Is it time to write “obituary” for chief judge, one-time alderman Tim Evans?

As much as some people want to believe the political system is rigged in favor of the incumbents and there’s no way to “throw da bums out,” the fact is that every now and then the will of the public works in ways that makes it seem as though we get bored with certain people and let them go.

From back in the days when Timothy Evans (to the mayor's right) was part of the Harold Washington operation to try to govern Chicago

That could very well wind up being the fate come Thursday for Timothy Evans, the one-time alderman who for more than two decades has been a Cook County judge and rose his way to the post of chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court.

THE ADDED TITLE basically means he gets to claim to have significant power over the courts, and is usually the person who gets called upon when there’s some sort of political ritual that requires the presence of a judge.

It is a nice-sounding post, and actually is quite a way for Evans to wind up a career in public service that dates back to the final years of the first Mayor Daley.

But I’m sure that if Evans winds up losing that “chief judge” title, he’s going to take it badly. He’ll see it as a repudiation, although it’s not really clear what people who are repudiating him think is wrong in the way he has conducted himself.

Which makes one thing very clear – internal elections involving professionals can be just as petty as those public elections that we all have the opportunity to vote in.

THERE IS A certain generation of political observers to whom the name “Tim Evans” brings back significant memories from the days of Harold Washington as mayor – because while the mayor had a majority opposition in the City Council going out of its way to thwart much of what he desired to do, he did have some allies.

EVANS: Wants to remain the chief

And Evans – the alderman from the South Side-based 4^th Ward – was the floor leader. Meaning he was the one who supposedly was trying to coordinate the mayor’s desires when they came up in ordinances before the City Council.

When Washington died, there were those who believed that Tim Evans was the natural heir who should have become mayor. Of course, that would have implied that people were generally in agreement with the Washington agenda; rather than scheming for a way with which to dump him.

ALLEN: Looking for a promotion

That is why the council picked another alderman, Eugene Sawyer (the father of current 6^th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer), to be the interim mayor, then dumped Sawyer when the special election came along a year later. Which is how we got the concept of “Mayor Richard M. Daley.”

EVANS TRIED CHALLENGING all of this, but lost at the polls. Then lost a 1991 re-election bid for the City Council, which is how current Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle gained her entrance to electoral politics.

A year later, Evans became a judge. And in a sense of peace-making, Daley supported his rise through the ranks that saw him ultimately be able to call himself the “chief judge.”

But the Cook County judges on Thursday (all 241 of them) will gather to pick a new chief judge for a three-year term, and Evans has challengers. Particularly in the form of Tom Allen, a former alderman-turned-judge who’d like to have the top title.

Allen has his ties to the Cullerton family that has produced many generations of government officials in Chicago. He even has the backing, of sorts, from Preckwinkle – who has made it clear she thinks Evans has undermined her own efforts to push for reforms in the criminal justice system.

Sentiment of some, but not enough, to make Evans the mayor

ALLEN ALSO HAS been aggressive in trying to get his judicial colleagues to back the idea of a change in leadership, to the point where 34^th Ward Alderman Carrie Austin this week was publicly critical of her Democratic colleagues who are backing Allen – saying they are guilty of a “double cross.”

Feisty rhetoric for a title that I imagine most of us didn’t know was up for grabs and didn’t realize would be decided on Thursday.

It will be interesting to see how the judges take all this into account. Is there a serious sentiment to depose Tim Evans? Do they really want a new chief judge? Or is this a lot of hype being spewed to an impressive-sounding-but-obscure post?

Is it really time to write the political obituary of Timothy Evans? Or will judicial life carry on come Friday as it has before?

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‘Dump Kilbride’ is pure partisan politics

Justice Thomas Kilbride

I have my memories of being a reporter-type person at the Statehouse in Springfield during the spring of 1995, watching as a newly-elected Republican majority rammed through so many new laws meant to impose a conservative ideological agenda on the state.

What kept that agenda from having a lasting effect on the state was the Illinois Supreme Court. I lost count of the number of times I wrote stories during 1997 and 1998 – the gist of which was that yet another of those “Laws of ’95” was struck down as unconstitutional.

WHICH IS WHY when I hear the business-oriented associations and legal groups complain about Justice Thomas Kilbride and talk about the millions of dollars they are spending on a campaign to urge people to vote against his retention to the state’s highest court, I can’t help but think that their real intent is to try to mess with the court in such a way that it won’t be able to knock down the agenda they’d like to peddle in Springfield in coming months.

That presumes the GOP in Illinois will experience such significant gains on Election Day that they will be in a position to ram through bills on so many social and economic issues. Nothing is certain.

But I’m sure those political people who are old enough to remember that period in the mid-1990s when Illinois Republicans were not only significant, but also powerful, feel that one of the lessons they learned was that they can’t focus purely on the Executive and Legislative branches of Illinois government.

They also have to think about the Judicial branch, where members of the Supreme Court of Illinois are elected to 10-year terms. Justices wishing to get re-elected run for retention, which means there is no opponent. But they must get at least 60 percent support, or else a replacement is picked by political appointment.

WHICH MEANS THAT people who want to play conservative partisan politics are including the high court in their electoral strategy.

As it turns out, three of the seven justices on the court are up for retention this year. Charles Freeman, who is a Democrat, is running from the court’s first district, which is Cook County. Another is Robert Thomas of the second district. He is a Republican, but his home DuPage County accounts for more than half of the people of that district, so he’s probably safe.

That is why the attention is focused on McBride. He’s a Democrat from Rock Island from the third district – which includes portions of Will County and his home area along the Mississippi River that have significant Democratic voters, sandwiching a stretch of central Illinois that is solidly Republican.

In short, McBride is getting the focus of this attempt to potentially add a Republican justice to the high court because the GOP political operatives think they can get that middle portion of the district to turn out in what has potential to be a significant year for Republicans so as to “win” come Tuesday.

FOR THEM, A “win” means dumping Kilbride from the high court, even though it probably makes him the one person to have conservative opposition even though he has the support of the National Rifle Association, among other groups.

That is why we have been getting campaign ads on television in recent weeks focusing on the Illinois Supreme Court, claiming that Kilbride is some sort of criminal-loving justice who doesn’t rule in favor of real people.

It is the reason this election has been called the most expensive one-candidate retention election held during the past decade, according to a study by Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Among the effort’s leaders is the Illinois Civil Justice League (an outspoken proponent of tort reform), which according to a study compiled by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform has a political action committee that has raised $667,000 from various business-oriented groups.

THAT HAS CAUSED the Illinois Democratic Party to give Kilbride significant assistance ($1.4 million), with other money and in-kind assistance coming from groups such as the Illinois Federation of Teachers political fund ($454,000). In all, Kilbride has had $2.48 million in his campaign fund to enable him to fight back.

The Illinois Civil Justice League has said the reason it wants Kilbride off the high court is because in 21 cases they have an interest in, Kilbride voted to rule against business interests all 21 times.

There is a difference of opinion about what is “good”. One of the cases was a ruling to strike down a new state law that would have limited the size of non-economic “pain and suffering” damages against hospitals and doctors – a ruling seen as beneficial to those who suffer severe long-term injuries.

But groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Tort Reform Association, and a political committee of the National Association of Manufacturers (all of which gave money to the civil justice league’s JUSTPAC political fund) view the issue differently. They want someone sympathetic to business interests involved in creating the high court’s rulings.

AFTER ALL, THE high court now has a 4-3 margin leaning Democrat. Kilbride of Rock Island and the three Cook County justices (Freeman, Anne Burke and Mary Jane Theis) comprise that majority against the Republican faction of Thomas, Rita Garman of Danville and Lloyd Karmeier of Nashville in Southern Illinois.

I do realize that the justices try to follow the law and downplay partisan politics when possible. But there are those issues that do become purely ideological for both sides and where the “letter of the law” can be interpreted to support either side. Which is why the conservative interests are eager to ensure that any future acts their elected officials pass into law get a final hearing by a high court inclined to be sympathetic.

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High court appeal gives feel of Blagojevich trying to avoid trip to “death house”

Perhaps it is a sign that I covered too many executions in Illinois (7 during the 1990s, along with other inmates who appealed the process). But watching Rod Blagojevich file an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to try to postpone his trial on assorted corruption charges is starting to feel like watching a condemned man try to find any scheme that manages to postpone his “death date.”

It is inevitable when a condemned inmate’s execution date approaches that his attorneys run through the process of filing token appeals to every court up the judicial ladder, in hopes that somewhere, someone with some legal authority will be moved enough by the plea to justify issuing a stay that postpones a trip on the gurney to the lethal injection machine.

THAT TRIP UP the legal ladder invariably winds up at the Supreme Court in Washington, where attorneys will file after-hours appeals and judges will wind up having to put in some extra duty before deciding whether or not there is any chance of legal merit to the condemned’s position.

In fact, the justices on the nation’s high court have the country split up so that each presides, so to speak, over a region. In short, it comes down to what one man thinks, and is willing to tell his (or her) colleagues on the high court what to do – since there really is little reason to have all nine justices read through the last-ditch appeals.

That is what occurred to me when I read the Chicago Tribune report that confirmed Blagojevich’s request for a delay in his trial was received late Thursday, and was sent to the chambers of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Which means that on Friday, it was Stevens’ clerks and other staff who were having to read through all the legal drivel offered up by Milorod as to why his trial should not begin in 12 days in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois (otherwise known to us locals as the Dirksen Building).

THOSE CLERKS WILL report to Stevens, who will make the ultimate decision. Late Friday, Stevens said he would give prosecutors one week to respond in writing to Blagojevich's request. Does this mean Stevens’ last act as a Supreme Court justice will be to decide whether or not to condemn Blagojevich to a trial this summer that many people are convinced will result in his serving time in a federal correctional system (and which many Republican partisans are hoping sentences Democratic political candidates to death on Election Day come Nov. 2)?

After all, guilt by association, they will claim.

Blagojevich’s legal motion for a trial delay has just has the same morbid overtone to it that many of the last-ditch legal appeals from condemned inmates have. There is a sense to people who follow the cases that everything has already been argued, and that this final appeal to the Supreme Court is nothing more than a formality before giving the condemned man (it has been so long since Illinois put a woman to death that I don’t think it sexist to say that all the condemned are “men”) his final sendoff.

Which means we all now sit and wait for word from the court. It likely will be a sudden snippet of rejection, followed up hopefully by the sight of Milorod seriously preparing himself for trial.

IT MAKES ME feel like the next step will be someone asking Blagojevich what he would like to have for a “last meal” before the moment of truth. Will he have any last words for us?

Actually, on that last point, the answer is, “yes, he will.”

For the federal trial is likely to last into October. I wouldn’t be surprised if jury selection lasted most of the month of June (got to weed out anybody whose ideology is so intense that they feel it is their “patriotic duty” to Illinois to convict the bum) and the jury deliberations for a verdict lasted several weeks. You just know Blagojevich won’t be able to resist taking the stand on his own behalf.

Which is why I am sure that the same Democratic Party partisans who were Blagojevich’s biggest critics and led the effort to impeach him from office probably wouldn’t mind if there was some delay that put the trial off until after those Nov. 2 elections.

BLAGOJEVICH CONTENDS THAT we need to see how the Supreme Court rules with regards to the legal appeals of former Hollinger Inc. owner (which once included the Chicago Sun-Times and its many suburban newspaper properties) Conrad Black in a case that challenges the degree to which stupidity and incompetence by officials ought to be considered criminal behavior.

Considering that I have always thought Blagojevich’s conduct as governor was more about arrogance and stupidity (trying to show other Democratic Party leaders, such as Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who the boss truly is) than truly criminal intent, it might be relevant. But I’m sure there are enough people who are going to be so willing to show they’re not showing a bias in favor of Blagojevich that they will bend over backward to oppose him.

Personally, I wish the two events (a likely Blagojevich verdict in late October, and Election Day on Nov. 2) weren’t so close together timewise because it is a ridiculous distraction, although I am not convinced that Stevens or anyone else with the Supreme Court will be inclined to do anything on Milorod’s behalf. Then again, I think most of the people who will think this is relevant are also the same types who would never have voted for Democratic Party candidates to begin with. Which means it is an irrelevant distraction.

It also means we can likely keep that June 3 date circled on our calendars for the beginning of the Rod Blagojevich Reality Show (follow the legal saga of a real-life political egomaniac) emanating from Chicago.

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ROLAND, ROLAND, ROLAND: Trying to end his career on a “high” note

Roland Burris is the man who likes to say he began his public life by desegregating the public swimming pool in his then-hometown of Centralia (he and his teenage friends showed up one day and just jumped into the pool that previously had been for white people only).

Now that the 72-year-old Burris is approaching the end of his public life, he seems determined to make an even bigger splash on behalf of political empowerment for African-American people.

FOR BURRIS IS telling that insiderish newspaper on Capitol Hill (called The Hill) that he wants President Barack Obama to pick a black person, preferably a woman, to the vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States that will be created with the upcoming retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

In fact, Burris says he is spending his time these days “working on” a list of experienced legal people who happen to be African-American and female, and that he plans to use his political influence with the president to get him to take the idea seriously.

Quit laughing! You know you are.

This sounds to many of you like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, possibly even worse than that one they actually aired last year where Kenan Thompson’s ignorance of the difference between running for multiple offices and multiple terms for the same office came up with one incredibly lame punchline coming from the mouth of “Burris.”

WILL WE SOON get Thompson once again giving us a Roland Burris, pompously sitting in his office putting together a list that no one other than himself will pay any attention to?

Actually, I should be a little honest. It isn’t even Burris putting a list together. It is his congressional staff. He has researchers to do the heavy lifting of digging up details to back up his arguments onvirtually anything – which, to be honest, all political people do.

Which is why I think those people who want to mock Rod Blagojevich for not knowing how to do basic research or use a computer are missing the point. He got elected to his political posts because of his “vision,” which basically means he wasn’t George Ryan – while Jim Ryan and Judy Baar Topinka were perceived as being too close to George.

And Milorod, in his final political act, gave us Burris, who is now trying to influence the choice of a new Supreme Court justice. Does this mean that a black woman justice on the Supreme Court could be perceived indirectly as Blagojevich’s lasting mark on our nation?

ALRIGHT, MY SARCASM there hung even more heavily than anytime Sarah Palin opens her mouth in public these days. But while I will concede there are less productive things Roland Burris could be doing with his time these days, the idea that our one-time attorney general with the incredibly ornate mausoleum already erected in his honor is trying to single-handedly pick a Supreme Court justice is worth more than a chuckle.

Then again, maybe it is something in the Washington air.

Because if one pays attention to the news reports emanating from the District of Columbia, there is talk coming from various political people about who Obama should choose for the life-long appointment to the nation’s high court.

There are those who are convinced it must be a woman. There are others who think it must be a protestant (because there is potential for a high court with nothing but Catholic and Jewish people).

SOME THINK IT should be a fairly conservative white man (because we don’t have enough of those in positions of authority), while others think Obama should make one blatantly partisan nomination during his presidency – instead of catering to people who would never vote for him in an election anyway.

I even read one report Tuesday morning from people who think the time has come for a Supreme Court justice who is gay and feels no need to cover that fact up.

So maybe in that environment, the image of Roland Burris sitting in his office, reading through research put together by his staff to make a statement about how the high court needs a black woman to go along with the Latina and the Jewish woman already on the court isn’t totally absurd.

Now I’m not going to claim to be an expert and say I know who Obama will pick. It could be someone with ties to him through Chicago, but I also wonder if he’d rather save that potential pick for a time when the confirmation process isn’t going to be such a blatantly ugly battle.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE someone exposed to hard-core Chicago politics is exactly the kind of person who could handle the Senate Republican caucus’ hardest shots?

So what of the idea of an African-American woman, to boost the number of black people on the high court to two? What would Clarence Thomas think of such a colleague? To me, the idea makes as much sense as any of the other trial balloons being tossed about.

I couldn’t help but notice the “reader comments” published by The Hill along with their story about Buris’ desires. One reader who does not like Burris’ idea wrote, “you have your African-American justice: learn to appreciate him.”

Perhaps we should be fortunate he didn’t use another word instead of “African-American.” But to me, the idea that such people could be so offended by the idea may be reason enough to not dismiss Burris so lightly.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Roland Burris takes some credit for recognizing the skills and appeal of Sonia Sotomayor (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/91753-burris-obama-should-name-black-scotus-nominee) in an effort to bolster the chances that anybody will listen to his Supreme Court opinions this time.

Does Burris want to end his political career (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/08/08lmaddow.phtml) with another Saturday Night Live sketch “appearance?”

A former state Supreme Court justice from Georgia who also happens to be a black woman is on some versions (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Supreme_Court/obamas-supreme-court-short-list-includes-women/story?id=10359170) of Barack Obama’s “list” of potential nominees. Would Burris accept her? Or is Leah Ward Sears too friendly with Clarence Thomas for Roland to be comfortable?

EXTRA: Will Obama replace Chicagoan with a Chicagoan on the Supreme Court?

I remember thinking last year when President Barack Obama was contemplating his first nomination for a Supreme Court justice (ultimately giving us the first Latina, Sonia Sotomayor) that Diane Wood was a likely nominee should the president from Hyde Park ever get a second chance to pick somebody.

Which is why I am wondering if the upcoming resignation of Justice John Paul Stevens is the opportunity for Wood – a federal appeals judge assigned to the court for Chicago and the Midwestern U.S. – to rise to the nation’s high court?

AS SOME HAVE already noted, Stevens was a part of a prominent Chicago family who always took pride in coming from the Second City, while Wood is a federal judge in Chicago who also taught on the faculty of the University of Chicago law school – although she was a full-fledged professor, compared to the “instructor” status that Obama held when he was on the faculty.

Is this going to be Obama’s chance to promote a Chicagoan to a spot on the court, in keeping with the heavy Chicago overtones that the federal government took on a year ago? It wouldn’t be the most ludicrous thought, since Wood (who on Independence Day this year will turn 60) was put through the interview process last year and theoretically has already gone through much of the vetting process to make sure that her presence wouldn’t “embarrass” the president.

Then again, with the political mood being the way it is these days, it isn’t going to take much for Republican partisans to engage in trash talk.

Heck, the political pundits on Friday who were offering quickie analysis about Stevens’ retiring were focused more on whether or not the GOP caucus in the Senate would use the filibuster to prevent any Obama from being approved, and less on whom he might actually nominate.

THE IDEA BEING that unless Obama came up with the type of person that Republicans would have picked themselves if John McCain had won the presidential election, he wasn’t going to get his choice.

Which means Wood might very well dread the idea of a Supreme Court nomination because it would put her at the epicenter of an upcoming political storm that will come right in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.

It won’t help that Wood is perceived in the federal appeals court as being an “intellectual counterweight" (to steal the words of legal observer Neil A. Lewis) to judges like Richard Posner (whom some conservatives say is a more appropriate choice for a Supreme Court nomination).

She also has the fact that she got her appeals court post by nomination from then-President Bill Clinton.

THERE EVEN ARE those people who say that picking Wood would mean giving the court an all-time high of three female judges, which they argue is the exact opposite of what Obama should be trying to do – which is to come up with such a conventional choice that his logic would appear boring to many.

Then again, I literally heard one pundit point out that the high court has six Catholics, and Stevens was the only WASP – implying we need another white man.

Ultimately, this pick is going to come down to how bold a thinker Barack Obama truly is.

No matter how much the ideologues want to rant and rage the Obama is a “socialist,” the truth is that he can be so eager at times to try to build some sort of concensus that he’s going to offend everybody – particularly those people who are convinced that he should take advantage of these last few months when there will be a sizable majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

THAT KIND OF logic might offend the ideologues and persuade them to filibuster. But I am inclined to think that those people who use the “f-word” so freely don’t truly understand what they are talking about. I’d also like to think that the more reasonable of those in the Republican caucus (such as the nearly 30 GOPers who ultimately backed Sotomayor for the high court) will prevail, and we will get some sort of discourse on the issue in coming months.

Whether or not Wood gets the nomination, we ought to note the departure of Stevens, whose retirement announcement caused us to see repeated showings of his 2005 “first pitch” duties prior to a game at Wrigley Field – where he did a very convincing impersonation of a Chicago Cubs pitcher.

Even if the thought of rooting for the Cubs makes you nauceous, you have to respect someone who has followed one ball club for that many decades, and literally was in the stands (he was 12) the day that Babe Ruth hit that home run off Charlie Root to help the Yankees beat the Cubs in Game Three of the 1932 World Series (the Yanks ultimately swept that series in four straight games).

It is hard to get more old-timey Chicago than that.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I envy freelance writer Bill Barnhart, whose biography of John Paul Stevens, entitled An Independent Life, is being prepped for release (http://www.barnhartbooks.com/) at just the right moment – it will be launched with an event May 20 at the Billy Goat Tavern.

Diane Wood has strong Chicago credentials (http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/wood-d), but can she top this moment (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-john-paul-stevens-retires-babe-ruth-20100409,0,2131726,full.story) from Stevens’ childhood?

Ballot slots – a race to be last

It’s one of those so-called “rules” that political people tend to give too much credence to – the idea that ballot slots make a big difference when it comes to getting votes on Election Day.

There were those hundreds of people who showed up at Illinois State Board of Elections offices Oct. 26 at 8 a.m. in hopes of getting the top spot on the ballot for each government position. In coming weeks, the state will conduct a lottery to break the ties to figure out whose name gets to be listed first.

BUT THERE ARE those people who believe that the next-best thing to being first is to be last. The idea is they don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a list of candidates.

Hence, some people who want to run for electoral office made a point of waiting until as late as they could Monday afternoon before filing the nominating petitions that are necessary to get a ballot spot for the Feb. 2 primary elections.

Take the Republican primary for governor – a campaign that is going to become a bloodbath between the old guard of the party and the conservative ideologues who think they have a superior vision.

Jim Ryan, the former state attorney general who lost a gubernatorial bid back in 2002, filed his nominating petitions to run for governor Monday at 4:18 p.m. Yet that’s not going to be good enough for him to get the bottom spot – Chicago business executive Andy McKenna filed petitions at 4:25 p.m.

THERE WAS A similar race to be last in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate from Illinois. Corey Dabney of Aurora thought he’d be able to get that bottom slot by filing petitions at 3:51 p.m., only to get beaten out by Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson at 3:59 p.m.

Now I know some political people look down on the people who wait – I once had a political candidate tell me with a straight face that anyone who didn’t have their nominating petitions ready to file with the state at 8 a.m. on the first filing day was somehow unorganized and not worthy of a vote on Election Day.

There is some evidence that the candidates who held out for the final day of filing are not going to be among the front-runners, although some of them were candidates for the state Legislature and for judicial posts who are counting on the fact that there won’t be much attention paid to them – and that they might be able to slip their way into a political post.

Somehow, I don’t think that Sylvester “Junebug” Hendricks is going to achieve political office. He filed his nominating petitions Monday at 4:11 p.m. to run for the Republican nomination for an Illinois House of Representatives seat on Chicago’s South Side.

WHAT CATCHES MY eye about his petitions is that he gives his home “address” as a post office box. Officially, he’s homeless. But, of course, we’re talking about a homeless man who has his own website – at http://sylvesterjunebughendricks.com/.

He’s also not the typical Republican official in that his website indicates he has a strong interest in urban issues and even is a supporter of President Barack Obama (his website indicates that Hendricks is an “Obama-can”).

Somehow, I don’t think state Rep. Will Burns, D-Chicago, is quivering in fear at the thought of the Junebug campaign – even though the freshman senator is at the point in his career where he is most vulnerable to an electoral challenger.

So when it comes to candidates being political stragglers, who was the absolute last to file their petitions?

INSOFAR AS STATEWIDE campaigns are concerned, two of the candidates for lieutenant governor were holdouts to the final minutes of the day.

Thomas Castillo of Elmhurst probably thought that getting his petitions for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in at 4:49 p.m. was late enough. But he got beaten out, in a sense, by state Rep. Mike Boland, D-East Moline, who filed his lieutenant governor nominating papers at 4:51 p.m.

Three candidates for a Cook County judicial subcircuit (Tracey Stokes, John Chwarzynski and Radusa Ostojic) filed their petitions to run as Democrats at 4:58 and 4:59 p.m.

Yet the absolute “loser” who hopes that it makes him into a “winner” may very well be Richard Mayers of Chicago. He is a Green Party type and he plans to use that political entity for his electoral aspirations this campaign season.

NOT THAT WE know yet which office he plans to seek.

He filed nominating petitions seeking the Green Party slot for governor, a seat in Congress and for a slot as a party state central committeeman.

He gives an address on the Southwest Side, but the Congressional post he’s seeking is the North Shore seat being abandoned by Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. – who hopes to move up to the U.S. Senate seat now held by retiring Roland Burris.

Does this mean he’s willing to move if elected? Does this mean he’s throwing his dreams to the wind, hoping to see where they land and what he can get?

THERE’S ONLY ONE thing I can say for sure.

The fact that he filed his nominating petitions right at 5 p.m. (closing time) means he was the absolute “last” candidate for the 2010 primary – which most likely will be his only achievement for this election cycle.

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Dig up those lists of judges. Obama may get another Supreme Court pick soon

Didn’t we just finish a Supreme Court nomination process?

Now we have some people speculating that we’re going to go through it again.

THE LOS ANGELES Times is doing the political prognosticating from the word that Justice John Paul Stevens has not picked a full load of clerks as evidence that he may be thinking about retirement.

Of course, the fact that he is on the verge of beginning his 10th decade of life on Planet Earth could also be seen as evidence that his seat (for one reason or another) on the nation’s high court could be opening up soon.

Should Stevens decide to retire in the near future, it would ensure that President Barack Obama would get to pick another justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. Having multiple picks on the high court would ensure that Obama would leave his mark on the nation in the same way that presidents Nixon and Reagan got to leave theirs with justices who remain on the job all these years later.

I’m sure that fact is making the Obama bashers of our society ill. They would prefer that the man leave no mark on our society because it goes so counter to their vision of the nation that would still have us stuck in so many ways in the first third of the 20th Century, rather than moving into the early years of the 21st.

BUT THIS UPCOMING confirmation battle, should it occur within the next year or so (which is what the Times of Los Angeles implies will occur), will differ from the one that is only recently complete.

For one thing, it won’t be an ethnic battle. It is highly unlikely that any of the other qualified justices of Latin American ethnicity will be taken seriously, on account of the perception that Latinos got “their” seat on the court with the selection of Sonia Sotomayor.

So this will be a case of all those other attorneys and judges who have serious credentials being able to dig out their resumes and make their pitches for lifetime employment on the nation’s high court.

It makes me wonder if Judge Diane Wood, one of the federal judges who works at the U.S. District Court for Chicago, could get her chance for a Supreme Court seat.

SHE REPORTEDLY WAS one of a few judges who got called to the White House earlier this year to meet with the president when he was looking for the replacement for David Souter.

Could she now be the replacement for Stevens – a Chicago native who was chosen for the high court by Saturday Night Live’s favorite klutzy politico, Gerald R. Ford? Or is it going to be one of the other judicial “goofs” we now see in our fair city somehow rising up to the nation’s high court?

There would be a symmetry of sorts if one Chicagoan on the high court were replaced by another Chicagoan. Even though Wood is a Chicagoan by choice who works here, rather than grew up here, I doubt that native Hawaiian and adult Chicagoan Obama would hold that against her.

The reason I bring this up is that I always had the nagging thought that Obama theoretically would like to have three appointments to the nine-member Supreme Court.

HIS PICKS WOULD be a Latino, a woman and a Chicagoan. I remember joking that if someone could find a Latina from Chicago with legal experience, that would be the ultimate Supreme Court pick for Obama.

On a serious note, Obama technically fulfilled two of those categories with his selection of Sotomayor.

Picking Wood, whom Obama knew personally during his Chicago days (he was a law school professor of sorts at the University of Chicago), would also fulfill two categories and certainly would reinforce the idea that he is looking to balance out the high court from a gender perspective.

And should things work out that Obama did someday get to make a third nomination to the Supreme Court, it would give him great latitude to pick, since he technically would have already fulfilled his minimal goals.

IT COULD BE his chance to pick someone whom he truly wanted to have the seat, particularly if it was to replace one of the five justices who tend to vote in an ideologically conservative manner on cases before the court.

Being able to have a third of the high court of his choosing and create an ideological shift in the court’s composition would make for a significant part of the Obama legacy.

Because that hasn’t happened yet. Replacing Souter and Stevens merely means the portion of the high court that tends to vote in a less ideologically conservative manner on cases before the court has the chance to remain the same.

It could be that Souter and Stevens would have been inclined to try to hold on to their Supreme Court posts for dear life had we been burdened with a “President McCain” for the next four years.

THAT LIKELY IS the reason Obama will get his picks early in his presidency, then would have to rely on the Grim Reaper himself to get those other Supreme Court justices to leave their positions during his administration.

Of course, just envision what would happen if Obama were to somehow, during the course of an eight-year presidency, get four Supreme Court picks. Talk radio would be overloaded with people in our society who would be decrying its downfall while those of us with sense would chuckle.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The nation could soon be enduring yet another partisan political fight (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-stevens3-2009sep03,0,5471894.story) over a Supreme Court judicial nominee.

Will we get Chicago vs. New York brawl?

The first president from Chicago gets to pick a Supreme Court justice, and some people are pushing the notion that it's time for a Latino to be among the high court's composition.

Yet among the names being tossed about for the life-time presidential appointment are Ruben Castillo, a federal judge in Chicago, and Sonia Sotomayor, a federal judge in New York. The activist types tied to New York are pushing the notion that it is ridiculous to pick anybody but Sotomayor.

YET COULD THIS be one of the effects of Barack Obama being an adopted Chicagoan (and the spouse of a native South Sider)? Could this be the latest political brawl between the political interests of the nation's largest city and the Second City?

There were times that the presidential primary came down to a Chicago vs. New York political scrap. Could this be what the Supreme Court selection process devolves to?

Or is Obama going to tick off the Latino activist types by picking neither? For those interested in reading more on the issue, check out our sister weblog, the South Chicagoan, at http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/.

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Pincham, Wright both worthy of respect

Back in the days when R. Eugene Pincham was a judge on the Illinois appellate court for Chicago, the city’s politics were a blood sport where the sides were not “Democrat” and “Republican” or “liberal” and “conservative.”

They were “black” and “white” – as in race (back in those days, “African-American” as a category wasn’t in regular use, and I remember times when any Chicago reporter who tried to work the phrase into his copy was mocked mercilessly).

IN THE 1980s when Harold Washington’s very presence at City Hall aroused the anger of much of white Chicago, the politically partisan split in our government came from the color of one’s skin. It wasn’t just “white” people who spoke out.

Pincham put himself in the Chicago political history books when he told a rally of potential black voters at an Operation PUSH rally in 1987 they ought to feel obligated to support Washington’s re-election as mayor.

Or, as he so “eloquently” put it: “Any man south of Madison Street who casts a vote in the Feb. 24 election who doesn’t cast a vote for Harold Washington ought to be hung.”

The significance of that comment is that south of Madison Street is the Great South Side, which has evolved into a collection of African-American neighborhoods with occasional patches of white and Spanish-speaking people mixed in (unlike the North Side, which is predominantly white ethnic with occasional Spanish-speaking and Asian neighborhoods and almost NO black people).

PINCHAM’S CAREER BECAME defined by that comment. To Anglo Chicago, he became a bigot – one who real bigots would bring up whenever anyone tried to call them on their nonsense.

There is a generation of Chicagoans who always want to think of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Pincham as the real racists, somehow wrongly biased against the white majority (even though in Chicago, the black population is slightly larger than the white one – with the Latino population growing at a rate that it will equal the two within about a decade).

Those people now want to add the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the list for the comments he made during various sermons, and would like for us to think of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as someone who is tainted by association with a racist like Wright.

I’ve made it clear before, and I will repeat myself again. I don’t buy it.

PINCHAM AND WRIGHT came out of an era where the power of the law was used against them, keeping them in a form of servitude and lashing out against them whenever it was to the advantage of the white majority.

It was that type of mentality that formed Pincham’s philosophy on life – he became a lawyer so as to fight the white establishment whenever it would try to abuse the rights of black people. Making sure that the judicial system didn’t run roughshod over the rights of criminal defendants (who are human beings too, even though some people don’t like to have to concede that fact) was the focus of his career.

If that meant that a legal system that was used to being able to bash black people around suddenly had a judge who would not support such abuses, then I suppose it would be natural that certain elements would want to think negatively about Pincham’s legal legacy.

I remember in particular when Pincham ran for mayor of Chicago using the label of the Harold Washington Party – an organization that briefly had legal status as a fully legitimate political party (I wonder if the Green Party in Illinois is destined to fade away in a similar manner – but that’s a different subject).

PINCHAM’S QUOTE ABOUT Washington was dredged up everywhere white people went, but black people understood the frustration that caused a man of his generation to make such a statement and think in such a way.

I never did encounter a black person who would admit to voting for anybody except for Pincham in that election, and Pincham actually managed to win a majority of votes in 15 wards – all of which on the South and West sides that had African-American majority populations.

Recalling Pincham is relevant because of Wright’s plight these days.

Wright’s career as a South Side pastor consists of work done to try to bolster the lives of the African-American majority that lived around his church and chose to worship there because its “Afro-centric” view of the world promoted a sense that their lives had value.

BUT CERTAIN HALF-WITS are trying to reduce Wright to the level of someone whose support for black people meant he did not support white people, as though providing support for “black” or “white” people are not compatible goals.

Obama is being trashed by his opponents (most of whom have eagerly been looking for an excuse to publicly say they don’t support him) for remaining in Wright’s congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ, which has a majority black congregation and preaches a message of African-American empowerment.

Even Hillary R. Clinton has said she would have dropped out of that church, had she ever heard a sermon like Wright’s.

BUT I ACTUALLY gain respect for Obama because he is not trying to pander to the potential votes of white people who want to get angry about people like Wright or Pincham, who in their comments remind us that our nation has an ugly history when it comes to racial matters.

Many of those people are the types who dream that the ugly past will wither away if we just ignore it. Others want to take an attitude that they are not bigoted against non-white people who realize the “error” of their ways and accept the “proper” means of doing things – which usually translates to the “Anglo” way.

Somehow, I don’t think Pincham experienced a “deathbed epiphany” this week that he was wrong to fight for the rights of people who might otherwise have been trod on by a judicial system that was set up to occasionally entrap them.

NOR DO I expect Wright to ever think he was mistaken in trying to use his ministry to promote the image of African-American people.

What about the fact that he used harsh language on occasion to do so? Wright’s speaking style really can best be described as “southern preacher.” But when other preachers use that style, we hear about “fire and brimstone” and can laugh it off. For Wright, too many of us want to condemn him for it.

Until we can accept that difference of style, this country’s multi-racial and –ethnic population will never be able to fully get past its racial divide.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: R. Eugene Pincham remained active as an attorney (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/chi-judge-pincham-obit-webapr04,0,6348192.story) even after retiring as a judge. He was one of the attorneys retained by musician R. Kelly in his ongoing legal battles in Cook County criminal court.

"Joliet, Ill." losing its rep as a prison town

There once was a time when the placement of a “Joliet, Ill.” dateline atop a news story was a sure-fire guarantee of prison violence or some other news related to the activity of a violent criminal.

The small city located at the far southwestern-most corner of what could be considered the Chicago area became internationally known for the facilities located in or near its borders that housed dangerous and violent criminals.

THE NAMES “STATEVILLE” and “Joliet” brought to mind the same dank, depressing images of criminal justice and retribution as do names like “Leavenworth” and “Alcatraz.”

Those days are receding into the past, and Joliet municipal officials are glad. While they enjoyed the tax benefits and jobs provided by having two maximum-security prisons nearby, the fact that their town was known more for its dangerous visiting residents than anything that happened in town had to be depressing.

Joliet’s days as a prison town are declining because the Joliet Correctional Center and the Stateville Correctional Center in neighboring Crest Hill (which many people mistake for the low-income section of Joliet) are old. The Joliet prison dates to the 19th Century, while Stateville is a modern (only by Illinois prison standards) facility that opened in 1925.

Age is the element that brought the Joliet Correctional Center to its demise as a viable maximum-security prison, and its sister Stateville Correctional Center could soon share the same fate. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Trying to turn those old prisons that were meant to resemble imposing castles that would scare passersby into never wanting to have to spend any time there (while also intimidating the inmates who were there) into modern corrections facilities would be way too expensive.

IT IS EASIER to just build new facilities, which can be constructed up to modern standards of criminal incarceration – which, for those who fear inmates are being “coddled” are still extremely restrictive. No one in their right mind would volunteer to live under such conditions.

The old Joliet Correctional Center already has been shuttered, as far as housing maximum-security inmates. The facility is now a center for people convicted of a crime in northern Illinois. They start their prison term there, spend a few days while being evaluated by state corrections officials, then they are assigned to the prison where they will spend the bulk of their hard time.

That fate is to be shared by Stateville, if Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets his way.

When Blagojevich presented his state budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, it called for closing the oldest parts of Stateville (the ones that are most in violation of modern standards for housing inmates) and using other parts to perform the same functions now carried out on the other side of town at the former Joliet Correctional Center.

STATEVILLE CURRENTLY HAS about 3,500 inmates, and it is estimated that the move would cause about 1,500 of them to be relocated to prisons across the state. That sounds like an ambitious project – trying to shift that many potentially dangerous people around the state.

There’s a very good chance that the bulk of them would wind up in Thomson, Ill., where a modern facility has been sitting empty in the rural northwest Illinois county for nearly a decade. Officials would like to have transfers complete by 2011.

Corrections officials also say that some less-violent inmates could be placed at new prisons in Lawrenceville and Sheridan, although critics of the proposed shift say the three new prisons were meant to supplement existing facilities – not replace them.

The Thomson prison is actually one of the laughable tales of state government ineptitude. The problem is that Illinois Department of Corrections officials were never given adequate funding to maintain the new prison.

THE FACILITY BUILT back in the 1990s was meant to give Illinois a modern maximum-security prison. Its construction was completed in time to theoretically open the facility in 2001.

But the state built itself a new toy that it can’t afford to play with. Large portions of the modern prison have sat empty for six years now, and a recent report by the Illinois auditor general’s office said some parts of the prison are deteriorating due to non-use.

I’ll credit Blagojevich for realizing that it is past due for the state to start using its new prison. I also realize that Stateville is a place whose best days are in the past. I have been inside Stateville on a few occasions (as a reporter, not an inmate), and what always amazed me was seeing the same spots that were used in the late 1948 film “Call Northside 777.” What was once fresh and new had become rather decrepit by the time I saw it 50 years later.

A shift from Stateville is a move that should have taken place some time ago.

THAT, OF COURSE, will not stop political people from trying to get involved. State Sen. Debbie D. Halvorson, D-Crete, says she will oppose any shift of inmates away from Stateville because that also means Corrections Department jobs moving from Will County to Carroll County.

State officials concede that about 400 jobs will be shifted from the Joliet-area if the move takes place.

In the big picture (that of the entire state), the jobs factor is irrelevant – the actual payroll will remain the same. Some might even argue that in the small picture, it is not that important because another Illinois area would suddenly gain a batch of jobs. It all balances out.

But Halvorson is running a campaign to move up to the House of Representatives, and Stateville is in the territory encompassed by the congressional district she wants to represent in Washington.

SHE WANTS TO appear as though she will fight for local jobs, and figures Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., whose Quad Cities-area congressional district would gain from the Illinois Corrections Department change, can fight his own battle to support the shift.

This issue is not an easy one for most Chicagoans to understand because most of us are living here in part because we would never want to live in the kind of isolated community that usually attracts prison facilities.

About the only place in Chicago that has anything resembling a prison atmosphere is the Little Village neighborhood, which abuts the Cook County Jail complex. But that neighborhood’s historic character is one where newly arrived immigrants live for a bit before moving up in life. Even the current Mexican population that lives in “La Villita” will some day move on to better places. Nobody in Chicago stays long-term in a jail atmosphere.

In fact, the reason Joliet got to be the unofficial prison capital of Illinois is because it used to be fairly isolated. Officials a century ago never envisioned the suburban sprawl that would spread itself out from Chicago in all directions and turn Joliet and its surrounding communities into just more suburbs of the Second City.

BUT THERE ARE people who will vehemently fight on both sides of this issue. Joliet area officials, while they would enjoy cleansing their public image of the prison ties, also enjoy the economic benefits of a steady employer like Illinois government.

Most of the people who work at the prisons are not the kind of people who would be able, or willing, to make a sudden move across the state just to keep a job.

Likewise, Carroll County, Ill., is an isolated place. While on the Mississippi River, Carroll County is the rural space that falls between the Quad Cities and Galena, Ill. Getting this prison to finally hire people and open itself is likely the biggest economic opportunity the county of just over 16,000 people (by comparison, the typical ward in Chicago has about three times that many people) will ever see.

For Thomson itself, the prison will put the town of 559 people (it’s the self-proclaimed “Melon Capital of the World”) on the map, just like no one ever paid attention to Tamms, Ill., until they got to be the location of the state’s only “super maximum” security prison.

IN THE BIG picture, Carroll County will gain more than Will County will lose. After all, Joliet still has two of the biggest moneymaking riverboat casinos in Illinois, a racetrack that hosts major auto racing events and an independent league professional baseball team. A lot of Illinois communities (many across the Midwest, to be honest) would love to be in Joliet’s position.

Honestly, the most negative aspect I can think of for Joliet is that officials will have to figure out a way to explain to future generations who watch reruns of “The Blues Brothers” film just why the blues singer character portrayed by John Belushi was nicknamed “Joliet Jake.” After all, the day will come when the nickname no longer makes sense.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Illinois corrections officials have used the Joliet area as the site of two (http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/facilities/information.asp?instchoice=sta) of its most intense-security facilities for more than eight decades.

We’ll see how pleased Thomson (http://www.thomsonil.com/) is to have a maximum-security prison after the first incident that takes place within its walls.

Inmates who have spent their time within Stateville’s walls all had their own ways of coping (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951815,00.html) with the mental anguish of being locked up.

(Democratic) Party crasher wants to be a judge

T.J. Somer is an attorney with dreams of being a Cook County judge.

The resident of Chicago Heights who is corporation counsel of his hometown has never won an election – even though he has tried repeatedly.

The closest he has come to success thus far is when he ran for mayor of Chicago Heights. He gained public attention by losing, challenging the results in court and taking 19 months before conceding defeat.

SOMER’S DREAMS OF running for office began in the 1990s when he was the former Chicago Heights police officer who was the sacrificial lamb to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., when the Republican Party needed someone to challenge the son of the civil rights leader in a congressional district that was rapidly developing a significant African-American population.

So what is different about Thomas J. Somer now that makes him think he has a chance of winning the election Tuesday?

He has changed political parties. Somer is running as a Democrat for a judicial post within a suburban subcircuit.
T.J. Somer hopes that changing political parties will result in a better Election Day outcome. Photograph provided by Bloom Township government.

Somer is the latest example of someone changing his politically partisan label in hopes that “joining the other team” will give him a better chance at winning. After all, it is not that Somer has anything significantly new in his background.

HIS HOMETOWN USED to be a Republican bastion in the south suburbs. Officials who controlled Chicago Heights politics were white ethnics (largely Italian) who leaned toward the GOP because they saw the party as their political instrument that kept them from being bowled over by Chicago city government.

Shifting parties is just a sign Somer can “smell the coffee,” so to speak, of his changing community. Growing African-American and Hispanic populations in Chicago Heights (along with a federal investigation of the Chicago mob during the 1990s that sent former Chicago Heights Mayor Charles Panici to prison) have changed the town’s politics.

Somer (who was not caught up in the Chicago Heights political corruption) is basically the same “white ethnic” guy whose focus is fellow working-class people.

There really is little difference between people of Democratic and Republican persuasions, particularly if they come from the same region. Similar life experiences will produce similar views on issues that triumph over political party ties. I’m convinced the only reason some “hard-core” Democrats in Chicago support the party is because it is the establishment and they do not want to be mavericks.

FORCE THOSE SAME people to live in a downstate Illinois community where the GOP is dominant, and they likely would convert within weeks. I also know that while I am a Chicagoan who leans Democrat, I find I have more in common with those rare Chicagoans who identify as Republican, than with those rural Illinois residents who vote for Democrats.

Somer’s political conversion is not unique.

The most prominent flip in recent Chicago political history was when Edward R. Vrdolyak, then an alderman and head of the Cook County Democratic Party, decided he wanted to be a part of the political party of Ronald Reagan.

After losing a 1987 mayoral primary to incumbent Harold Washington, he flipped to the GOP, where he campaigned for Cook County circuit court clerk in 1988 and later another mayoral bid as a Republican write-in in the 1989 special election.

HIS GOP BIDS were never traditional campaigns, as they were caught up in the mid-1980s spirit of “Council Wars” that poisoned our local politics. He was never appealing to hard-core Republican voters as much as to racially motivated ones.

I also remember when Ald. Bernie Stone of the far North Side’s 50th Ward declared himself to be a Republican on the grounds that Democrats were too preoccupied with racial disputes. He resumed use of the “Democrat” label when it became apparent no one believed the GOP conversion.

Digging back into Chicago political history, one of the biggest flips was that of Richard J. Daley, who won his first campaign for electoral office as a Republican representing the Bridgeport neighborhood in the Illinois House of Representatives.

The GOP label was a technicality that Democrats used when organizing a write-in campaign for Daley after the Republican incumbent died just before Election Day. Back then, Illinois House districts were required to have representatives of both political parties, and Daley as a GOPer was really a trick to steal a seat.

DALEY BECAME A Democrat officially in his second election, when he moved up to an Illinois Senate seat.

So what are the chances that the public (or at least those living in the 15th subcircuit of Cook County) will take to Democrat Somer any more than they did to the Republican version?

He could win this time around, but not because of any ideological flip.

The difference is that he has some money for a campaign (the Illinois State Board of Elections showed him spending $13,994.48 during the latter half of 2007, and starting this year off with $20,330.52), and he has put money into advertising billboards and public benches.

I HAVE SAT on Somer’s name in recent weeks, and it may help him get enough public recognition that some clueless voter will recognize the name when running through what seems like an endless list of people on the judicial portion of the ballot.

But then, I have yet to see an “idiot” card that lists him. None of the public officials who are organizing voter turnout are bothering to urge people to cast ballots for Somer, although the Chicago Bar Association and the Chicago Council of Lawyers both say he is “qualified” to be a judge.

The Illinois State Bar Association, the Hellenic Bar Association and the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, however, all say he is “not qualified.”

At the less public levels of politics, the bulk of a candidate’s votes usually come from having the support of someone with an organization who can turn out voters on one’s behalf. The various bar association rankings are interesting, but many voters don’t pay them much attention.

AND INSOFAR AS eye-catching political mailings are concerned, he’s running against Anna Helen Demacopoulos, an assistant state’s attorney who also wants to become a judge. (Take a guess who the Hellenic Bar Association would like to see win.)

Her mailings emphasize the notion that government could be spying on us, and that we ought to elect judges who will protect our personal privacy rights.

So who will wind up winning Tuesday; the Republican convert or the prosecutor appealing to our outrage over potential abuses of the Patriot Act?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here are the reports filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections that detail the finances of the Somer (http://www.elections.state.il.us/CampaignDisclosure/D2Semi.aspx?id=353527) and Demacopoulos (http://www.elections.il.gov/CampaignDisclosure/D2Semi.aspx?id=356859) campaigns. Note the significant drop in totals raised and spent, compared to the millions spent by candidates for statewide or county government posts.

Nia Vardalos (the star of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) doesn’t care if Somer is now a Democrat. She (http://www.annaforjudge.com/) wants you to vote for Demacopoulos.