‘Black and brown tension’ evident in Democratic contest for Illinois Supreme Court seat

Undeterred by Cook County Democrats’ decision to back appointed incumbent Justice Joy Cunningham in next year’s primary for a full term on the Illinois Supreme Court, some Latino leaders are forging ahead with an effort to elect a member of their community to the state’s highest bench.

County Democratic Party leaders voted overwhelmingly last month to endorse Cunningham, who is Black, in the race over Appellate Judge Jesse Reyes, whom party leaders passed over in slating four years ago in favor of another appointed incumbent, Justice P. Scott Neville Jr., who also is Black.

Supporters of both Cunningham, who was an appellate judge before being elevated to the Supreme Court last year, and Reyes, an appellate judge since 2012, are on the streets now collecting the 4,262 petition signatures needed to get their candidates’ names on the March 19 primary ballot. Winners of Democratic primaries for state Supreme Court seats in Cook County traditionally go on to win the general election.

The brewing battle over one of Cook County’s three seats on the Supreme Court, where Democrats hold a 5-2 majority over Republicans, comes as the county’s Latino population is on the rise and the Black population is declining. It also is yet another example of long-simmering tensions between two key blocs within the Democratic coalition — divisions that historically have been stoked by white politicians to keep either group from gaining too much power or influence.

“This Black and brown tension … is always a little bit under the surface, bubbling under the surface,” said Delmarie Cobb, a veteran political strategist who once served as a spokeswoman for the City Council’s Black Caucus.

In recent years, the dynamic played out openly in City Hall during debates over new ward maps, with fights over the number of Black and Latino-majority wards, and behind closed doors at the Illinois Capitol, where Democrats argued over how to address massive cost overruns in a state health insurance program for immigrants who are in the country without legal permission.

It’s not that Black and Latino officials dislike one another, Cobb said, “it’s just that the pie was divvied up, there’s a sliver of it for Black(s) and Latinos, and so they’re fighting over what’s left.”

The push to elevate Reyes comes at a time of demographic change, both in Cook County and on the high court.

From 2010 to 2020, the county’s Latino population grew by 11%, while the Black population declined by 6%. That shift was significant enough to make Latinos the county’s second-largest demographic group, comprising 26% of the county’s roughly 5.3 million residents, while fewer than 23% were Black, according to census data.

When Neville was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018 to replace the retiring Charles Freeman, who in 1990 became the court’s first Black justice, all six other members were white.

But the court’s racial makeup shifted substantially last year with appointments to replace two retiring justices. By tradition in Illinois, the outgoing Supreme Court justice selects their replacement, who then still must be approved by the full court.

First, Lisa Holder White, a Republican from Decatur, was tapped in May 2022 to fill a downstate seat vacated by longtime Justice Rita Garman, making her the first Black woman to serve on the state Supreme Court. Months later, retiring Justice Anne Burke selected Cunningham as her replacement.

Reyes, who in 2020 finished second in the seven-person primary for the seat ultimately won by Neville, who had been endorsed by the party the previous year, said he “made it known” that he was interested in being appointed to replace Burke, though he didn’t make a formal request in writing.

So some Reyes supporters argue that when ward and township committeemen last month voted to back Cunningham for a full 10-year term, it marked the third time in four years that party insiders passed on an opportunity to ensure Latino representation on the Supreme Court.

“From our perspective, that is not the kind of equity that a progressive state like Illinois should stand behind, let alone a state and a city that’s going to welcome next year the Democratic National Convention,” said Martín Montes, a partner at law firm Barnes & Thornburg and a member of the Illinois Latino Agenda, a group that advocates for representation at all levels of government.

Montes said he doesn’t see the potential primary matchup between Reyes and Cunningham as “a Black versus brown situation or race.”

“We’re beyond that,” he said. “I would hope that not only as a country but as a state that we see the strong economic benefits that the Latino community has provided to Illinois (and) the strong part of the fabric of this state that Latinos have provided.”

However, Montes said, “when you look at a court that is issuing rulings that impact all of its citizens, but yet you don’t have someone that looks like almost a quarter of the population, then that’s a miss. That’s a miss on those individuals in leadership.”

While being on the party’s official slate may not carry as much weight as it did in the heyday of Democratic machine politics, it can still make all the difference in judicial races, where voters tend to be less familiar with the candidates, even those who sit on the state’s highest court, said Cobb, the veteran strategist.

The stakes are particularly high in Supreme Court races because candidates run in open contests just once. After winning a seat, a justice goes up for a retention vote once a decade. Only one Illinois Supreme Court justice — Thomas Kilbride in 2020 — has failed to win retention since the system was put in place in 1964.

Having the county party’s backing comes with resources, from financial contributions and inclusion on party mailers to boots on the ground at election time.

It also means that many party loyalists who backed a candidate who failed to be slated will shift their support to the endorsed candidate.

Such is the case with state Sen. Robert Martwick, the Democratic committeeman for the 38th Ward who also chairs the party committee in charge of slating candidates for the Supreme Court.

During slating, Martwick, who is white, cast his Northwest Side ward’s share of the weighted vote for Reyes. But he now supports Cunningham as the party’s chosen candidate.

Cunningham will “continue to be a good judge,” said Martwick, who added that slating is “a good process” that reflects the views of Democrats across an “extremely diverse county.”

Although election season is just underway, Cunningham already enjoys a significant fundraising advantage over Reyes.

She ended the previous quarter on June 30 with nearly $300,000 in her campaign fund and has since reported raising an additional $117,000 in contributions of $1,000 or more, state campaign finance records show. Reyes, meanwhile, entered July with a little more than $2,400 on hand and has reported raising another $48,400.

Despite the seemingly long odds, Reyes, whose father immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City, said he remains committed to seeking a seat on the high court.

“Let the people decide who should sit on the Illinois Supreme Court,” he said. “That’s always been my view. Ever since I became a judge, I’ve always felt that the courtrooms belong to the people, and so the people should decide who sits in those courtrooms.”

Reyes worked in the city corporation counsel’s office in the 1980s under Harold Washington — Chicago’s first Black mayor, who also had strong support in the Latino community — and at Chicago Public Schools before becoming an associate judge in Cook County in 1997. He was later elected as a circuit judge and in 2012 to the First District Appellate Court, making him the first Latino justice elected to an Illinois appeals court.

Having grown up in Pilsen and worked his way through college at the University of Illinois at Chicago and law school at John Marshall, Reyes said he’s tried to bring that “lived experience” to the bench.

“Having diversity on the bench ensures multiple perspectives … are considered both in decision-making and the judicial policy setting, which is what the Supreme Court does a considerable amount of. That’s one of their responsibilities and duties,” Reyes said. “And I think that a voice should be lent to that effort and that endeavor, and that voice right now is not there.”

Cunningham said she also values diversity on the bench, pointing to a group of circuit and appellate judges she’s appointed since joining the Supreme Court that includes a Black woman, a white woman, an openly gay white man, a Latino man and an Indian American woman.

But while Cunningham said she “can empathize … in a very narrow way” with concerns over the lack of Latino representation on the state’s highest court, “the ultimate criteria for who serves on our Supreme Court cannot be ethnicity or race, that or gender.”

“Once you start down that path, it’s a slippery slope,” said Cunningham, whose mother was from Panama and whose father was from the Cayman Islands.

Cunningham, who was an appellate judge from 2006 until her elevation to the Supreme Court last year, previously was an associate judge in Cook County and an attorney in private practice, including a stint as general counsel for Northwestern Memorial Healthcare in the early 2000s. She began her legal career in the Illinois attorney general’s office.

In 2012, she ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the state Supreme Court seat currently held by Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis.

“Ethnicity has to go hand in hand with excellence,” Cunningham said. “And if you have to choose one or the other, you have to choose excellence in my view.”

Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Reyes was the first Latino justice on an Illinois appeals court. He was the first elected to the appellate court but other Latino judges previously had been appointed.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com