Dr. Klumpp looks at the data: What were the major influences on the 2024 Cook County judicial retention vote?

FWIW is once again pleased to present a Guest Post by Albert J. Klumpp, a PhD in public policy analysis with a national reputation for expertise on judicial races. His article, "California's Judicial Retention Elections: Past, Present, and Future," appeared in the December 2024 issue of the Orange County Lawyer Magazine. Dr. Klumpp has been a generous contributor to FWIW for many years.

by Albert J. Klumpp

This past November 20, I provided FWIW with a preliminary analysis of Cook County’s November 5 judicial retention voting, based on preliminary vote totals and available information. Now that final, official vote totals are available, and using better information in certain categories, I’ve completed a full analysis including ward- and township-level results. As promised, here are some of the details.

■ Voter Participation: Roughly 68% of Cook County voters completed the retention ballot. The figure is higher than long-term historical numbers but is the lowest since 2016—indicating that the surge of voter interest in judicial retention that happened in 2018 is fading somewhat, as it typically has done in similar situations in retention jurisdictions. The highest and lowest participation rates:

■ Voter Approval: The baseline approval rate countywide, controlling for all other factors, was 74.8%. This is a typical value based on recent history. Locations with the highest and lowest baselines:

■ Name Cues: The final figures for name-based voting are virtually identical to the preliminary ones: 1.7% for female; 1.0% for Irish; 1.4% for Black. For Hispanic names the analysis produced a figure of 0.4% but it was not statistically significant. All of the Hispanic-majority locations did favor Hispanic names, but the historical pattern countywide is that heavily ethnic names of whatever origin tend to lag very slightly behind other names. Those two factors tend to offset, as they did here. The highest name-based votes for each category:

Notably, nearly all of the highest pro-female numbers came from Hispanic-majority locations. I had not noticed such a thing before and will have to check past results to see if it is a regular occurrence.

■ Bar Associations: The ratings of local bar associations together influenced 18.2% of the vote. Considering that the figure two years ago was 15.0%, and that for the second consecutive election major newspapers did not report bar ratings, this result was unexpectedly high. The analysis also confirms that ratings from the smaller bars were more influential than ever before, providing nearly half of that 18.2% figure. As I explained in my most recent post, the most prominent sources of bar ratings found in mobile-device searches did not limit themselves to the major bars but rather offered voluminous presentations covering all of the bars. The heaviest users of bar ratings:

■ Social Media Sources: The Girl, I Guess voter guide is continuing to grow in influence. Six years ago when it debuted, it captured 3.4% of the retention vote. Four years ago the figure increased to 4.2%, and two years ago it increased again to 5.3%. Last month the figure increased for a third straight time, to 6.1%. The guide was statistically detectable in 41 wards and 26 townships.

The Chicago Votes! young voters guide, which in 2022 incorporated the original “Cheat Sheet” guide first seen in 2020, this time simply recommended a No vote for every judge who was flagged by Injustice Watch for a negative rating or controversy. Usage of the guide, and also of the Injustice Watch information for anyone who employed the same decision strategy, was 2.7%.

The largest figures for each source:

And two final tables showing the combined information use from all sources:

As FWIW readers know, there are other sources of ratings on retention judges besides these. But typically their impact is too small to detect statistically and so I do not attempt to do so. One limited exception is the Fraternal Order of Police ratings. Countywide the FOP ratings were not detectable, but they did have influence in the 11th, 13th, 38th, 41st and 45th Wards. The 41st produced the highest number, 4.3%.

As usual, these figures are statistical estimates with margins of error, but everything cited above (without qualification) is considered highly statistically significant.

I’ll have one final post about this election cycle, to examine campaign spending for judicial vacancies. That one has to wait for the final quarterly reports to be filed by candidates who were in several partisan contests.

Bonnie McGrath remembered

Bonnie McGrath, who passed away unexpectedly just before Christmas (which would have been her 74th birthday), came to the law later in life, having done other things first.

It is not that unusual for lawyers to choose their profession after trying something else for a time. Many lawyers, including a number of judges, have taken up the law after serving as a police officer; one of my many ex-partners worked first as a teacher. After earning degrees in community health education and public health, Bonnie McGrath worked as a telephone installer for a number of years before taking up journalism. She was not licensed as an attorney in Illinois until 1993.

McGrath did not follow a traditional path to the bar.

An obituary posted on the CBS2 website documents some of McGrath's many intersts and, inter alia, links to a tribute posted on Project Onward's Instagram page.

FWIW readers will recall McGrath's several judicial campaigns: She ran countywide in 2010, 2016, and 2020. During that last campaign, McGrath said she was making her sixth run. In addition to the three mentioned here so far, I know McGrath sought an 8th Subcircuit vacancy in 2018. I've somehow missed one, because the only other one I can remember was her countywide run in 1998.

In 1998 McGrath ran as "Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath" and got roasted for it. Her journalistic contacts and credentials -- including stints with the Chicago Tribune -- did not stop the Tribune from making her the 1998 poster child for all that the Tribune thought wrong about judicial elections.

In those far-off days the Tribune could be counted on doing one, and usually only one, 'news' story in every election cycle, focusing on the real or imagined sins of one particular judicial candidate, which story would then serve as an anchor for the Tribune's biennial scold about Why We Need Merit Selection of Judges. One year, the Tribune singled out a particular judicial candidate because several members of her successful family donated a lot of money to her campaign (she lost, which would have undermined the dire warning of the editorial about money buying judgeships, but the Tribune never noted the irony). In 1998, it was Bonnie's turn, her alleged sin being the attempted exploitation of voter ignorance by adopting "Fitzgerald" as a nickname or middle name just in time for a primary election falling (as it usually does) around the Feast of St. Patrick.

(IIRC, McGrath said she did it on the recommendation of her election lawyer. Who knows? It might even have worked... if the Tribune's Eye of Sauron had not come to focus on her campaign. But that was long ago: Anyone trying a similar tactic today would almost certainly be removed from the ballot. See, here, here, and, most recently, here.)

And why were voters ignorant of the relative qualifications of judicial candidates you may ask? If the Tribune's editors ever asked themselves such a question, they never recognized that the newspaper's policy of running one, and only one, 'news' story during a judicial election cycle, focusing in on only one of many candidates, might be a contributing factor.

But, if McGrath got no special considerations from her fellow journalists, the experience did not sour her on continuing to write, and publish, in the Reader, the Tribune, and elsewhere. In her statement on FWIW concerning her 2020 campaign, McGrath noted that she'd won 25 major journalism awards. She also pointed out, "I won three awards for legal writing from the Chicago Bar Association, and one of my articles was cited in a law review. I did regular columns in the Illinois Bar Journal and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, and have been on the Chicago Bar Association editorial board for 28 years."

McGrath was still a member of the board of editors of the CBA Record at the time of her passing. I first met her, many years back, when I served a much shorter term on that editorial board. I used to link to her blogsite on Chicago Now from the sidebar here on FWIW. When the Tribune folded Chicago Now a couple of years back, McGrath moved to Substack.

In preparing this article I spent a lot of time trying to locate a lengthy piece that McGrath published on Chicago Now concerning why she stopped participating in judicial evaluations. I can't find it. The links to that article that McGrath provided when she commented here or provided a guest post no longer work.

McGrath had substantive and thoughtful arguments about the biases and limitations of bar association judicial evaluations... but adhering to her principles and declining to participate necessarily resulted in her being rated "not recommended" when she made her later runs.

Despite the automatic opposition of the bar associations to her judicial campaigns, Bonnie McGrath continued to participate in bar activities. In addition to the CBA Record, McGrath chaired several CBA Committees over the years, including the Criminal Law and Bench/Bar Relations committees. Some years back, she was also president of the Decalogue Society of Lawyers.

Bonnie was an interesting person, with a wide and varied acquaintance, and a talent for sharing what she saw and what she remembered... like this Substack piece from 2023, "In 1969, I had to listen to 16-year-old Mandy Patinkin sing Broadway tunes in his South Shore living room because his mother made me...." She will be missed.