Very preliminary analysis and some other thoughts about yesterday's judicial primary results

Turnout was abysmal -- 23.65% countywide -- no real difference between the City (23.9%) and suburbs (23.4%).

The low turnout benefited slated candidates. Winning elections, I've been told, is not about 'getting out the vote' but, rather, about getting out your votes.

Not every slated candidate won. Judges Stanley L. Hill, Sr. and Alfred M. Swanson, Jr. did not prevail; neither did Deputy Corporation Counsel Michael A. Forti. Female opponents prevailed in each of these races.

But the the Cook County Democratic Party delivered for five of the eight slated candidates in contested countywide Circuit Court races, all three contested Appellate Court races and, of course, in the Supreme Court race.

I don't know for certain who could claim slating in the 7th Subcircuit races; I'm told that Kimberly D. Lewis, who narrowly leads appointed Judge Arthur P. Wheatley as of this morning, enjoyed significant political support.

But in those 24 contested races where slating could be ascertained, only four slated candidates did not prevail. In addition to the three already mentioned, Abbey Fishman Romanek appears to have fallen to Associate Judge Larry G. Axelrood. But Axelrood, though not slated, enjoyed considerable political support, including the endorsements of Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl and Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin.

The low turnout seems to be the most important factor in yesterday's results.

People seem to need some particular motivation to vote in primary elections; why every citizen does not see that it is his or her duty to go to the polls at every election is not a question I can hope to answer in a blog post -- and certainly not this morning. Instead, the first thing to do is to congratulate the winners.

Next, I hope we can all acknowledge that there were a great many qualified candidates who did not prevail yesterday. There is some consolation -- for those of us who were not candidates, at least -- that, for the most part, the candidates who did prevail were rated qualified or recommended by all or most of the evaluating bar groups.

And for those who were not successful yesterday, I offer these words of former President Theodore Roosevelt, made during a 1910 speech in Paris. These words were inscribed on a plaque that my wife gave me after one of my own spectacular failures as a judicial candidate. Teddy Roosevelt's words are not gender-inclusive, but I hope you will understand that I intend this as some comfort to all candidates who fell short yesterday:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Admittedly, these weren't an immediate comfort to me either....