Notes from inside (sort of) this week's Cook County Democratic Party slating meeting

I reported on the Central Committee's judicial slating choices earlier this week. But, inasmuch as I spent the better part of two days sitting in the room (or pacing outside it), I wanted to share some of the things I saw and heard that readers might find interesting.

No promises, of course....

This is least the third time the Cook County Democratic Party has conducted its slating meeting in the cavernous, ultra-modern hall at the Bronzeville headquarters of IBEW Local 134. I didn't make it over there at all for the December 2021 meetings. I did get there in August 2019 for some of the festivities, writing about at least some of what I sat through.

It occurred to me this week, as I sat in the designated rubbernecker area, that the room itself has a major impact on the process. If you look hard enough at the picture above, you may recognize Appellate Court Justice Jesse Reyes at the podium, very... far... away. The larger the room, the more formal the meeting.

There was less camaraderie and playful banter among the assembled committeepersons at the IBEW than I noticed in 2013, when I attended the slating meeting in a significantly smaller room at the Hotel Allegro. I'm told that things got even more jocular during the slating meetings at the Erie Cafe. That's where the slatemakers met in 2015 and 2017, but I did not make it to slating in those years. I have it on good authority, however, that making things a bit more stately and dignified was one reason Party leaders chose to move to the IBEW.

Of course, nothing can stop folks from cracking wise, especially as the proceedings drag on... and on... but I am getting ahead of myself here.

Let's get back to the picture of Justice Reyes at the podium. He was the second candidate to present on Monday morning; appointed Supreme Court Justice Joy Cunningham had the opportunity to speak first. All candidates, for every office, had exactly two minutes to present their credentials to the assembled committeepersons. Committeepersons, or at least those committeepersons on the subcommittees whose candidates were then appearing, could ask questions, and several did during the course of the slating meeting, some of these questions even ending with a question mark. Most, though, were declarative statements.

Several committeemen rose to salute Justice Reyes with just this sort of declarative-statement-instead-of-question. Reyes is understandably popular in political circles: He goes everywhere. He knows everyone. Unless your social media contacts are limited to immediate family only, Justice Reyes probably haunts your Facebook and IG feeds, too.

As FWIW readers know, Appellate Court justices are elected to 10-year terms. Reyes was just retained in 2022. He doesn't have to go anywhere for years unless he wants to, which he evidently does.

But (spoiler alert) all this affection from several committeepersons did not add up to sufficient weighted votes to get Justice Reyes the endorsement. Of course, this would have been obvious for those who were present when, after Justice Cunningham made her presentation, County Party Chair Toni Preckwinkle rose for one of those sorts of declarative "questions" along these lines: She was proud, Preckwinkle said, to rise in support of Cunningham, as she had in every race where Cunningham had sought support since 1994, even in the one race where the Party had failed to support her [in 2012, when Cunningham first ran for the Supreme Court].

If any committeepersons were unsure of how to vote, surely here was a signal, in letters writ large, or words of few syllables -- simple enough for even the dullest to discern.

Of course, there was another takeaway, buried in that tribute, that was almost certainly unintended: Party loyalty, and blind adherence to the Party's slate, is absolutely vital... except when it isn't.

Next up were the Appellate Court hopefuls. Appellate Court Committee Chair Leslie Hariston (5th Ward Committeeperson) announced that four candidates would be slated for the four known vacancies and four alternates as well. Absent some disaster on the order of a meteor strike, in which case it is likely that no one would care anyway, there are not going to be four more vacancies on that court in this election cycle.

Nine candidates were on the schedule, all of them currently serving on the bench; six of these had presented their credentials at the June Pre-Slating Meeting including, of course, all three of the Circuit Court Judges sitting by Supreme Court assignment on the Appellate Court and pushed into 'up or out' positions by more recent appointees. Each of these six jurists got some kudos in the form of declarative "questions" from one or more committeepersons. One of these, Judge Mary Cay Marubio, the Presiding Judge of the Pretrial Division, asked the slatemakers to make her the third alternate so that she could devote her fullest efforts to implementation of the SAFE-T Act. She was deferring her ambition to serve on the Appellate Court, she said, asking the Committee instead to support Judge Judith Rice to be the first gay woman elected to the Appellate Court.

In the end, 11 potential Appellate Court candidates sought the slatemakers' endorsement. Two, Judge Carolyn Gallagher and former Judge Russ Hartigan, were added to the schedule after it was printed. Neither got any glowing tributes disguised as questions from the audience. Preckwinkle challenged Hartigan about his 2022 run for the Appellate Court. (Not only did he run against the Party's candidate unsuccessfully, the Party's candidate lost.)

In addition to Rice, who did get her share of laudatory remarks, the other two Appellate Court hopefuls who asked for slating were Judges Celia Gamrath and William Sullivan. Both got tesimonials from Oak Park Township Committeeperson and Senate President Don Harmon; Gamrath also received praise from Evanston Township Committeeperson Eamon Kelly. All three got slated as alternates (in order, Gamrath, Rice, and Sullivan). Marubio, who'd asked for the third alternate spot, received nothing.

Whether showered with tributes or not, every candidate was asked at least four questions. Rich Township Committeeperson Calvin Jordan got the first two: If slated, will the candidate be able to contribute to the costs of fielding the ticket? (The buy-in this year is reportedly $45,000.) If not slated, would the candidate run against the party? Jordan tried to mix it up, framing these questions in different ways, referring to meetings with the candidate, providing assurances that, in this case, the questions were a mere formality because he already knew the answers... but the repitition became tedious. Somewhere during the Monday afternoon session, as the Circuit Court hopefuls came up, seemingly in unending supply, Jordan's opening, "Good afternoon," morphed into "Good evening." It wasn't, but it felt like it might be.

Northfield Township Committeeperson Tracy Katz Muhl got to ask almost every candidate the ratings questions: Does the candidate have current ratings from the bar associations? Are these ratings for the office that is sought? And (if the candidate did not volunteer this information in his or her answers to the preceding inquiries) are these ratings all favorable? The Appellate Court candidates all had favorable ratings from their most recent retention bids, but all concurred that the bar groups haven't gotten around to issuing ratings for their Appellate Court bids. No one was happy about it.

Experienced judges are used to running a room. A few had to be reminded that it was the prerogative of the Party Committee Chair to recognize committeemen with questions, not the judge seeking slating. All hopefuls were subject to that two-minute time limit for their presentation. Some were better at adhering to the timer than others.

When his buzzer went off, Justice Carl Anthony Walker, still making his case, quickly commented, "I'm running out of time." Chair Hairston immediately shot back, "No, you're out of time." Walker redeemed himself, though, a few moments later when, in response to the funding question from Committeperson Jordan, he said, "I am prepared to write a check today." Hairston leaned into her microphone and said, "Madame President will see you after the meeting."

Of course, all the really interesting stuff happens when the rabble is sent from the room and the Committeepersons get down to voting. After Judge Ramon Ocasio made his pitch to the slatemakers, the aforementioned President Preckwinkle rose to praise him, noting how she was impressed with him at pre-slating, and that she was recommending he be made the Party's first alternate. In the event, of course, Ocasio got the fourth and final open spot on the ticket. Something happened while the rest of us were cooling our heels in the lobby.

Of course, candidates have to wait in the lobby, too. Here, Larry Rogers Jr. offers words of support to Justices Cynthia Cobbs, Mary Mikva, and Carl Anthony Walker while the slatemakers counted noses.

Early Monday afternoon, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin showed up. Invited to the podium to speak, he opened by saying that his purpose in coming had been to offer support for Rogers, but he turned out not to need Durbin's help after all (Rogers was unopposed in his bid to be renominated to the Board of Review, 3rd District).

State Senate President Don Harmon chaired the Circuit Court Committee's portion of the slatemaking session on Monday afternoon.

All the appointed judges were given the opportunity to be heard first, even James Murphy-Aguilu, who had been appointed to a 10th Subcircuit vacancy. This was consistent with something someone told me when I'd arrived in the morning: All nine appointed judges were likely to be slated, I was told. This was extraordinary; appointed judges have usually done pretty well with the slatemakers in recent years, but never had every single appointed judge been granted a spot on the slate. In past years, some unfortunate appointed judges, knowing they were to be passed over, did not even bother to show up.

I didn't necessarily accept this information as Gospel -- though, of course, it turns out that my informant was entirely correct -- but it did put the proceedings in a very different light: There were, on the program, 25 persons vying for a single vacancy and 10 alternate spots that might amount to nothing at all. (Actually, there were 26, because there was an add-on.)

The 10th spot, as you already know, went to Jennifer Callahan. She was the highest returning alternate from the 2022 election cycle. Accepting an alternate spot was, perhaps, her penance for running against the Party in 2020. In the meantime, Callahan had been a Short List finalist for associate judge earlier this year.

These credentials were all well and good, but 38th Ward Committeeperson Rob Martwick had one further question: "Do you have the support of your committeeman?"

The room erupted with good-humored laughter. Of course, most people in the room knew that Callahan is married to outgoing 41st Ward Committeeman Joe Cook.

With so few actual vacancies at stake, it became a guessing game as to who might get slated as alternates. I starred my notes on the possibles, gauging the kind and quality of the testimonial "questions" from the floor as clues. You'll have to take my word for it, of course, but I guessed nine out of 10. I thought Ashonta Rice, who had been the highest-rated returning alternate from 2022 after Callahan, would make the list. I was wrong.

Rice told the Committee that she could self-fund her race and that her campaign manager was waiting out in the hall, holding $40,000 in her purse. Well, Committeeperson Jordan said, it has gone up a bit....

But -- guessing here -- Rice's problem may have been a negative rating from the Illinois State Bar Association.

Rice was not the only one to complain about bar ratings. FWIW readers will remember that ISBA ratings in particular were singled out as unduly harsh after pre-slating, especially for women of color; Politico had that story on June 16. Joanne Fehn, who was the 10th slated alternate in 2022, was also derailed by negative Alliance ratings. However, she told the Committeepersons, she supplied the Alliance with 41 references and has been informed that not one was contacted by the Alliance.

Back in 2013, Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown professed dismay at judicial candidates loudly proclaiming their loyalty to the Democratic Party. I didn't think this was so terrible, not because I think judges should be partisans -- I most certainly do not -- but because I thought that this was a typical speaker's trick, trying to get a potentially hostile audience to identify with the speaker. Persuasion is not likely where a speaker sets himself or herself at odds with the audience to be persuaded. I just didn't think the trick was particularly effective with the slatemakers.

Judicial hopefuls were trying that same trick this week, too, with about as much effect: If the speaker were known to one or more committeemen for precinct work or other volunteer activities, the committeeperson in question might pipe up and verify the claim. Otherwise... these professions just fell flat.

There wasn't a lot of room for persuasion here -- the decisions about who to slate and who to anoint as alternates seemed pretty well pre-ordained. Perhaps the order of slotting alternates was up for debate behind closed doors; I wouldn't know that, of course. Given the contingent slotting of Ava George Stewart as either second alternate or sixth, depending on whether Yolanda Sayre makes a subcircuit run, I'd guess that there may have been some substantive last-minute discussions. But it really is not that important; there is unlikely to be more than another chair or two allowed at the table when all is said and done, and maybe not even one or two.

The bottom line, though, was no one had any real chance to come in and bowl over the assembled committeepersons, no matter how elegant their two-minute spiel turned out to be. They had a spot when they came in, or they had nothing at all, no matter how many precinct captains lived in their family tree.

No, what bothered me was the Circuit Court candidates' unaimous insistence that they would not run against the Party were they not chosen.

Yes, that strategy has paid off for a few in the past. But, this time, it paid off for exactly one (out of 11 alternates) from 2022. Choosing a no-longer-working strategy doesn't particularly bother me. But several candidates cheerfully announced that they'd signed a pledge not to run. This was, in my view, an unwelcome innovation in the last election cycle. I see this as an infringement on judicial independence, and something to be avoided -- even if one is willing to put faith in a move-up-through-the-alternates path to the bench.

I started this article with the observation that the large room at the IBEW headquarters made for a more formal, less spontaneous proceeding. But there were moments of humanity.

This was my personal favorite: I couldn't help but notice the man sitting next to me, who stood up with his phone recording the moment when Judge Debjani Desai asked the slatemakers for support. When she finished, he sat back down. "Your daughter?" I asked. He nodded. A very proud father, indeed.

Technically, on Monday, the Party's Supreme Court Committee recommended its choice for endorsement, then the Appellate Court Committee made its recommendations, and then the Circuit Court committee announced its choices. But these did not become the Party's slate until the entire Central Committee voted on the reports... while the rest of us were loitering in the lobby... Tuesday afternoon. That meant I had to come back Tuesday, and I did, just to see if the slating choices would be ratified.

I will squeeze one more article out of that.

I wondered if any of the committee reports might be changed when the Central Committee voted as a whole. I was told, however (and I report what I was told without being able to verify this), that the Central Committee has not rejected a committee recommendation since 1994. Whether that's true or not, the committee reports were all accepted on this occasion.