Wait... I thought shills weren't supposed to have lawn signs...

It's just one lawn sign, one lawn sign on the east side of a corner lot. But it had a twin on the north side of that lot, where it could be spotted, as I spotted it, driving down Devon Avenue a few days back.

It's not in front of Maureen Patricia O'Leary's home. That's significant, given Abdon Pallasch's summary of the duties of a shill, or 'ringer,' the term he used in a 2009 Sun-Times article referred to in John Seasly's February 14 article on Injustice Watch, "Sham candidates for judge: an election secret you're not supposed to know about," (an article also published in the Sun-Times). In the 2009 article, Pallasch wrote:

The rules are clear for ringers, if unwritten: Don’t campaign, not even a sign in your front lawn. Your job is to siphon votes from Irish women candidates really running for judge — not to win, though sometimes that happens, and then you get to be judge.

So I've been planning to run a picture of this sign anyway, as a follow up to my February 26 post, "About that shill story on Injustice Watch....," the thought being that the existence of even one sign, posted along any public way, refuted the shill allegation, by definition.

Then I received a comment contending that O'Leary has a "huge billboard on the Dan Ryan and over-sized yard signs along Roosevelt Road and the south side." I haven't seen these; if these exist, please send pictures.

But the commenter's point was that Judge Gallagher should apologize to O'Leary for calling her a shill.

I don't know why Gallagher would owe anyone an apology. Whatever her private musings may have been about O'Leary's bona fides, it was Injustice Watch that published them. It was Injustice Watch that made the accusation (though Gallagher is reported as agreeing with Injustice Watch's contention). If anyone owes O'Leary an apology, I'd say it was Injustice Watch.

Inasmuch as I am a confirmed coward, I won't wade further into any crossfire between Gallagher and O'Leary -- or, worse, between Judge Gallagher and Mary Kay Dawson.

But the point here is that O'Leary is acting more and more like a real candidate. Not a shill.

Both Gallagher and O'Leary are largely self-funding. Gallagher just reported a $1,000 contribution from a prominent plaintiff's attorney, but almost every other dollar in her campaign fund has come from her own pocket. She's put a little more into her campaign than O'Leary has, and so far she's reported spending a lot more -- but, then, O'Leary's committee was just set up this year and she's not yet filed a D-2. Neither has raised even a quarter of what Daniel Epstein initially tossed into his quixotic Supreme Court campaign. To this extent, their campaigns are comparable.

The accompanying photograph here is terrible. But, even making allowances for the awful photography (mine), O'Leary's lawn sign isn't particularly good. You can barely see what she's running for. There's no punch number.

Of course, when I first ran for judge, my lawn signs had no punch number either. I didn't really understand how punch numbers worked. I probably found out what mine was before I voted -- but probably not much before. So I understand that a first-time candidate may make rookie mistakes. I made all of them.

Buying less than effective lawn signs may not be the best expenditure of O'Leary's funds. I expect that Gallagher, as a more-seasoned candidate, will spend her money more effectively than O'Leary.

But O'Leary has a good ballot name, and the top ballot line, and even though the parades have been cancelled, the primary is still set for the Feast of St. Patrick. Any other candidate in the race for the Neville, Jr. vacancy on the Appellate Court that dismisses O'Leary out of hand would be making a grave mistake.