All 10 judicial candidates the Cook County Democratic Party establishment is working to get elected to countywide judicial vacancies this year are already judges.
Most have deep legal experience and high bar ratings, but also the personal and political connections that have come to epitomize Cook County politics.
The candidates slated by the Democrats are running as sitting judges thanks to an often-opaque process in which justices of the Illinois Supreme Court get to fill vacancies on a temporary basis.
Most of the supreme court’s appointments came months before the election cycle began, leading some party leaders and political observers to suggest other potential candidates may have been discouraged from running against what one insider calls the “Platinum Slate.”
The judicial ballot in the 2024 primary election is unusually scarce in candidates, with a variety of factors coalescing to create the least competitive election for circuit court judgeships in memory.
When elected circuit court judges leave the bench in Illinois, the supreme court can make temporary appointments to hold the job until voters grant the official replacement his or her first six-year term. And endorsing the appointed candidates is nothing new for the Democratic Party. In 2022, just under half of the slate was already appointed; in 2020, it was two-thirds.
But a slate made up entirely of appointees highlights the interconnectedness of the supreme court and the Democratic Party’s decisions more than ever.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who leads the slating process as chair of the Democratic Party, said the supreme court’s appointees were endorsed because they all reflect the party’s priorities for diversity and good bar ratings.
But most of the appointed candidates have long been on the party’s radar, too. In the words of the late former U.S. Rep. Abner Mikva (father of Democratic Party-endorsed appellate court candidate Mary Mikva), most of them aren’t exactly nobody nobody sent.
Two of the appointees, Debjani Desai and James Murphy-Aguilú, had worked in clouted government jobs and had been slated as alternates in 2022. Cook County clerk Karen Yarbrough’s niece Chloé Pedersen had run unsuccessfully in the 4th Subcircuit in 2022, losing to Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s wife, ShawnTe Raines-Welch.
Neil Cohen, who is close with the Obamas, was already an associate judge with a plum assignment in the chancery division. Edward Underhill, a generous donor to Democratic candidates for years, had run for judge twice before and had been in a running group with one of the supreme court justices.
The lone slated candidate who wasn’t yet an appointed judge when it came time to collect petition signatures was Jennifer Callahan, the wife of 41st Ward committeeman and the party’s circuit court slating committee member Joe Cook. She has sought the Democratic Party’s endorsement twice before.
An individualized process
Each of the seven justices gets to select candidates to recommend for vacancies from their district of the state, and each gets to vet the nominees in their way.
The decision-making process is internal to the court, which is not subject to open records laws.
The three justices from Cook County — Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis; P. Scott Neville Jr., who was appointed in 2018 and elected in 2020; and Joy Cunningham, who was appointed to succeed retired Justice Anne Burke and is now running for her first 10-year term — take turns recommending the appointments in Cook County. All are Democrats.
Current primary candidates who have been appointed — which include three candidates in subcircuit races — told Injustice Watch about lengthy paper applications and hourslong interviews with screening committees and with the justices one on one. Most emphasized they had no prior personal acquaintance with any of the justices.
Theis told Injustice Watch she opens a 30-day application period and has applicants fill out a 17-page form. Applicants must also submit their ratings from the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening and the Chicago Bar Association. Theis then has a 14-member committee review the applications and conduct their investigation of the candidates.
“I read every single application closely,” Theis said in a written statement. “The first trait I am looking for is competence. Competence means being able to walk into the high volume, high stress courtrooms that new judges are assigned to and be successful.”
She said “rich life experiences” and community involvement are important criteria. Theis interviews the top candidates personally before making her recommendation to the rest of the court.
Of the candidates running in the March primary, Theis recommended the appointment of Corinne Cantwell Heggie and Desai.
“I got a call from her office,” Desai said, describing what happened after she filled out the application Theis posted online. “I met with her, and she said she was in the process of going through 80 or so applications.” Following the one-on-one meeting with the chief justice, Desai had a separate interview with her committee.
Cunningham did not solicit applications in an open call. She said in an interview with Injustice Watch she has not formalized her application process while she serves in an interim role.
Cunningham said, if elected, she will model her vetting process after Theis and Burke.
“I haven’t solidified it and I’m not going to until I win the election,” she said. “I’m going to use a committee. Because I think that’s more objective. And every letter or inquiry I get – I have my committee lined up, I have not impaneled them because I am in an interim situation.”
Cunningham recommended the appointments of Deidre Dyer, Underhill, Murphy-Aguilú, and Sarah Johnson. Cunningham said she “used an ad hoc committee of lawyers whose opinions I respect” to review candidates, and had multiple one-on-one interviews with the ones recommended by her committee.
“I was very proud of the process that the ad hoc committee used because they sent me people who were excellent,” said Cunningham, underscoring the diversity of her appointees. “There’s a black woman, a white woman, an Hispanic man, and a gay man. … I’m very proud of them.”
Underhill told Injustice Watch that Cunningham, whom he knew through a running group, reached out and asked if he would be interested in an appointment. Johnson and Murphy-Aguilú said they had initially applied for consideration to Theis. Johnson also took the initiative of delivering copies of her application to Cunningham and Neville but Murphy-Aguilú said he was surprised when he was contacted by Cunningham’s representatives.
“It’s kind of a mystery in a certain sense about how these appointments go down, even amongst people who have been doing this for a while,” said Murphy-Aguilú. “I was contacted, and it was, ‘Hey, your name is coming up, would you ever be interested in an appointment?’ And my response was obviously yes.”
Neville, too, did not solicit applications in an open call. He declined multiple requests for an interview through a spokesman.
In a 2022 press release, which did not spell out how to apply to Neville, the justice did explain he would rely on the Alliance of Bar Associations “as his committee to evaluate candidates.” He also said he would only consider attorneys for circuit court vacancies who have practiced for at least 12 years in Illinois.
Neville, who recommended the appointment of Philip Fowler, Owens Shelby, Pedersen, and Arlene Coleman Romeo, did not return an Injustice Watch request for further details about his vetting process. But Neville told Injustice Watch through Supreme Court spokesman Chris Bonjean: “He is working on a new nomination process.”
Shelby told Injustice Watch he had been applying for every temporary appointment he saw posted by the supreme court and for associate judge positions for several years. One day, he was called for a meeting with Neville.
“He asked me some questions, we were talking for about four to five hours, he said I might be considered,” Shelby said. “I was very surprised; it was all new to me. I didn’t know how the process really worked, but I was told that people had been saying good things about me in the past, and that’s how my name came up on their radar.”
On Jan. 17, the supreme court announced the appointment of seven more primary candidates, including Callahan, to temporarily do the work they’re sure to be officially entrusted by voters to perform.
All seven had received “recent positive ratings” from bar associations and had no primary or Republican opponents. At the end of the month, the court also appointed Yolanda Harris Sayre, a former Chicago Police Department lawyer who ran for judge in 2022 and is on the ballot unopposed in the 5th Subcircuit.
After the primary votes are tallied, “it is likely this appointment process will continue,” Bonjean wrote in an email.
Senior reporter David Jackson contributed reporting.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the year when Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. was elected.
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