
- Mark Lawrence
- Anna Sedelmaier
Appellate court
Slated candidate:
- Judith C. Rice
Alternates:
- Sanjay Tailor
- Sandra Ramos
- William Sullivan
Correction: This story has been updated to correctly refer to the Cook County Democratic Party’s Latino caucus.
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