Guest Post: Dr. Klumpp takes a look at 2022 judicial campaign spending

FWIW is pleased to present this Guest Post by Albert J. Klumpp, a generous and frequent contributor to FWIW over the years, a research analyst with a public policy PhD, and the author of several scholarly works analyzing judicial elections.

by Albert J. Klumpp

Our final piece of business in examining Cook County’s 2022 judicial election cycle is a look at the campaign spending numbers. As in, how much was spent, who spent it, and how it all compares to previous cycles.

The 75 candidates who sought one of the county’s 29 judicial vacancies spent a total of $8,028,433 on their campaigns. Except for one November contest involving two candidates in the 13th Subcircuit, all of that total was spent for the June primary.

For the two Appellate Court vacancies, five of the six candidates reported totals of between $123,281 and $236,262. Raymond Mitchell was the highest spender; Devlin Schoop was the lowest (filed ISBE documents but reported $0 in spending).

For the 26 candidates for countywide Circuit Court vacancies, the median spending amount was $72,744. Rena Marie Van Tine was the biggest single spender at $317,879; this was the fifth-highest total for a countywide candidate since 1980, but was well short of the top four, each of whose inflation-adjusted totals exceeded $400,000 (Jack Hagerty 2018, Martin Leavitt 2000, Kerrie Maloney Leytin 2020, Chris Stacey 2020). The top ten countywide spending totals for 2022:

As for the subcircuits, the median spending amount for the 43 candidates who sought subcircuit vacancies was $50,840, slightly less than that of the countywide candidates. But as has become typical, certain individual contests produced some remarkable numbers.

The single most-watched subcircuit contest took place in the 4th Subcircuit and involved ShawnTe Raines-Welch, the wife of the current Illinois House Speaker. Not surprisingly, Ms. Raines-Welch was able to mount a substantial campaign, and ended up spending $697,356 during the primary cycle (and, as the chart below indicates, just a bit more besides for the uncontested general election). This easily outdistanced the previous record high for a subcircuit primary campaign (James Shapiro in 2018, inflation-adjusted to $574,619).

And yet... Ms. Raines-Welch is not the new record-holder. That distinction belongs to Stephen Swedlow, who faced one opponent in an 8th Subcircuit contest and spent a whopping $719,637. Roughly two-thirds of that amount was reported as direct mail costs, with smaller amounts spent on both robocalls, digital advertising, and consulting.

The top ten subcircuit spending totals:

As for the larger significance of these numbers: A few years ago, in an article for the CBA Record*, I presented an analysis of spending numbers covering candidates from 1980 through 2018. I showed how spending had trended upwards significantly in the decades of the 2000s and 2010s compared to the 1980s and 1990s. The decade of the 2020s has only two completed election cycles so far, so any sort of larger comparison to previous complete decades is premature. But as the following graph shows, there is no reason to think that the gradual increase in spending is leveling off.

Median Spending By Decade, Cook County Judicial Candidates (excluding Supreme Court candidates):

Finally, the usual fine print. The amounts reported here come from a review of every quarterly campaign finance report filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections by every candidate. The totals include items reported as in-kind contributions, and exclude items that are not directly relevant to the vote-getting objective of the campaign (for instance, loan repayments that are technically required to be reported as expenditures). All pre-2022 totals were adjusted for inflation basic standard Consumer Price Index data provided on Federal Reserve Bank websites.

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*  "Campaign Spending in Cook County Judicial Elections," CBA Record, Vol. 33, No. 6, p. 30 (Nov/Dec 2019).