Editor's note: This article has been revised from an earlier version to clearly state Judge Anderson's record includes traffic citations.
Will County Judge John Anderson, who is the Democratic nominee for a seat on an Illinois state appeals court, is asking voters for support, despite a past admittedly marred by 33 citations, arrests and convictions for reckless driving and other charges.
That checkered past has been newly documented and publicized on a website promoted by Anderson's Republican opponent, DuPage County Circuit Judge Kenton Skarin, who asserts "John Anderson breaks the very law he's supposed to uphold."
DuPage County Judge Kenton Skarin
| Facebook.com/judgekenton/
Anderson, in response, has cried foul, not denying "choices I made when I was 20 years old," but painting them as part of a story of redemption.
In the Illinois Third Appellate District, Judge Anderson is facing off against Republican DuPage County Circuit Judge Kenton Skarin for a seat on the state appeals court.
The Third District Appellate Court includes the counties of DuPage, Will, Kankakee, Iroquois, Grundy, LaSalle and Bureau.
The race is officially for the vacancy on the court left open following the retirement of former Justice Tom Lytton in 2022 following three decades on the appellate bench. Lytton died in May 2023.
The seat is currently held by Justice Joseph P. Hettel, of LaSalle County.
In the race for the Lytton vacancy, Anderson easily defeated Hettel in the 2024 Democratic primary.
In the Republican primary, Skarin ran unopposed.
Both Skarin and Anderson come with strong recommendations from their legal colleagues, as expressed in judicial ratings from the Illinois State Bar Association.
Anderson has received the rating of "Highly Recommended" from the ISBA, with Skarin receiving the rating of "Recommended."
However, according to the results of accompanying Judicial Advisory Polls published by ISBA, which were completed by lawyers and judges who work with Anderson or Skarin, Skarin scores slightly higher marks than Anderson in a number of categories, including "Meets Requirements of Office," "Integrity," "Impartiality," "Legal Ability," "Temperament," and "Court Management."
According to ISBA, 369 respondents answered questions about Skarin, while 453 answered questions about Anderson.
According to their biographies, Skarin graduated top of his class from the Northwestern University Law School in 2009. He went on to serve as law clerk at the U.S. Fourth District Court of Appeals in Virginia and at the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law, including appellate law, from 2013-2019 for the international firm of Jones Day.
Skarin has served on the DuPage County Circuit Court since 2019.
According to his biography, Anderson has secured two law degrees and two other graduate degrees, including from Duke University Law School and the University of Notre Dame College of Business.
Anderson has clerked for two appellate court justices and for former Justice Thomas Kilbride at the Illinois Supreme Court.
Since 2002, Anderson has worked in private practice and has conducted contract work for the Illinois State Appellate Prosecutor's office. He has remained active in politics throughout, including serving as a Democrat on the Will County Board.
Anderson was elected to the Will County Court as a judge in 2010. In addition to his duties on the bench, Anderson was selected by the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court to chair the state high court's Rules Committee.
Both candidates have asserted pledges to keep politics out of their hearings and decision-making while on the bench.
However, as the campaign has heated up this fall, Skarin's supporters have moved to shine a light on Anderson's past.
In a website created just for that purpose, RecklessJohn.com, they list all of Anderson's 33 citations, arrests and convictions for traffic-related offenses and one arrest for retail theft dating back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The charges listed include a count of reckless driving, though most of the listed offenses are for speeding 15-20 mph over the limit or more. Some of the offenses include speeding 26-30 mph over the limit. And at least one offense listed is for driving more than 31 miles beyond the speed limit.
Other offenses listed included disregarding a traffic control device, driving while license suspended and carrying open open containers of alcohol in the vehicle while driving.
The website includes images of the related court documents to substantiate the claims.
In promoting the site on his Facebook page, Skarin said: "We need judges who follow the law, not break it."
He later added in another post: "Second Chances? Absolutely. Judges don't get thirty-third chances."
In response, Anderson did not deny the list of offenses. Rather, he said they are evidence of what he said is a "challenging" past from his younger days.
He noted only one of the tickets has come within the past 14 years.
In a post on his campaign Facebook page, Anderson said: "I have made no secret that I was once an angry, rudderless young man. I had bad grades, I was even homeless and lived on my friend's couch in a cockroach-infested apartment in Joliet. I turned my life around after a member of my family was murdered in an act of gun violence.
"These experiences taught me empathy, integrity, and the value of hard work...
"I won't defend choices I made when I was 20 years old. I can't - in part, because I don't even remember them. But I believe redemption is a powerful thing that ought to be celebrated, not attacked."
Anderson said the "Reckless John" site shows Skarin "is not fit to be a judge."
But he also warned Skarin that "if you keep it up, maybe I will need to highlight a few things about you as well."
The race is but the hottest for three seats on the Third District Appellate Court.
In addition to the contest between Anderson and Skarin, voters in DuPage, Will, LaSalle, Kankakee, Bureau, Iroquois and Grundy counties will be asked to choose justices for two other seats.
In one race, Republican John F. Costello is seeking to unseat Justice Lance R. Peterson. Peterson was appointed to the appellate court in 2022, following the death of former Justice Daniel L. Schmidt.
And in the other contest, Republican LaSalle County Judge Jason Helland is opposing Democrat Appellate Justice Linda Davenport. Davenport was appointed to the appeals court in 2022 to replace former Appellate Justice Mary K. O'Brien, after O'Brien was elected to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Currently, the Third District Appellate Court includes two Republicans and five Democrats.
O'Brien departed the court in 2022 when she was elected along with fellow Democrat Elizabeth Rochford, as the Democrats rode millions in campaign funds from Gov. JB Pritzker and other top Illinois Democrats to take advantage of a map redrawn by Democratic state lawmakers in a successful gambit to cement a supermajority on the state Supreme Court.
Observers noted the redistricting was driven primarily out of an apparent desire to prevent Republicans from winning the seat formerly held by Kilbride.
That seat opened in 2020 when Republicans succeeded in stopping Kilbride, a noted ally of now indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, from winning enough votes in the old Third Judicial District to retain his seat on the court.
Previously, the Third District, which is based in downstate Ottawa, included most of north central Illinois, including Peoria and the Illinois half of the Quad Cities. Will County was the only suburban Chicago county included in the old Third District.
The district was redrawn to loop in increasingly Democratic DuPage County and to lop off most of the predominantly Republican counties to the south and west, instead grouping those counties into a redrawn Fourth Judicial District to make the Third District more friendly to electing a Democrat to the Supreme Court.