Four jurists targeted for removal by both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times were retained by the voters in yesterday's election.
Combining figures provided by Cook County Clerk David Orr and the Chicago Board of Elections, it appears that Judge Evelyn B. Clay received a 68.69% "yes" vote from the voters, easily besting the 60% retention threshold.
Judge Vanessa A. Hopkins received a 74.24% "yes" vote in the City and a 66.20% "yes" vote in the suburbs for a combined favorable percentage of 69.92%.
Judge Cassandra Lewis got a combined 68.55% approval rating and Judge Edward N. Pietrucha received "yes" votes from 65.40% of the Cook County electorate.
These figures are taken from unofficial County results showing 2250 of 2290 precincts counted and unofficial City results showing 2504 of 2575 precincts counted.
A quick survey of the other results showed no other retention candidate in jeopardy of losing his or her seat.
4 weeks ago
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Some VERY preliminary analysis: Median voter participation in the circuit court retentions was 57.6%, generally in line with other recent elections. Median approval rate was 76.6%; this is actually a bit lower than I expected. Kathleen G. Kennedy was the high (80.9%), ahead of Thomas Flanagan (79.8%) and six others who topped 79%. Edward N. Pietrucha was low at 65.4%; he and the other three judges “neg’d” by the Sun-Times and Tribune were the only four below 70%. Use of voter recommendations appears to have been just over 100,000 votes, in line with recent history. This is difficult to further subdivide, but it appears that newspapers were responsible for 70,000 votes or so, and bar groups for the remainder. Female and Irish names had their usual small positive effects, adding roughly 2.25% and 1.4%, respectively, to a judge’s approval rate. There also appears to be a more pronounced positive effect than usual for African-American sounding names and a more pronounced negative effect than usual for heavily white ethnic-sounding names, possibly a point or two each (but this isn’t something I’ve estimated statistically before and am simply eyeballing). Finally, if you’re going to share a president’s surname, make it a Democrat’s. Besides Kathleen Kennedy’s apparent one-point bump, Lewis Nixon lost around a point—which is less than Bernetta Bush’s five-point hit in 2004, but still...gotta love Cook County.
Just read that the State Board of Elections "found the complaint of Schaefer v. Citizens for Pamela E. Loza, 08CD042, was filed on justifiable grounds." Pamela E. Loza got a sanction. Too bad Loza hasn't YET been up for a public hearing for all of her illegal and poor practices! Maybe soon...we can only hope. She's gotten away with too much and has been allowed to use poor practices as opposed to best practices.
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