Illinois Dems might sweep the big offices, but it won't mean much if they lose the state Supreme Court

Could Darren Bailey’s candidacy help turn the Illinois Supreme Court red? (State of Illinois photo)

Darren Bailey might get beaten Nov. 8 as badly as any Illinois gubernatorial candidate ever. But he’s got to be good for something, Republicans have to hope.

Maybe he is. Probably not, but maybe.

So far, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s scheme to try to ensure he got future also-ran Bailey as an opponent is turning out pretty sweet for him. He’s polling about 15% ahead of Bailey.

But Bailey’s position at the top of the GOP ticket might conceivably help elect Republicans bent on weakening laws Democrats care about most.

Like the ones involving abortion rights.

This could be a big ego boost for a guy like Bailey, the kind of fellow who should hire someone to make sure his shoes are on the right feet.

Earlier this year, Bailey was the indirect recipient of a spectacular pile of money from Pritzker. The top state Democrat gave $24 million to a PAC that ran lots of ads during the GOP primary saying Bailey was too conservative for Illinois.

Telling Republican voters that a candidate is too conservative is like accusing a Miss America contestant of being too pretty.

Bailey had more conventional primary support, too. Hedgefund magnate Ken Griffin and Styrofoam sultan Richard Uihlein sent him boxcars full of campaign money. He still needs more.

Bailey’s perch atop the ticket probably doesn’t endanger Democrat’s grip on elections for the relatively big-time offices like U.S. Senate, Secretary of State and Attorney General. Democrats look like locks in all of those, unless somebody gets caught with a hand in the cookie jar (which in Illinois is never beyond the realm of possibility).

It’s the races that few are talking about that might be challenges for Democrats.

They include the two Illinois Supreme Court races involving very conservative candidates. If both win, the Court would turn 4-3 GOP. That might mean some future decisions could suddenly resemble those emanating from the Mississippi or Alabama courts supreme.

What’s the connection between Bailey and the Illinois Supreme Court races? Bailey’s run could get voters off their duffs who might otherwise be unenthusiastic about a mid-term election. Voters like evangelicals and Donald Trump loyalists who love the idea of a gubernatorial candidate who thinks like them.

Does a candidate with no chance of winning have coattails? Maybe not. But I remember when the majority of the state Republican Party leadership believed one could.

Now, keep in mind that Illinois Republicans are occasionally prone to hallucinations impelled by all that losing. 

That may have happened in 2004. 

Jack Ryan, a DuPage County investment banker with good hair, ran against State Sen. Barack Obama for the privilege of representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate. A judge released details of Ryan’s divorce from TV star Jeri Ryan – Jack Ryan had allegedly lobbied her to go to swinger clubs with him – and Ryan dropped out three months before the general election.

The Republican State Central Committee had to come up with a new candidate to run against Obama, who was already way ahead when there was an opponent to be ahead of. They imported Alan Keyes from Maryland, where he had already lost two U.S. Senate races. He had also been positively masticated in two presidential bids.

Several committee members told me then that they knew Keyes, who sometimes appeared addled, couldn’t come close to catching Obama. But he could be a useful idiot.

That’s because he spoke passionately and forcefully about his own brand of super-duper conservatism, which was probably pretty appealing to some Illinois Republican voters. The GOP bosses figured that Keyes could drive enthusiasm to vote in places where there were some particularly hard cases they wanted to elect.

Tom Ernst, challenging John Sullivan in the 47th Senate District, and Ron Summers, fighting Gary Forby in the 59th Senate District, were suggested as possible beneficiaries. And then there was Lloyd Karmeier, a Republican running for an open Supreme Court seat from Southern Illinois’ District 5. 

Both Republican state Senate candidates were defeated. Ernst had been almost as long a shot as Keyes, as he had been appointed to run in March after another candidate had quit, possibly in fear of getting clobbered. 

Summers didn’t seem to get that much of a boost from Keyes because Forby was almost as conservative as he was. Liberal Democrats often don’t make it very far in Illinois’ southern tip.

Then there was Karmeier, whose campaign was allegedly taking gobs of dark money from State Farm Insurance Companies, which had a huge case coming to the Court about using cheapo parts to repair cars. His opponent, Gordon Maag, was taking big money from lawyers who didn’t want to appear before a guy who would do what they said Karmeier was doing. Together, the two judicial candidates raised more money than any participants in a U.S. judicial race, ever.

Karmeier got just a little more campaign funding than Maag, and won, after GOP ads called Maag everything but human. Whether Keyes helped Karmeier win is hard to tell. But the lawyers who lost the State Farm case when Karmeier voted against them in the lawsuit in 2005 say that dark money is what they care about.

They remounted the case via a civil racketeering angle, and won a $250 million settlement from the insurer in 2018, just before Karmeier and State Farm would have had to testify.

So there’s scant evidence that the ultra-conservative, ultra-loser Keyes made any of the difference Republican bosses hoped he would when they hurled him to the top of their Illinois ticket in 2004.

But will Bailey do anything for Mark Curran, running against Democratic Lake County Judge Liz Rochford in the northwest suburban Second District Supreme Court race, and Third District Supreme Court Justice Michael Burke, trying to fight off Democratic Appellate Justice Mary Kay O’Brien in the southwest suburbs?

Would significantly conservative voters thrilled to just have a chance to vote for a far-right gubernatorial candidate do so in large enough numbers to do a favor for Curran and Burke? 

It’s pretty clear that both Burke and Curran are not exactly pro-choice, by their own statements and political activities. Their opponents are.

I used to chat with Curran, Lake County Sheriff from 2006-2012, during the early part of his tenure as sheriff, and he flavored much of his criminological philosophy with his Roman Catholicism. He still is guided by his faith, which seems to have given him confidence that a state supreme court justice needn’t have any experience as a judge.

Illinois Supreme Court justices, unlike their federal counterparts, aren’t appointed for life. But they’re hard as herpes to get rid of, anyway. They run for a ten-year term, then re-up by winning retention election contests. To be retained, they run against their own records, which are a complete mystery to most voters.

It’s hard to get a justice un-retained. Only one has ever missed. Karmeier, with several obvious excuses to not make the 60% threshold, was retained in 2014 with 60.77% support.

Burke was appointed by the Court to fill a vacancy, so he’s running in November for the first time. If he wins, he can stay in just by getting retained, which most voters okay as a matter of course. The same with Curran.

So on Nov. 8, perhaps the most significant Illinois races may or may not be affected by the relative enthusiasm for the presumed loser atop the Republican ticket. It’s hard to tell how those two Supreme Court races will turn out, Bailey Effect or no Bailey Effect.

But it’s likely that many Illinoisans won’t notice right away if both Republicans win seats on the Court. 

They would notice before long.