Even as Illinois election officials and the state's powerful Speaker of the House seek to end the legal action, more potential Republican state legislative candidates have joined their names to a lawsuit challenging a new election law approved by the state's Democratic supermajority this spring to rewrite the rules by which political parties can select candidates - a law which Republicans have called a brazen attempt to block GOP candidates and steal elections this fall before any votes have been cast.
Last week, Sangamon County Judge Gail Noll granted a request for a preliminary injunction sought by four prospective Republican state legislative candidates, blocking the state from enforcing the new law.
Known as Senate Bill 2412, the legislation amended state election law to block political parties from slating candidates to run for office after the primary election, unless they had first run in their party's primary election.
Jeffrey Schwab
| Liberty Justice Center
Under the previous rules, parties who had no official nominees for a particular elected office after the spring primary vote had 75 days after the primary election to "slate" candidates to run as the official party nominee in such races. This year, that deadline was to be June 3.
However, six weeks after the March 19 primary, and with just about four weeks until the June 3 deadline, Democrats rushed SB2412 through both houses of the Illinois General Assembly in less than 48 hours. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker then quickly signed the legislation, upending the candidate nomination process that was already underway.
While the changes would apply to all political parties, it is particularly harmful to Republicans, as the party intended to rely on that process to ensure it had candidates on the ballot to run against Democratic incumbents in the November general election.
Republicans have decried the law, calling it brazen election interference by a partisan supermajority, under the guise of "ethics reforms" and promoting democracy.
With the changes, Democrats could all but ensure many of their incumbents will face no competition this fall.
Indeed, in a brief filed in court, attorneys for Democratic Speaker of the House Emanuel "Chris" Welch noted the legislation would ensure as many as 53 Democratic state representatives and state senators, combined, would likely face no opposition in November, as Republicans would be blocked from nominating candidates in those districts in which no Republican candidate ran in the March primary election.
By contrast, Democrats did not run candidates in 21 State House districts and four State Senate districts.
There are 138 state legislative contests on the ballot this fall across Illinois.
On May 11, four prospective Republican state legislative candidates, identified as Leslie Collazo, Daniel Behr, James Kirchner and Carl Kunz, filed suit, asserting Democrats had unconstitutionally changed the rules for the 2024 election in the middle of the election cycle, violating the rights of voters and of candidates to seek office under the state and federal constitutions.
All four candidates had been "slated" by the Illinois Republican Party to run in their respective legislative districts against Democratic incumbents, primarily in Chicago and Cook County.
In the May 22 ruling, Judge Noll blocked the state from using the new law to prevent the four candidates from landing on the ballot. In her ruling, Noll said she she believes lawmakers' decision to essentially rewrite the election rules for this year in the midst of the 2024 candidate nomination and petition process likely "places a severe restriction on the fundamental right to vote."
And she said she believed the four Republicans were likely to prevail ultimately in court on the larger legal questions, as well.
A week after Noll's ruling, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and attorneys for Speaker Welch each filed separate motions to end the case.
Raoul moved for summary judgment, which is a legal term for a final ruling from the judge without a trial.
Attorneys Michael J. Kasper and Adam R. Vaught - longtime powerful Democratic Party operatives with ties to indicted former House Speaker and former Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Michael J. Madigan - filed a motion to dismiss.
They assert no court has the authority to question lawmakers' decisions to change ballot access rules, even in the middle of an election cycle.
"(SB2412) is non-discriminatory – it applies to Democrats and Republicans equally. While there are more Republican vacancies this year, it could be the opposite in the next election cycle.
"While Plaintiffs may decry the Act as some sort of political dirty trick, that does not make the Act unconstitutional."
In his filing, Raoul noted the only real complaint with the law is not with the substance of the law, only its timing, coming in the middle of the process under the rules that were in play when the 2024 election cycle began.
He said that is not enough to demonstrate Democratic state lawmakers had trampled anyone's rights by changing the rules in the middle of the process.
"... The Act did not stop any of the Plaintiffs from running for office or otherwise disqualify someone already chosen by the voters. Each Plaintiff could have run in their respective primaries, and their declarations provide no explanation as to why they did not. That they did not do so does not mean that they are entitled to a process where political insiders hand-select them to be their party’s nominees after the primary has passed and do so while gathering less signatures than independent or third-party candidates," Raoul wrote.
Plaintiffs filed their own motion for summary judgment on May 31.
In their brief filed in support of that motion, they assert the purported concerns for the will of the voters espoused by Raoul and Welch in their filings don't hold up under scrutiny, as allowing the law to be enforced in 2024 would leave more than half of legislative races with only one candidate on the ballot - and that would usually be an unopposed Democratic incumbent - leaving most voters with "effectively .. no choice at all."
"... Applying the Act to Plaintiffs in the 2024 general election would undermine the State’s purported interest - in preventing political insiders from having control over which candidates are slated and to ensure that the voters make this determination—because it would ensure that voters have less choice and political insiders have more control over which candidates are on the ballot," plaintiffs' attorney Jeffrey M. Schwab, of the Liberty Justice Center, wrote.
While the judge has not yet ruled on those competing motions, Judge Noll did allow Republican plaintiffs to add more prospective candidates to their roster of plaintiffs.
New candidates added to the list of plaintiffs include:
Comaxtle "Max" Olivo, of Chicago, who is seeking to place his name on the ballot in the 1st Representative District, challenging Democratic State Rep. Aaron Ortiz;
Juvandy Rivera, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado in the 3rd Representative District;
Nancy Rodriguez, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Lilian Jimenez in the 4th Representative District;
Terry Nguyen Le, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Hoan Huynh in the 13th Representative District;
John Zimmers, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Lindsay LaPointe in the 19th Representative District;
Carlos Gonzalez, of Lyons, challenging Democratic State Sen. Javier Loera Cervantes in the 1st Legislative (State Senate) District;
Ashley Jensen, of Winthrop Harbor, challenging Democratic State Sen. Mary Edly-Allen in the 31st State Senate District;
Teresa Alexander, of North Aurora, challenging Democratic State Rep. Barbara Hernandez in the 50th Representative District; and
Donald Puckett, of Elgin, challenging Democratic State Rep. Anna Moeller in the 43rd Representative District.
The list of candidates also notably includes Ron Andermann, of Arlington Heights, who is seeking to run in the 53rd Representative District in Cook County's northwest suburbs. Andermann had sought to run against former Democrat State Rep. Mark L. Walker.
However, Walker will not be the Democratic candidate in that race, as on May 11, he was selected by Democratic Party leadership to fill the vacant seat in the 27th State Senate District.
Under state law, Democratic Party leadership will have the authority to select Walker's interim replacement, who can then run in the November general election, ostensibly as an incumbent, despite never having faced voters in the primary election, as the new election law does not impact the power of political parties to appoint interim legislators to fill vacancies.