Congratulations to the presumptive winners

They will have to wait an entire year, but each of the candidates named below are virtually assured of beginning (or, in some cases, continuing) a judicial career.

Each of these persons filed for a Cook County judicial vacancy.

And no one filed to run against them.

All of these persons will be unopposed in the Democratic primary in March and, inasmuch as no Republicans have filed to run for any of these vacancies, it is highly likely that each of these candidates will be unopposed next November.

So congratulations to Appellate Court Justices Mary Lane Mikva and Carl Anthony Walker who will almost certainly remain on that court. Congratulations also to these unopposed countywide Circuit Court candidates:

• Corinne C. Heggie,
• Sarah Johnson,
• Deidre M. Dyer,
• Arlene Y. Coleman-Romeo,
• Jennifer Patricia Callahan, and
• Chloe Georgianna Pedersen.

Congratulations, too, to these unopposed subcircuit Circuit Court candidates:

• Pat Heery (3rd Subcircuit - Harmening vacancy),


• Michael M. Chvatal (4th Subcircuit - Felice vacancy),
• Philip Fowler (4th Subcircuit - King vacancy),
• Koula A. Fournier (4th Subcircuit - Maloney vacancy),


• Yolanda Harris Sayre (5th Subcircuit - Lewis vacancy),


• Caroline Glennon-Goodman (10th Subcircuit - McWilliams Vacancy),


• Dawn Gonzalez (11th Subcircuit - Collins vacancy),


• Ralph E. Meczyk (13th Subcircuit - Betar III vacancy),
• Mary Sevandal Cohen (13th Subcircuit - Steffen vacancy),


• Stephanie Kathryn Miller (14th Subcircuit - Pierce vacancy),


• John A. Fairman (15th Subcircuit - Toomin vacancy),


• Cecilia Abundis (16th Subcircuit - Converted from Judgeship of Griffin, Jr.),


• Rivanda Doss Beal (17th Subcircuit - Converted from Judgeship of Aguilar), and
• Lloyd James Brooks (17th Subcircuit - Converted from Judgeship of Flaherty).

For the persons involved, for their families, for their friends and colleagues, this is wonderful, happy news.

But... while I can, and do, join in congratulations to these fortunate persons, I also believe that this is not a healthy development for our court system in particular or our society in general. You may have seen comments to a prior post about the change in the judicial pension structure discouraging potential candidates. I don't think that's the problem. Certainly not the only one.

I'd like to explore this further in another post.

But not in this post. For now, bouquets only to these presumptive winners.