Democratic Illinois Supreme Court Justice Tom Kilbride’s bid to retain his seat this fall has emerged as a high-stakes, record-setting expensive campaign that Republicans are trying to make a referendum on embattled House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Billionaire conservatives, state GOP leaders and a dark money group are blanketing voters’ mailboxes with full-color attack ads that portray the justice as a Madigan puppet, citing the speaker’s large campaign contributions to Kilbride’s election efforts dating back to 2000.
One mailer describes the justice as “Mike Madigan’s captain on the Illinois Supreme Court” and depicts the speaker wearing a baseball shirt that says “coach” with a whistle around his neck. Another features the two as tuxedo-clad James Bond-style secret agents, with Kilbride holding a bag festooned with a dollar sign representing Madigan’s money. There’s even a four-page faux newspaper that attempts to taint Kilbride with 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke’s corruption scandal.
It’s not a good time to be tied to Madigan, whose political and government operation is under intense federal scrutiny as part of an investigation that’s already resulted in ComEd admitting it sought to influence legislation by giving Madigan allies jobs and contracts.
Kilbride, a 67-year-old onetime labor lawyer from Rock Island, said the millions of dollars in campaign funds he received from the Madigan-controlled Illinois Democratic Party have played no role in his past judicial rulings.
“Just a bunch of crap,” said Kilbride, who dismissed the Republican-backed hit pieces as out-of-order “mudslinging.”
In an interview, Kilbride said he wants voters to judge him “thoughtfully and fairly” and not based on negative flyers with “misrepresentations of the truth.”
The outcome of the contest is critical to both parties: Democrats want Kilbride to succeed in his retention effort so they can preserve a 4-3 majority on the high court. Republicans see defeating Kilbride as their best hope to eventually try to be in charge of the state’s high court for the first time in more than half a century and break the Democrats’ grip on all three branches of state government.
Kilbride needs the approval of 60% voters to win retention to a third 10-year term. No opponent runs in a retention contest.
While the 3rd Judicial District contest has statewide implications, it will be decided by voters in 21 counties that stretch from Will and Kankakee to Peoria and Rock Island. It’s a swath of Illinois that backed Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and favored then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018.
“It won’t be easy, but it’s a district that, if Republicans got out and voted ‘no’ against Kilbride, against his retention, I think we could knock him out of the box,” said former U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, a Peoria Republican who served as Democratic President Barack Obama’s transportation secretary.
On the ground, Republicans are pitching the Kilbride race as a chance to vote against Madigan, who at election time answers only to voters in his heavily Democratic Southwest Side House district every two years since 1970.
James Nowlan, a former GOP lawmaker who chairs the anti-Kilbride committee Citizens for Judicial Fairness, asks political audiences in towns such as Carthage, Monmouth and Utica if they ever wished they could vote against Madigan.
“They almost come out of their chairs with applause,” he said. “And I say, ‘This year you can (vote against Madigan). You can vote against Tom Kilbride.'”
The war continues
The Kilbride retention fight is a continuation of Madigan and Democratic special interests battling wealthy Republicans who backed Rauner’s anti-union, pro-business agenda.
The biggest anti-Kilbride money has come from billionaire Citadel hedge fund owner Ken Griffin, who has given $4.5 million, including $2.5 million reported Thursday night; and packing materials mogul Richard Uihlein, who added $1 million, including $500,000 reported Friday night. Both were key Rauner donors, though Uihlein later broke with the governor.
Griffin and Uihlein also oppose Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s push for a graduated-rate income tax amendment — another political crosswind that Kilbride foes think will bring out voters who will oppose both the amendment and the justice.
A $200,000 donation from a dark-money group called the Judicial Fairness Project gave the anti-Kilbride forces a jump-start. The group’s registered agent is attorney John Fogarty, the Chicago-based general counsel for the Illinois Republican Party. Fogarty declined to identify the donors.
Paperwork filed with the secretary of state showed the group’s board of directors includes two members of the Republican state central committee and the former head of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen’s Association. Listed as the incorporator was Nick Klitzing, a former state GOP executive director.
Two years ago, Democrats decried Klitzing for the political dirty trick of impersonating a college newspaper reporter on a press phone call with Democratic congressional candidate Betsy Dirksen Londrigan. Klitzing could not be reached for comment on his anti-Kilbride efforts.
The Judicial Fairness Project does not fall under laws that require prompt disclosure of specific individuals who gave to the group, and the lack of transparency leads to public cynicism, said campaign finance expert Kent Redfield.
“It does nothing to build faith in judicial institutions and the public sense that the political system works in a fair way,” said Redfield, a professor emeritus based at the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs.
Another $75,000 sent to Nowlan’s group comes from the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Illinois political action committee, which is affiliated with a Washington-based group that’s received contributions over the years from ADM, Boeing, FMC Corp. and Koch Industries.
In addition to the flood of flyers, anti-Kilbride forces aired a TV ad telling voters to “defeat Mike Madigan’s favorite judge.”
Kilbride recently countered with an ad in which he looks into the camera and says he has been “attacked harshly, repeatedly and falsely. I’m here to tell you flat out: These attacks are lies and distortions.”
A narrator then says Kilbride is under attack by out-of-state dark money because he refuses to let greedy corporations and predatory insurance companies own our courts.”
Madigan’s help
Madigan doubles as state Democratic chairman, and one of his most farsighted successes was pouring nearly $700,000 in state Democratic Party funds late in a 2000 race to help Kilbride defeat a Republican opponent and flip the seat to the Democratic column.
Ten years later, Kilbride was up for retention and Madigan infused nearly $1.5 million in Democratic Party funds into the justice’s campaign. Kilbride received under 66% of the vote, a low enough level of support that anti-Kilbride forces believe he is vulnerable now.
On Tuesday, Madigan poured $550,000 into Kilbride’s retention, putting his total support to Kilbride over the years to $2.6 million in party funds alone.
That contribution came after Kilbride had indicated he wouldn’t take Madigan’s money. “We’re not going to accept one penny — and I say this respectfully — (from) Speaker Madigan or any of his entities,” Kilbride said on Oct. 2, WBEZ reported.
Asked by the Tribune before the latest contribution if he anticipated support from Madigan or the Democratic Party, Kilbride said, “As far as I’m concerned, we’re not coordinating.”
Kilbride said he would make himself available for follow-up questions, but he did not on Wednesday. Instead, a spokesman issued a statement to questions about Madigan’s contribution.
“To further maintain his impartiality, (Kilbride) has no role in fundraising — all such decisions are made by his treasurer — and no knowledge of the donors to his retention committee nor of those to the opposition committee,” spokesman Ryan McLaughlin said. “Justice Kilbride is proud to have support from Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and to have been endorsed by a bipartisan group of law enforcement leaders and police officers from across the district.”
One factor that’s different this time around for Kilbride is that Madigan has been under a harsh spotlight since federal prosecutors implicated him over the summer in the ComEd jobs-for-favors bribery scandal. The power company admitted it sought to influence legislation by giving Madigan allies jobs and contracts. Madigan repeatedly has denied wrongdoing.
Kilbride also has received millions of dollars from the speaker’s allies in big labor, teacher unions and the trial lawyer community. A growing number of groups have made six-figure contributions after Kilbride lent his campaign $110,000 on Sept. 11, a move that removed campaign contribution limits in the contest.
Of the first eight law firms that gave Kilbride $100,000, seven of them previously gave to Madigan-controlled funds. To date, Kilbride has received more than $300,000 from the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association, two of at least seven major unions that have given Kilbride $100,000 or more for his current retention bid.
All told, the pro- and anti-Kilbride sides have put in nearly $10.7 million through Friday night. That’s a new contributions record for a state Supreme Court contest in Illinois, breaking the previous high-water mark of $9.38 million in 2004.
“It’s a stunning amount,” said Redfield, the campaign finance expert.
The issues
The makeup of the state Supreme Court is crucial because justices rule on everything from the constitutionality of laws to legislative maps that help decide who controls the General Assembly.
Nowlan, who chairs the anti-Kilbride political committee, is particularly miffed that Kilbride authored a 2016 decision that threw out a proposed amendment that attempted to neutralize the politics when legislative district boundaries are redrawn once a decade.
“I really think he sold his soul to the devil with that opinion,” Nowlan said.
Madigan was opposed to taking away mapmaking from politicians, and Kilbride’s 4-3 Democratic majority opinion drew a searing dissent from then-Republican Justice Robert Thomas, who wrote: “The Illinois Constitution is meant to prevent tyranny, not to enshrine it.”
Even so, Thomas has endorsed his Democratic colleague for retention, calling Kilbride a “conscientious jurist.” Despite their differences, Thomas said he “never saw” Kilbride make judgments based on Madigan’s influence or on Democratic politics.
In attack brochures, the anti-Kilbride forces also hammered the justice for joining a 4-3 bipartisan opinion that allowed an Illinois Federation of Teachers lobbyist — a former Madigan staffer ? to get a taxpayer-supported teachers pension after substitute teaching at a grade school for only one day.
The lobbyist now gets nearly $80,000 a year from the teacher retirement system — plus almost $35,000 annually more from a separate state pension system for his time on the speaker’s staff.
In another pension case, Kilbride is taking heat for writing the 2015 opinion that a high-profile public retirement system overhaul was unconstitutional because it violated the standard that retiree benefits could not be reduced once they were put in place. Kilbride noted the court agreed unanimously and that Madigan, a chief proponent of the pension law, came out on the losing side.
Republican Ty Fahner, a former Illinois attorney general who fought to uphold the pension law, strongly disagreed with Kilbride’s opinion but still backs him for retention. “I found that (opinion) to be disappointing but certainly not partisan one way or the other,” Fahner said.
If Kilbride wins and serves another term, it would give him 30 years on the high court, a feat no one has achieved since full terms were set at 10 years in the 1960s. He would come close to the state’s longest-tenured justice, Thomas Browne, who served for 30 years and two months ending in 1848, according to historical court records.
If Kilbride loses his retention bid, the court’s remaining six justices would seek to find an interim appointment until a replacement could be elected in two years.
One scenario Republicans are mulling is that the six justices ? three from each party ? would deadlock on a temporary Kilbride replacement and keep the court evenly balanced. That could come in handy if a politically charged issue, such as redrawing legislative boundaries, comes before the high court during the next two years. The final step in the Republican hope of taking control of the court would be to win the Kilbride seat outright against a Democratic opponent in 2022.
Besides the Kilbride race, there are two other state Supreme Court contests on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The Trump factor may play a role in the open-seat, 5th District race in far southern Illinois territory that has trended increasingly more Republican. The contest pitting Democratic Appellate Justice Judy Cates of Swansea and Republican Appellate Court Justice David Overstreet of Mount Vernon has grown contentious.
Cates even endorsed the idea that she and Overstreet should face off at a turkey shoot campaign event to show who is the better shot. Overstreet’s campaign chairman dismissed the idea, saying Cates was simply trying to woo conservative Democrats and Republicans in an area where hunting has great appeal.
In Cook County, appointed Democratic Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. is running unopposed for a full term to replace the late Justice Charles Freeman.
