Illinois has joined the club. When three candidates for the Illinois Supreme Court spent $1 million in their primaries this year, and a fourth spent nearly that much, this state took its place next to such states as California and Texas, where millions of dollars have rolled into high court races for nearly two decades.

DuPage County Circuit Judge Bonnie M. Wheaton spent $1.5 million. Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Fitzgerald spent $1.04 million. Appointed Supreme Court Justice S. Louis Rathje spent $1.01 million. And 1st District Appellate Justice Morton Zwick spent $974,411.

The $580,000 Chief Justice Moses W. Harrison II spent in 1992 on his primary and general election races was the previous record, says Kent Redfield, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The $447,631 spent by Justice James D. Heiple that same year was the record spent on a general election race alone. Five candidates for the high court seat won by Justice Mary Ann G. McMorrow in 1992 spent a combined $804,000.

By way of comparison, the campaign waged by Supreme Court Justice Benjamin K. Miller in the 1980s was thought to be expensive.

He spent $255,258 on both the primary and general elections in 1984. Miller, a Springfield Republican, won the seat.

Three open seats on the state's high court, and a growing interest in judicial races, are credited for this year's cash rush. Most of that money has been spent on television advertising, other forms of media and political consultants.

Whatever the reason for the rise in spending, some experts predict the tabs for Illinois judicial races are likely to go even higher. After all, Texas, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Alabama have had million-dollar high court races for years. Illinois' high court races can be expected to join the trend.

"[The costs of] all campaigns have skyrocketed," says Jim Collins, executive director of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. "If one thing works for a given team, they all will try to do it," says A.L. Zimmer, general counsel to the State Board of Elections. "So the contest becomes more intense. People

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I think it's just the natural course of anything that's greatly fought over."

But there's an additional reason judicial campaigns are getting more expensive: Third-party political action committees have begun to wage their own campaigns for and against judicial candidates. In Ohio this year, as much as $12 million is expected to be spent in a battle over a single high court seat. About half of that is expected to be spent by business political action committees trying to oust an incumbent justice who wrote the majority opinion that struck down that state's law limiting damages that plaintiffs can win in civil actions, a so-called tort reform.

Business PACs and other special interest groups haven't been as active in waging their own campaigns in Illinois' high court races, but that could change. Small businesses, big businesses and business PACs did donate to Illinois Supreme Court candidates this year, but their contributions paled in comparison to those made by lawyers and law firms, who have historically kicked in the bulk of contributions to judicial candidates' kitties.

"Very, very large sums of money have been going to judicial candidates for decades," says Todd Maisch, vice president of government affairs at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. "The problem is that it's only been lawyers that have been doing it. The truth is the business community is going to stand up and take note, and we are not going to leave the judicial system at the mercy of the law profession."

Illinois business this year did favor one high court candidate, state Sen. Carl E. Hawkinson, a Galesburg Republican, running in the 3rd District. A review of state Board of Elections contribution reports filed through June 30 by the candidates who will appear on the November 7 general election ballot indicates that business PACs gave a higher percentage of single contributions to Hawkinson than to any other candidate for the high court.

Hawkinson took in at least $3,000 from business PACs, including $1,000 from the Illinois Hospital and HealthSystems Association, $1,000 from the Illinois Chamber, $500 from the Illinois Construction Industry and $500 from the Illinois Association of HMOs. Still, he also received contributions from trial lawyers, the business industry's traditional courtroom adversaries on such issues as tort reform. Hawkinson's trial lawyer contributors included $1,000 from Bourbonnais attorney Thomas E. McClure and $500 from Peoria attorney Robert C. Strodel.

Even with the help of business and legal interests, Hawkinson, who raised $303,754 and spent $291,156, didn't come close to some of the state's highest spending judicial candidates. Neither did his November opponent, Rock Island attorney Thomas L. Kilbride, a Democrat who raised $38,755 as of June 30.

The two Supreme Court contests at the northern end of the state were far more expensive. Two candidates in the 1st District, which includes Cook County, and two in the 2nd District, which runs west of Cook County to the Mississippi River and north to Wisconsin, raised about $1 million or more each. And, in step with tradition, lawyers and law firms contributed generously to several of those candidates. They gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Fitzgerald, and to his opponents in the 1st District, as well as to candidates in the 2nd District and 3rd District races.

Fitzgerald, like Kilbride in the 3rd, also had solid support from labor, a traditional Democratic donor base. In the first six months of this year, for example, Fitzgerald took in $41,085 from labor PACs, including $3,500 from UAW Illinois, $150 from Motion Picture Projectionists, Local 110 and $1,500 from International Heat & Frost Insulators, Local 17.

Fitzgerald, who raised $1,037,665 and spent $1,025,356 in the primary, has no opponent in the November election.

The race in the Republican-held 2nd District was even more expensive. Appellate Justice Bob Thomas, who won the GOP nomination, spent $522,000, though that was only half of what each of his opponents spent. He faces Democratic Chicago attorney Larry D. Drury in November. Drury was unchallenged in the primary.

Thomas received money from lawyers and law firms, of course, including $250 from Barrington Hills trial attorney Bruce Pfaff and $250 from the Lake Zurich firm of Salvi, Salvi and Wifler PC. He raised $531,095, including an $18,000 loan from Chicago trial attorney Joseph A. Power Jr. Maisch of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce says that as far as the Illinois business community is concerned, the big spending has just begun. This state's businesses, he acknowledges, have lagged behind their counterparts in other states in contributing to high court candidates. But if the Illinois Chamber can help it, he says, that will change.

Illinois, like Ohio, used to have a tort reform law, but it was struck down as unconstitutional by this state's Supreme Court. Maisch called that 1997 decision the "toughest lesson."

"Frankly, the Illinois business community is well behind business communities in several other states --Pennsylvania, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio -- that have been actively participating in judicial races for a number of years," Maisch says. "And it's essentially a very tough lesson that you can work very hard to pass important, good pieces of legislation, only to have the courts throw them out. Then you're back to square one."

Aaron Chambers is a Statehouse reporter for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. This story and the two that follow were partially funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation through The Sunshine Project of the University of Illinois at Springfield. Joyce and the project has funded other articles about campaign finance in Illinois Issues, including "The four tops," in November 1996 and "Cash vs. citizens," in October 1998.

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