Nearly 250 Chicago area lawyers, including some with deep political histories and some with high-powered political connections, have thrown their names into consideration to become Cook County’s next crop of appointed judges.
The list notably includes the wife of Illinois’ new Speaker of the House of Representatives Emanuel “Chris” Welch.
The list of judge candidates was made public this week by the office of Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans.
The new judges will be selected by a process established by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts.
From here, the names will be sent to a nominating committee that includes Judge Evans and the presiding judges over each of the county’s court divisions. Those presiding judges were appointed by Evans.
The nominating committee will then narrow the list to 20 finalist candidates. From that list, the county’s elected circuit judges – all Democrats – will vote to choose the 10 who will become the county’s next associate judges.
The list of names of those seeking one of the open judgeships is loaded with names of attorneys from government agencies, including the offices of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office; the Cook County Public Defender; the Cook County Public Guardian; and the Illinois Attorney General, among others.
For instance, from the Attorney General’s Office, the list includes Richard Cenar, chief of the Public Integrity Division; Assistant Attorney General John Fearon; and Assistant Attorney General Sunil Bhave. Bhave had represented Evans’ office in a dispute with Cook County over funding for the judiciary in 2017.
Other notable public officials seeking one of the judicial vacancies include Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard;
Dartesia Pitts, general counsel for Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton;
Debjani Desai, general counsel for Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza;
Sonia Antolec, currently, director of People and Legal at The Mom Project, who had worked as the director of legal hiring and recruiting for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx;
And Natalie Howse, regional counsel for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
The list also includes a number of current and former judges, and lawyers who sought election as a judge, but lost.
These include former judge Jackie M. Portman-Brown, who was voted out of office when she lost her bid for retention in 2020. Portman-Brown was captured on video putting a child – who she identified as her grandniece – into a courtroom holding cell, before returning to the bench and leaving the child in the cell alone.
It also includes Frank DiFranco, a Park Ridge Republican who narrowly lost his race for a Cook County subcircuit judgeship last fall. He has since sued the Cook County Clerk’s office, asserting he was the victim of vote fraud.
Felicia Simmons Stovall is also on the list of candidates. The enforcement attorney for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White lost in her bid for election to the Cook County bench in 2020.
However, the list of judicial candidates is topped by ShawnTe Raines-Welch, the wife of the man who became the first Black person to be elected House Speaker and the first Democrat other than former State Rep. Michael J. Madigan to hold the Speaker’s gavel in Illinois in four decades.
Raines-Welch, who practices law as ShawnTe M. Raines, is a partner at Ancel Glink P.C., in Chicago. Her husband also was a partner at the law firm, which specializes in representing municipal governments, including cities, school districts, park districts and other local taxpayer-funded public bodies.
Neither he nor the firm have clarified what the Speaker’s role with the firm will be going forward.
Others who are seeking appointment to the Cook County bench include:
- John Fritchey, a Democratic former Cook County Board commissioner and former Illinois state representative;
- Joseph Chico, cousin of Gery Chico, who was the chief of staff to former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and former president of the Chicago Board of Education;
- Christopher Cooper, a Chicago attorney who has established his name representing police officers, notably including Cook County Sheriff’s Correctional Officers and Deputies in a sprawling court fight over whether they had been legally disciplined and fired for alleged infractions;
- Shay T. Allen, a Chicago lawyer who is representing a group of Black former campaign workers for Gov. JB Pritzker, in a discrimination lawsuit against the governor’s campaign; and
- Robert Milan, a former federal and Cook County prosecutor, who served as a special prosecutor handling the Jon Burge Chicago Police torture accusation cases. Milan lost his bid for Cook County State’s Attorney in 2008.