Justice David Overstreet has easily won election to the Illinois Supreme Court, having defeated Justice Judy Cates by a 63-37 margin.
With 94 percent of precincts reporting in a district that includes the state's 37 southernmost counties, Overstreet lead 346,761 to 199,397 votes.
Overstreet, 54, is a Republican from Mount Vernon; Cates, 68, is a Democrat from Swansea. Both serve as justices at the Fifth District Appellate Court and were vying for the seat of the retiring Justice Lloyd Karmeier.
Overstreet said he was "ecstatic" with the results.
"I'm so pleased the voters embraced the campaign," he said. "I am so grateful to serve on the Supreme Court."
He thanked his campaign co-chairs former State Sen. Dave Luechtefeld and Jennifer Price, campaign manager Jesse Johnson "and all others for their blood, sweat and tears."
Over the long campaign season, the candidates mostly campaigned on familiar themes, and did so politely: Overstreet as a constitutional conservative and Cates as one fighting for access to justice for all.
They didn’t argue in a remote debate on Sept. 16. They followed a statewide code of polite conduct in judicial campaigns, though they disagreed a bit about how tightly that code fits.
But things turned sharply negative in mid-October when Cates blasted Overstreet for his concurrence in an opinion giving a second trial to a child rapist suspect convicted in absentia by a Marion County judge in 2017. The accused, Jerad Peoples, missed his trial because he was sleeping off effects of drugs used in an attempted suicide.
A $421,000 attack funded by trial lawyers exploiting the Peoples decision played out in TV commercials and other media, and drew sharp criticism from Overstreet supporters - including major funder, the Illinois Republican Party, as well as a sitting appellate judge and colleague of Cates (Milton Wharton) and former Edwards County circuit judge David Frankland who wrote that the advertising distorted the truth.
Wharton wrote in a social media post that it was his decision to grant Peoples a new trial, but it did not release him from charges.
"I take the strongest personal and professional offense to the campaign of distortion waged by Justice Judy Cates and some of her supporters against my ruling for, in my opinion, an attempted political advantage," Wharton wrote. "This decision was issued by me months ago and I have been in repeated contact with her, yet she never voiced any objection to me or even mentioned this case until recently in her campaign?"
And last week, the Record reported that four years ago Cates, as appellate court justice, made a very similar concurrence in the case of a Bethalto man.
In a Nov. 22, 2016 opinion, Cates concurred with a majority to reverse the first conviction of Michael Burgund, who upon second trial was convicted of sexually assaulting his two minor daughters between the ages of one and three.
The decision that Cates concurred in, like the one Overstreet concurred in, remanded the case back to the trial court for a second trial. Burgund, like Peoples, also posted bond after his first conviction was overturned. He was released for approximately a year and a half before jurors convicted him a second time in Madison County.
Another surprise late in the campaign season was the filing of a lawsuit against Overstreet alleging he violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act through unsolicited campaign text messages.
The complaint was filed by St. Louis attorney John Driscoll, a top contributor to Cates in St. Clair County. The case was removed to federal by Overstreet's attorney. Magistrate Judge Reona Daly last week denied remand to St. Clair County.
Contributions
The last time there was an open race for Illinois Supreme Court in the Fifth Judicial District close to $10 million was spent, which set a nationwide record as the most expensive state supreme court race ever.
The year was 2004, when Republican Lloyd Karmeier defeated Democrat Gordon Maag by a margin of 55-45.
Spending this election cycle has paled by comparison at approximately $1.2 million - not including approximately $450,000 spent in negative advertising by the trial lawyer funded Clean Courts Committee.
The candidates' campaign committees raised roughly the same amount; Cates at approximately $570,000 and Overstreet at approximately $540,000.
According to campaign finance records in the third quarter, Overstreet received 134 individual contributions from the rural side of his district and Cates received none.
Three fourths of Overstreet’s individual contributions came from the 35 counties of the Fifth District beyond St. Clair and Madison.
In Mount Vernon, where he lives, 26 individuals gave his campaign a total of $33,200.
Cates received about as much money as Overstreet overall, by relying on lawyers from Chicago, St. Clair County, Madison County, and St. Louis.
More than 95 percent of her individual contributions came from lawyers.