Former Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven will be on the ballot this fall in his bid to unseat Democratic State Rep. Katie Stuart.
On Friday, Aug. 23, the Illinois State Board of Elections voted to approve the recommendation of a electoral hearing officer who had determined Democrats' attempt to change state rules to block Republicans from the ballot shouldn't apply to Keeven.
Shortly after that vote, the Illinois Supreme Court followed up with a ruling in a related case, ending Democratic House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch's bid to win a court order overturning a Springfield judge's ruling that the new candidate ballot access law was unconstitutional, at least as it could impact the ballot for the 2024 fall general election.
Following the ISBE vote, Keeven said he was "thankful the Illinois State Board of Elections made the right decision."
"Our campaign followed the rules and our voters deserve a choice in this election," Keeven said in a statement emailed to The Record.
"For months, Democrats in Springfield have tried every possible way to keep the voters in the Metro-East from having a choice in November. Today, they lost.
"With every attempt to kick me off of the ballot, our campaign continues to gain momentum. I am grateful that the voters of our district have a choice and I am working everyday to be the common sense and ethical candidate our area deserves.”
Keeven will be one of more than a dozen Republican candidates for state legislature in Illinois who have assured their place on the ballot to challenge Democratic incumbents this fall.
On Aug. 23, the Illinois Supreme Court issued an order, indicating that the court had effectively deadlocked on the question of whether the state's Democratic legislative supermajority and Gov. JB Pritzker had trampled the rights of Republican candidates and voters in enacting a new law banning political parties from using the process known as "slating" to nominate candidates for state legislative office following the primary election.
In the ruling, the court indicated two of its members, Justices P. Scott Neville and Joy V. Cunningham - both Chicago Democrats - had recused themselves in the matter. The court did not indicate why Neville and Cunningham had opted not to participate in the case and the law does not require them to do so.
However, the court said the effect of the recusals resulted in a situation in which the remaining five justices - three Democrats and two Republicans - could not agree on a decision that would produce the four member majority needed to deliver an opinion.
Under such a deadlock, the ruling of the lower court stands, and Welch's appeal was dismissed.
Attorney Jeffrey Schwab, of the Liberty Justice Center, who represented the Republican challengers to the law, said he believes the decision is "most definitely a win" for Republican candidates that would have otherwise been blocked from the ballot by Democrats "changing the rules in the middle of the game."
Initially known as Senate Bill 2412, the law rewrote state election rules to block political parties from slating candidates to run for office after the spring primary election, unless they 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 and 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.
Concerning the new state law, Republicans 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 ensure at least 53 Democratic incumbents in the State House and State Senate will face no competition this fall.
The law was challenged promptly in court by a group of Republican state legislative candidates seeking to use the apparently defunct slating process to place their names on the ballot this fall to challenge Democratic incumbents in the Chicago area.
In court in Springfield, Sangamon County Circuit Judge Gail Noll ruled the law violated the constitutional rights of voters and candidates. The ruling specifically applied to only 14 Republican candidates from northern Illinois who joined their names to the lawsuit.
Speaker Welch, however, appealed that ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court, asking the high court to agree that judges have no authority to question the ability of state lawmakers to change ballot access rules, even in the middle of an election cycle.
In the appeal, Welch and his attorneys further argued that the law was needed to make sure that only primary voters are allowed to nominate candidates for office, and not party bosses or political insiders.
At the same time as Welch and his fellow Democrats took that position in court, Welch, Pritzker and the state's Democratic lawmakers took the exact opposite approach, when they rushed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race for president. Harris has never run in or won a presidential primary election in any state.
Schwab noted the contradictory positions, saying the passage of SB2412 in Illinois would have been equivalent to Republican lawmakers in a Republican dominated state moving to pass a law in the time between Biden's announcement and the official nomination of Harris to declare that only candidates who actually received votes in a presidential primary election could be placed on the ballot.
"There's a large irony here," Schwab said. "No primary voters have ever voted for her (Harris), only political insiders. Yet in court, Welch defended this law by saying it's necessary to ensure that only voters and not political parties or insiders choose candidates on the election ballot.
"So maybe it wasn't really that important to them, or maybe they were lying."
Noll's ruling, which will now stand, doesn't stop state election officials from enforcing the new law in future elections. But the decision means the law cannot be applied to this fall's election.
Schwab declined to comment on whether he believed SB2412 could be challenged by others seeking to overturn the law entirely. But he said the point of the legal challenge was to make sure Illinois Democrats couldn't apply the law in this year's elections, at an advanced point in the election cycle.
"Our clients had been nominated and they were in the process of gathering signatures," said Schwab. "They were proceeding under the existing rules and were two-thirds of the way done, when they (Democratic lawmakers and Pritzker) tried to apply the new law to this election.
"The judge said, 'You can't do that.'"
IL Elections Board overrules Democratic objections
The Illinois Supreme Court decision allowing Noll's ruling to stand was issued shortly after the Illinois State Board of Elections ruled on four objections to Republican candidates for the General Assembly, all of which were based entirely on the "anti-slating" provisions of SB2412.
In rejecting all of the objections, the ISBE concurred with hearing officers who concluded Judge Noll's ruling meant SB2412's anti-slating provisions could not be applied in 2024 to the "slated" Republican candidates.
The ISBE, however, also concurred with a hearing officer who determined SB2412 could not be applied to downstate Republican candidate, former Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven, whether or not the Illinois Supreme Court overruled Noll's decision.
Keeven is running against incumbent Democratic State Rep. Katie Stuart in House District 112, which includes portions of Madison and St. Clair counties. Keeven had filed his candidate nominating petitions with the ISBE on May 2, one day before Pritzker signed SB2412 into law.
Republicans have said the law was designed particularly to protect Stuart against Keeven's expected strong challenge.
Democrats had argued before the ISBE that SB2412 should also block Keeven from the ballot, because he didn't run in the March primary.
But in a report filed with the ISBE, hearing officer Mathias Delort, a retired Illinois appeals court justice, sided with Keeven, saying his May 2 petition filings meant the law shouldn't apply to him, even if the Illinois Supreme Court had declared the law constitutional.
The ISBE also voted to reject objections to three other Chicago area Republican state legislative candidates, including:
- Donald P. Puckett, of Elgin, who is running in the 43rd House District challenging Democratic State Rep. Anna Moeller;
- Teresa L. Alexander, of North Aurora, in the 50th House District, against Democratic State Rep. Barbara Hernandez; and
- Daniel Behr, of Northbrook, in the 57th House District, against Democratic State Rep. Tracy Katz Muhl. Muhl has never been elected, but was selected by Democratic Party leaders earlier this year to replace former State Rep. Jonathan Carroll, who resigned her seat.
Other Chicago area Republican legislative candidates who now will be allowed to run in November include:
- Ron Andermann, of Arlington Heights, who will face Democratic State Rep. Nicolle Grasse in the 53rd House District in Chicago's northwest suburbs. Grasse has never been elected, but was selected by Democratic Party leaders to serve out the remainder of the term of former State Rep. Mark L. Walker, who vacated the 53rd District House seat when Democratic Party leaders appointed him to serve in the 27th State Senate District. Walker was selected to replace former State Sen. Ann Gillespie when Gillespie was appointed by Pritzker to lead the Illinois Department of Insurance.
- Comaxtle "Max" Olivo, of Chicago, who is seeking to place his name on the ballot in the 1st Representative District, challenging Democratic State Rep. Aaron Ortiz;
- Juvandy Rivera, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado in the 3rd Representative District;
- Nancy Rodriguez, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Lilian Jimenez in the 4th Representative District;
- Terry Nguyen Le, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Hoan Huynh in the 13th Representative District;
- John Zimmers, of Chicago, challenging Democratic State Rep. Lindsay LaPointe in the 19th Representative District;
- Carlos Gonzalez, of Lyons, challenging Democratic State Sen. Javier Loera Cervantes in the 1st Legislative (State Senate) District;
- Ashley Jensen, of Winthrop Harbor, challenging Democratic State Sen. Mary Edly-Allen in the 31st State Senate District;
- Leslie Collazo, of Chicago, running against Democratic State Rep. LaShawn Ford in the 8th House District;
- James Kirchner, of Chicago, against Democratic State Sen. Robert Peters in the 13th Senate District; and
- Carl Kunz, of Hickory Hills, against Democratic State Rep. Mary Flowers in the 31st House District.