Michael B. Hyman breaks the press barrier

Judge Michael B. Hyman, candidate for the countywide Nowicki vacancy that he now holds by Supreme Court appointment, received a nice mention in Neil Steinberg's column in this morning's Chicago Sun-Times.

Steinberg wrote,

Our perverse human psyche prods us to focus on remote concerns while ignoring pressing ones.

Thus we fret about rare peril -- shark attacks and terrorist bombs -- while shrugging off our pending heart attacks and bankruptcies.

Politics is no different. We fixate on primaries that might select a candidate who may become a president whose actions then could, conceivably, affect us, someday, while completely ignoring the local judicial races where the winners will certainly affect our lives in real ways every single day.

Steinberg quoted Judge Hyman on this:

"One judge can overrule the governor," Judge Michael B. Hyman told me. "It took one judge to decide the president of the United States. One judge can end your marriage or send you to jail."

It's wonderful to see Judge Hyman reminding the public about the importance of judicial elections generally, even as he's engaged in a tough contest to hold his own seat.

Not that he didn't get a plug in for his own campaign: Judge Hyman told Steinberg that his ballot number is 100. "For the next three weeks, my name is 100," he said.

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I recently wrote an article here decrying the fact that the major media outlets here almost completely ignore judicial races. In that post, I mentioned that a brief item in the Sun-Times about Judge Laguina Clay-Clark's fundraiser featuring several members of the 1985 Super Bowl Bears was about the only mention I had so far noticed.

This morning, Neil Steinberg's column provides another very rare exception.

Have there been others that I've missed? Can anyone point me to any others?