A Republican candidate for Illinois state representative in Cook County's northwest suburbs has hit Gov. JB Pritzker with a state regulatory ethics complaint, asserting Pritzker violated his ethical responsibilities as a lawyer by supporting and defending an Illinois state law - which was later declared unconstitutional - which Democrats enacted to rewrite election rules in the middle of the 2024 election cycle, in an apparent bid to keep that candidate and other Republicans from challenging incumbent Democratic state lawmakers.
On Oct. 30, Ron Andermann, of Arlington Heights, filed the complaint against Pritzker with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which investigates professional misconduct and ethics complaints against people licensed to practice law in Illinois.
Andermann posted the complaint on his campaign website, in which he accused Pritzker of violating an Illinois rule of professional conduct, established by the Illinois Supreme Court and applicable to licensed attorneys holding public office.
Ronald Andermann
| Wheeling Township Republican Party
Specifically, Andermann pointed to Rule 8.4, which prohibits licensed Illinois attorneys from using their elected public positions "to obtain, or attempt to obtain, a special advantage in a legislative matter for a client under circumstances where the lawyer knows or reasonable should know that such action is not in the public interest."
"Changing an election law in the middle of an election cycle is not in the public interest particularly if the law is aimed at limiting voter choice," Andermann wrote in his report to the ARDC. "In fact, Illinois courts found the change in law related to in this specific misconduct to be unconstitutional.
"The misconduct here is tied to nothing less than election interference which is clearly not in the public interest."
The complaint centers on Pritzker's support and public defense of an Illinois state law, which would have eliminated the ability of political parties in Illinois to use the process known as "slating" to nominate candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in 2024.
Initially known as Senate Bill 2412, the law rewrote state election rules to forbid parties from nominating any candidates for state legislative office unless those candidates had first run in their party's primary election.
Under the previous rules, parties who had no official nominees for a particular elected office after the primary election 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 with virtually no debate or discussion.
It was signed quickly by Pritzker, upending the candidate nomination process that was already underway.
While the changes would apply to all political parties, the law would have been particularly harmful to Republicans this fall, as the GOP intended to rely on the former process to ensure candidates could be placed on the ballot to run against more than a dozen Democratic incumbents.
Pritzker described the law as an "ethics reform" measure and Democrats said the law was needed to ensure only primary voters can choose party nominees for seats in the Illinois House and Senate.
Republicans, however, said the law amounted to brazen election interference by a partisan supermajority, trampling voters' and candidates' rights under the guise of promoting democracy. They noted the law would have ensured at least 53 Democratic incumbents in the State House and State Senate would face no competition this fall.
Among those would have been Democratic State Rep. Nicolle Grasse, who now serves in the State House from the 53rd House District in Chicago's northwest suburbs.
Grasse has never been elected to that post, but was selected by Democratic Party leaders to serve out the remainder of the term of former State Rep. Mark L. Walker, who vacted the 53rd District seat when Democratic Party leaders appointed him to serve in the 27th State Senate District.
Walker had been selected to replace former State Sen. Ann Gillespie, after Gillespie was appointed by Pritzker to lead the Illinois Department of Insurance.
Andermann is challenging Grasse for that office, after he stepped forward amid a call from the local Republican Party for candidates.
However, to land on the ballot, Andermann first had to join with other Republican state legislative candidates to sue the state to overturn SB2412.
In Sangamon County court in Springfield, a judge sided with Andermann and the Republican candidates, agreeing that the law represented an unconstitutional attempt to retroactively rewrite election law in the middle of the election process, trampling voting rights.
The judge struck down the portion of the law, as it applied to the 2024 election.
Illinois Democrats appealed that decision to the Democrat-dominated Illinois Supreme Court. But after two Chicago Democratic Supreme Court justices recused themselves from the case, the high court said it could not get the majority required to overturn the Springfield judge.
That meant the Sangamon County judge's decision stood, and the law would remain blocked, clearing the way for Andermann and more than a dozen other Republican candidates to place their names on the ballot this fall.
However, Andermann then also had to beat back an attempt by Democrats to continue to protect Grasse's seat, by still attempting to persuade the Cook County Electoral Board to remove him from the ballot. They argued the county elections board should ignore the Sangamon County judge's ruling, because it didn't directly apply to the Cook County board.
In his ethics complaint against Pritzker, Andermann said everything about the now-blocked state law should have signaled to lawyers in office, and Pritzker, in particular, that support for the law represented a breach of his oath as an Illinois attorney.
Andermann noted the law was enacted rapidly, using legislative tricks designed to hide the passage of the law from the public for as long as possible and stifle democratic discussion and debate of a measure that could have wide-ranging ramifications for the upcoming elections.
And Andermann accused Pritzker of allegedly continuing the subterfuge by declaring he believed the law represented "ethics reforms" needed to ensure only voters can select party nominees - a sentiment Andermann noted did not square with Pritzker's later strong support for the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president, even though Harris had secured no votes in any presidential primary ever.
Andermann said Pritzker's actions demonstrated a desire merely to place the interests of the Democratic Party above those of the voters and people of Illinois, which he said represented a professional and ethical conflict of interest and a violation of Illinois court rules governing attorney conduct.
"Clearly, there is at least a significant appearance of professional misconduct by Mr. Pritzker, a lawyer who holds the public office of Governor. As Governor, Mr. Pritzker used that office to obtain a special advantage in a legislative matter for the Democratic party (sic) of which he is a member and reasonably had an interest in the blocking potential opposing candidates (sic) from the ballot," Andermann wrote. "The misconduct occurred udner circumstances where Mr. Pritzker knew or reasonably should have known that such misconduct was not in the public interest, and where through deception the victim of this misconduct, the voting public, was unlikely to discover the offense."
Andermann is also an attorney licensed to practice law in Illinois.
He said the decision to file the report with the ARDC was reached in consultation with other lawyers, acting as his counsel.
A spokesperson for Pritzker did not reply Friday, Nov. 1, to a request for comment from The Cook County Record.