From the Southern

MAAG LOSES BOTH RACES
BY NICOLE SACK
THE SOUTHERN
[Wed Nov 03 2004]
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS -- Gordon Maag took two big hits Tuesday night when he was defeated by Lloyd Karmeier for the Illinois Supreme Court 5th Judicial District and was also not retained for his position on the 5th District appellate bench.
No appellate court or Illinois Supreme court judge has ever lost a retention bid since the adoption of retention votes for Illinois judges in 1964.
"To my knowledge, an appellate justice has never lost retention before," said Joe Tybor, press secretary for the Illinois Supreme Court.
In a retention election, voters are merely asked whether a sitting judge should be retained with either a "yes" or "no" vote. For a judge to hold his seat he must receive a super-majority of 60 percent "yes" vote.
According to the unofficial voting results from the 37 counties in the 5th Judicial District, Maag only captured 54.38 percent of the retention votes, not enough for him to maintain his seat at the appellate courthouse in Mount Vernon.
Of the 504,976 votes cast, 274,581 were "yes" votes, while 230,395 -- 45.62 percent -- were "no" votes. The 5th Judicial District represents 1.3 million Southern Illinoisans.
Maag served as an appellate judge since 1992 when he was appointed. In 1994, Maag was elected to the bench and this year he was up for the automatic 10-year retention process. Maag's term will expire Dec. 5.
Mike Lawrence, director of the Public Policy Institute, said there may have been several factors to why Maag did not keep his seat.
"Let's remember that a majority voted to retain him, it was just that he didn't get the 60 percent he needed to be retained," Lawrence said. "There may have been some confusion among people who voted in favor of him for the Supreme Court and thought they could not then vote to keep him on the appellate court -- that he couldn't hold two jobs."
If Maag would have been elected to the high court, then his appellate position -- assuming he had retained it -- would have been filled by appointment by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Now, however, Karmeier will be one of the five justices who will fill the vacated seat.
Steve Tomaszewski, a Karmeier spokesperson, said while some people may have been confused by seeing Maag's name twice on the ballot, there may have been other reasons why the Democrat from Glen Carbon was ousted from his job.
"I think it happened just because it was such a high profile race and was a little bit confusing," Tomaszewski said. "People who voted for him once maybe weren't sure what the second vote was. And if they voted against him once, it made it easier to vote against him twice."
The Southern Illinoisan has been unable to reach either Maag directly or his spokesman after repeated attempts.
Tomaszewski said the Karmeier campaign has not heard from Maag either.
With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Karmeier had 297,257 votes, or 54 percent, and Maag had 245,338, or 45 percent, in unofficial results. The Supreme Court race was one of the most expensive judicial races in the nation's history.
By election day, both candidates had accumulated at total of more than $8.5 million. If the candidates spend all the money they raised, each vote would have cost roughly $14 per vote in favor of Karmeier and about $17 per vote for Maag.
Besides the large sums of money that both sides drew in, the race became notable due to the viciousness of the negative advertising. However, in the end it was the perceived stance the candidates took on medical malpractice tort reform that truly tipped the scales.
George Maroney, administrator of Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, said the Karmeier victory was a "tremendous" event and he expects a ripple effect to take place in state government.
"I think you have to be deaf, dumb and blind as a Democratic leader in the state of Illinois not to recognize what the voters are saying and get serious now about coming up with some serious medical malpractice tort reform," Maroney said. "If they are not motivated to this now, I don't know what it is going to take. The voters are saying 'if you don't do something, we will continue voting people down who won't solve this problem.'"
When the Republican Karmeier secured his seat on the Supreme Court, he also helped balance the high court with three Republicans and four Democrats. Currently, the court had five Democrats and two Republicans.
Karmeier is scheduled to be sworn in on Dec. 6.
nicole.sack@thesouthern.com 618-351-5816