For the second time in four years, the office that handles the records and documents of Cook County's courts will come under new leadership.
And the new Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court is again coming into office with promises of increased transparency and commitment to public service from the office long associated with mismanagement, bureaucracy and accusations of political corruption.
In the March Democratic primary election, Mariyana Spyropoulos easily defeated incumbent Circuit Clerk Iris Martinez.
Iris Martinez, Cook County Circuit Court clerk
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According to unofficial vote totals, Spyropoulos garnered 65% of the vote against Martinez to secure the Democratic Party nomination for the office. In heavily Democratic Cook County, winning the Democratic nomination is almost always enough to secure election, making the November general election all but a formality.
Spyropoulos was swept to office both on concerns over Martinez's handling of the office since winning election in 2020, and the official endorsement from Cook County's powerful Democratic Party bosses.
Prior to running for Circuit Clerk, Spyropoulos had served since 2010 as a commissioner on the board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which oversees the region's sewage and stormwater treatment plants and related infrastructure. She served as board president from 2015-2019.
Spyropoulos also is a lawyer, who previously served as an assistant Cook County State's Attorney.
Spyropoulos also brought significant personal and family financial resources to the race, dropping $1.4 million in personal and family contributions into her campaign fund.
Such donations prompted Martinez and her supporters to claim Spyropoulos essentially "bought" the office.
Following her election victory, Spyropoulos pledged to follow through on campaign pledges of modernizing the circuit clerk's office, emphasizing transitioning to digital court records and improving public access through the court's dated computer systems and website.
She further pledged to "fight corruption" and "misconduct" in the court clerk's office. She pledged to not accept campaign contributions from circuit clerk's office employees, long a sore spot central to political corruption accusations in the office.
When Martinez took office in 2020, she made similar pledges about cleaning up the scandals that had plagued the office under former clerk Dorothy Brown, an embattled public figure whose final years in office were spent under the shadow of federal investigation of her office for a range of alleged misconduct.
Brown was never indicted or formally accused of wrongdoing.
Reform advocates also pilloried Brown for her management of the office, notably criticizing her for refusing to bring Cook County's court records system into the 21st Century and grant the public remote access to public court documents.
Members of the public, including those needing to use the courts, are required to visit courthouses to access documents and records related to criminal and civil cases, even if it is their own. Only lawyers are allowed to access court documents remotely.
Martinez also pledged in 2020 to modernize the office's technology and improve public access.
During her 2024 campaign, Martinez noted the office, under her watch, had digitized 70 million court files. She also noted she had opened a call center to allow people involved in court cases or facing criminal charges to gather information about their cases in multiple languages.
The circuit clerk's website continues to lack any ability for the public to remotely access court documents.
In her victory speech, Spyropoulos pledged that she would "fix this office and restore faith in the courts."