The race for ideological control of the Illinois Supreme Court has been one of the most-closely watched elections on the 2022 ballot, and Cook County residents will get their own chance to weigh in, albeit in a slightly different fashion.
While voters in the second and third districts will choose between Democratic and Republican candidates on their ballots, Cook County voters will instead face a retention decision, with Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis running for a fresh 10-year term on the bench.
Theis, who took over as chief justice from the retiring Anne Burke earlier this year, will need 60% of the vote in order to remain on the bench for another 10 years.
The chief justice received her law degree from the University of San Francisco’s School of Law in 1974, and worked as an assistant public defender in Cook County before being appointed an associate judge on the Cook County circuit court in 1083. She was first appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010, and received enough votes for retention in 2012.
If Theis fails to hit the 60% threshold, which is unlikely, the remaining members of the Supreme Court would choose a justice to fill the seat until the next election in 2024. That justice would then face a competitive race for a full 10-year term on the court.
Adding further intrigue to the proceedings, two Supreme Court seats are up for grabs in an election that could determine the ideological makeup of the court.
In the second district, former Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran is running on the Republican ticket, while Judge Elizabeth Rochford, who currently is serving on the circuit court in Lake County, will represent the Democratic ticket.
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The third district will feature Republican Justice Michael Burke, whose residence was redistricted into the third district for this election, running against appellate court Judge Mary K. O’Brien.
Should Republicans win both of those races, they would have a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court, a critical milestone as court challenges to a wide variety of legislation loom on the docket, including on the “SAFE-T Act” and the expanded rights to abortion access in Illinois in the wake of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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