Cook County Dems slate 10 alternates for Circuit Court

The casual reader may think this an odd choice for a post, even here.

After all, alternate choices, by definition, if they wait as the Party is asking them to wait, will not even appear on the ballot unless a vacancy occurs. If vacancies do open, the alternates are automatically slated (pre-slated?) in the order of their selection, from one to ten.

There are 13 countywide vacancies already; there may be a few more. A couple, perhaps.

But not 10.

Why accept slating as an alternate for a vacancy that will never open?

The gentleman on the left is Thomas E. Nowinski, a one-time Assistant State's Attorney who is currently Labor Counsel in the Office of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. Licensed as an attorney in Illinois since 2004, he is the son of retired Judge Thomas E. Nowinski.

He was also the Democratic Party's fifth alternate in the 2018 election cycle.

Only three slots opened up after the slating meeting in 2017 -- but those first three 2018 pre-slated alternates, Rosa Maria Silva, Tom S. Sianis, and Thomas F. McGuire, are all sitting judges today.

So, by accepting the unlikely alternate spot in 2018, Mr. Nowinski is in position now to have the Party's promised support the moment another vacancy occurs. And he's got a campaign website and campaign Facebook page already in place awaiting the fulfillment of that contingency.

So... the Cook County Democratic Party would presumably hold Nowinski up as an example of what can happen where a prospective candidate remains patient. His story is incentive for the nine behind him not to run against a Party candidate.

And there's a cautionary tale in this historical review: Alternates 1, 2, and 3 from 2018 are all judges today. Alternate 5 is in line to be slated when as and if another countywide vacancy occurs.

What happened to Alternate 4? Well, the fourth alternate in 2018 was a sitting judge, with an appointment that would have expired if she didn't find a way to stay on the bench. So she tried her hand a subcircuit race... and got knocked off the ballot. She was among the many presenters last week at the slating meeting. But she wasn't slated. And she is not an alternate either.

After Nowinski, the Party's slated alternates are, in order, former Judge Travis Richardson, Cristin McDonald Duffy, Eric Sauceda, Yolanda Sayre, Frank Andreou (a 12th Subcircuit candidate in 2016), Joseph Chico (who made a 1st Subcircuit run in 2010), Diane Marie Pezanoski (a finalist for Associate Judge in 2018), Amanda Pillsbury (who ran countywide in 2018), and Ashonta Rice (who was a candidate for a 15th Subcircuit vacancy in 2018).

And who did the Party actually slate for the 13 countywide vacancies already in existence? I'll get to that in my next post.