Dr. Klumpp analyzes the Supreme Court primary

Albert J. Klumpp, PhD, a Research Analyst with the Chicago firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, has provided FWIW with his take on the recent Supreme Court primary.

He agreed with my suggestion that Justice Mary Jane Theis's victory had a lot to do with her fundraising and TV ad campaign. "But," he writes, "there is more to it than just that."

Klumpp reports that, in analyses he's done on the circuit and appellate contests from 1986 to 2010, "I've found only a very small relationship between campaign spending and election results. Statistically it's barely even detectable. This makes sense, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Cook County is so populous that it takes a lot of money to even make contact with any significant chunk of the electorate. And then, because most people have little interest in judicial contests, it's hard to get a name or a message to 'stick' enough that people will actually remember it on election day among the deluge of other political ads for higher-level offices and purposely search for that candidate on the ballot."

Klumpp noted that there have been only seven Supreme Court contests in Cook County during the past 38 years; these events provide insufficient data for serious number-crunching. But, he suggests, an analogy may be made between the Supreme Court races and other countywide judicial races.

"Look at the most recent contest, in 2000," Klumpp writes. "In that one, two of the four candidates spent more than $1 million and ran TV ads. What happened? One of them (Fitzgerald), was the winner. But despite being slated, having the highest bar ratings, and getting the Tribune's endorsement, he won by less than five percentage points over a candidate who spent only $250,000 but had better political name recognition (Cousins). The other big spender (Zwick), finished dead last."

Therefore, Klumpp concludes, simply raising and spending lots of money is not enough. The ads purchased, he says, must have an impact.

In the case of Justice Theis, Klumpp felt there were three identifiable reasons why her commercials were effective. "First," he writes, "and most importantly, there was very little at the top of the ballot in this primary. Think about it: Usually by election day we've all been so utterly inundated by big-budget political ads that we're ready to throw our TVs out the window. Not this time; it actually was very mild. Not many ads at all, and possibly more ads for Theis than for anybody else. So she wasn't competing for attention with candidates for president or governor or senator or county board president or the like." I mentioned the pro- and anti-Romney ads, but Klumpp felt these were relatively few, at least compared with other election cycles.

"Second," Klumpp writes, "the ads were very good. The one she ran most was a very positive ad; hit all the right points about her bar ratings and newspaper and political endorsements; it featured carefully selected images of her looking civic-minded and engaged. Overall it made her look good and sold her very well--exactly what you need when most people know little or nothing about any of the candidates." On the other hand, Klumpp writes, "Back in 2000, Zwick's ads were so awful that they got him in a lot of hot water and sunk his campaign. Theis' were just the opposite."

"Third," Klumpp concluded, "[although] I can't prove it directly, Theis's ads showed Mayor Emanuel and emphasized his endorsement of her, and I think that mattered big-time. Remember when Emanuel won his election last year; all of the talk was how he did so well across the entire city--even in the black wards against his black opponent and in the Hispanic wards against his Hispanic opponent. Well, look at the Supreme Court primary voting in the city, where [Appellate Court Justices Joy V.] Cunningham and [Aurelia] Pucinski needed to do well. Theis beat Cunningham in 40 of the 50 wards, and in only four wards did she lose by as much as ten points." (Justice Cunningham's largest margins came in the 4th, 6th, 21st and 24th Wards; she also finished ahead of Justice Theis in Wards 3, 7, 8, 9, 20 and 27.) Cunningham was a strong candidate, Klumpp said. "Just six years ago Cunningham beat a slated white candidate and won her appellate court primary on the strength of minority votes in the city."

And, Klumpp added, Pucinski beat Theis in only four of the 50 wards, winning by double digits in only one. (Pucinski's largest margin came in the 22nd Ward; she also carried Wards 12, 23, and 31.) This was the same Pucinski, Klumpp noted, "who beat a beat both a slated, black female candidate and a white, Irish-surnamed candidate (whom the Tribune and Sun-Times both endorsed -- and who spent in excess of $250,000) just two years ago in both the city and the suburbs on the strength of name recognition."

It was Justice Theis's success in all ethnic communities in the City that suggested to Klumpp how important was Emanuel's endorsement. Emanuel's image "in Theis' ads, and also on those here's-the-party-slate palm cards that were mailed countywide, sure seems to have made a difference."

I asked Dr. Klumpp if he might be exaggerating the mayor's influence. Certainly, his endorsement of Justice Theis was decisive in getting her a head-start on fundraising, and certainly when elected Mayor Emanuel polled well in areas across the city. But controversy descends upon anyone on the 5th Floor. During the campaign, Mayor Emanuel's battles with CPS teachers over a longer school day were frequently in the news (the Chicago Teachers Union endorsed Cunningham) and the controversy over speed cameras by school and parks really heated up just before the primary. But Dr. Klumpp stood his ground.

"I'm not saying that everybody likes everything that Emanuel does," Klumpp responded. "But I don't think a controversial issue or two out of all of the issues out there are going to lead people to say, 'The mayor wants speed cameras, therefore I'm voting against Theis.' Not everybody likes the long school day thing either, and a lot of city teachers vote, so sure, maybe some people did vote against Theis because of Emanuel. But it looks pretty clear from the evidence that his net impact was very positive." Klumpp stated that, controversies aside, "I get the impression that Emanuel is still a pretty popular guy in the city--certainly a lot more popular than Daley was in 2010 when," Klumpp says, "the value of slating tanked."

"Really," Klumpp concluded, "the only direct Emanuel-related controversy in the Supreme Court contest was the residency-ruling thing. But that never got any traction at all, despite Pucinski trying very hard to slam Theis about it."

Dr. Klumpp's 2005 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Illinois (Chicago) was entitled, "Judicial Retention Elections in Cook County: Exercise of Democracy, or Exercise in Futility." He has since published in Chicago legal publications on retention elections including, "Voter Information and Judicial Retention Elections in Illinois," 94 Ill. B.J. 538 (October 2006); "Cook County Judicial Elections: Partisanship, Campaign Spending, & Voter Information," CBA Record, January 2007; and "What Influences the Voters?" CBA Record, January 2010.

I've asked Dr. Klumpp to share more of his observations concerning the recent primary race with FWIW readers and I'm hoping he will find time to do so.

Modified April 4, 2012.