Nearly 9 in 10 state-level primaries give voters no choice in candidates
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[March 05, 2024]
By ANDREW ADAMS
Capitol News Illinois
aadams@capitolnewsillinois.com
On March 19, voting will conclude in primary contests for hundreds of
seats in the Illinois legislature and in the state’s court system. But
most of those contests are uncompetitive.
Statewide, 88 percent of judicial and state legislative primaries
feature either a single candidate or no one running at all. This is the
highest number of uncompetitive primaries for those seats in at least 20
years, according to a Capitol News Illinois analysis of data going back
to 2004.
The number of primaries with no candidates running at all is similar to
years past, about 33 percent. But the number of primaries with a single
person running has jumped to 55 percent, from 46 percent in 2020.
John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said
Illinois’ primary participation mirrors a national trend and is
partially stoked by growing political polarization and state
redistricting practices. The state process for drawing legislative
districts is a partisan one by law, meaning many districts have been
drawn in a way that favors one party over the other.
While that’s made primaries increasingly important in districts that
lean heavily in favor of one party over the other, it’s also helped
reinforce a trend of parties choosing not to run candidates in districts
that were not drawn in their favor.
“The only battle is the primary,” Shaw, a former congressional reporter,
told Capitol News Illinois.
Shaw said the expectation of candidates to work across the aisle has
decreased in recent decades, meaning that parties lean into ideology
more.
“It is not good for governance when candidates run unopposed in a
primary or general election,” Shaw said.
For about 65 percent of state legislative and judicial seats, only one
party’s primary has any candidates running, with most of those primaries
featuring a single candidate.
While many of those races will likely be uncompetitive in the general
election as well, the number of contested seats could grow beyond what
the primaries indicate via a political appointment process. The
political parties have until June 3 to select a person to run on the
party’s behalf in races where the primaries did not produce a winning
candidate. That person would be chosen by local party officials, such as
county board chairs in downstate Illinois or ward committees in Chicago.
“It’s not routine, but it’s not unheard of,” Illinois Board of Elections
spokesperson Matt Dieterich said of the process.
Long-term trends
John Jackson, a professor at the Paul Simon Institute, said the stark
divisions in party control are driven by party realignment and
polarization, which have resulted in fewer candidates running on
politically moderate platforms.
“That started nationally, then trickled down to state, even now to
local,” he said.
Jackson, who works at an institute founded by and named for a
conservative Democratic senator, noted this trend only emerged in the
past few decades.
“There used to be moderates in the Republican party and moderates in the
Democratic party,” Jackson said. “They were much more heterogeneous than
they are.”
In Illinois, that’s led to stark partisan divides that also fall
squarely along urban-rural lines. The city of Chicago remains the center
of Democratic power in a democratically controlled state. Republicans
have few primary candidates in the city and no serious challengers to
most Democrats running.
Rural Illinois, meanwhile, remains almost unrepresented by the state’s
Democratic party in the legislature or on the bench, with few Democratic
candidates filing to run on rural primary ballots.
Only one legislative seat is competitive for both Democrats and
Republicans: the 76th House District. This district contains most of the
city of DeKalb as well as stretches of DeKalb, LaSalle and Bureau
counties. The district’s current representative – Rep. Lance Yednock,
D-Ottawa – is not running for reelection, and two Republicans and three
Democrats are vying to replace him.
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The exterior of the Illinois State Capitol is pictured in
Springfield. In 2024, nearly 90 percent of Statehouse primaries
feature either one candidate or none at all. (Capitol News Illinois
photo by Andrew Adams)
The legislative primaries that have drawn the most candidates include
two four-way Democratic contests in the Chicago area. The primary for
the 20th Senate District in Chicago, a seat currently held by Sen.
Natalie Toro, D-Chicago, is Toro’s first senate race. She was appointed
to the seat last summer to fill out the remainder of former Sen.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas’ term after she resigned to take a position with
the city of Chicago.
In the House, the south suburban 79th District also features four
Democrats vying for the seat. The district has been represented by a
Republican since 2016 and is currently held by Rep. Jackie Haas,
R-Kankakee.
The 53rd Senate District Republican primary also drew four candidates.
That seat is currently held by Sen. Tom Bennett, R-Gibson City, who is
not running for reelection. He was appointed to the seat early last year
after serving in the state House.
Judicial elections getting more attention, low competition
While there are primaries for 82 judicial positions across the state,
about 85 percent of them feature either one or no candidate on the
ballot. Just over half feature a single candidate across both major
party primaries.
Part of this is due to the high number of races in Cook County – a very
Democratic area – which operates the second largest court system in the
nation.
But the low number of interested candidates can be partially explained
by shifting career goals among lawyers, according to Eizabeth Monkus,
senior research attorney at the nonprofit judicial reform advocacy group
Chicago Appleseed Center.
“People come into the profession with different goals than they used
to,” Monkus said.
Monkus noted that there are more people interested in what she called
“movement lawyering,” where a person furthers political and social goals
through legal advocacy, rather than working as a trial lawyer or working
on criminal cases.
“If you’re working to change the world, judges have less power to do
that than you might expect,” Monkus said.
But judicial elections are important because of their impacts on a local
– often personal – level, where Monkus said judges’ decisions can have a
“long and lasting” impact.
Monkus noted that since she began working in judicial elections over a
decade ago, people are more aware of judicial elections than they used
to be, despite the relatively low number of candidates in any given
race. She attributed that to increased voter interest, more campaigning
in high-profile races and more thorough news coverage.
The most high-stakes judicial primary this year is the battle over one
of the state’s Supreme Court seats from the 1st District in Cook County.
That race features Joy V. Cunningham running to keep the seat she was
appointed to in 2022 against Jesse G. Reyes, an appellate court judge
who also ran in 2020 in a heated seven-way primary for the seat
currently held by P. Scott Neville. Reyes came in second in that race
with 20.3 percent of the vote to Neville’s 26.2 percent.
As with most judicial races this year, it’s a one-party race at this
point. No Republicans are currently running for the seat on the state’s
highest court.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is
distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is
funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois
Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association. |