From the St. Louis Post Dispatch

Karmeier discusses negative ads, filling vacancies
Scott Cousins
Of the Suburban Journals
updated: 11/06/2004
Illinois Supreme Court Justice-elect Lloyd Karmeier plans to finish up his work as a circuit judge and appoint a committee to help him screen likely candidates for several expected vacancies on the Fifth District Appellate Court.
Karmeier, a circuit judge in Washington County, defeated Fifth District Appellate Judge Gordon Maag, 54 - 45 percent, for the Supreme Court seat on Tuesday.
Maag also lost a bid to retain his appellate court seat, failing to garner the 60 percent of the vote needed.
The Supreme Court race attracted national attention, both for the record-breaking amount of money spent by both sides and the negative campaigning.
Although he was pleased with the results of the race, Karmeier said he was not sure how to avoid the high-cost negative campaigning.
"I don't have any solutions right now," he said while talking to reporters in Collinsville on Thursday. "But one thing I think might be noteworthy is the fact that although my opponent and I may disagree on how all this got started, it didn't work for him.
"The fact that the press covered this well was good for the process. I'm sure the negative advertising was not good for the process and I'm going to work on that to the extent that I can.
"But I think this has raised the awareness. One of the things I had talked about from the outset was I wanted to raise awareness about the race because it was the race nobody cared about. We can't say that anymore.
"It's gotten name recognition out, which is helpful, it's gotten people interested, which is helpful, but having party politics creates problems for judges to preserve not only the actuality but the perception that you're not influenced by special interest groups or party politics," he said.
He said the biggest reason for the negative campaigning was the large amount of party interest and money involved, as well as the need for name recognition in the campaign.
Part of the reason is that most people don't bother thinking about judges, especially appellate judges.
"Maybe 10 or 11 percent knew who we were," Karmeier said. "So we have to get our names out if people are going to vote.
"If voters don't know either of us and they hear something negative about me and nothing negative about him, it's going to resonant with the voters and we've got problems," he said.
Because the negative campaigning really didn't work, Karmeier said he hopes that others will take notice.
Karmeier said he will be sworn in Dec. 6, but the time and location has not been picked yet.
In the meantime, he has several trial starting this week, and his last day as a circuit judge would be Dec. 3.
"I will be talking with my future colleagues about what happens and what part I may or may not take in connection with cases that are argued in November," he said.
He also joked that if he made any mistakes in his upcoming trials, he could correct them as a member of the Supreme Court.
Another task will be appointing judges to the Fifth District Appellate Court.
In addition to naming a replacement for Maag, there is at least one other vacancy expected on that court in the near future.
"I intend to appoint a committee to screen this, but I haven't gotten that far," Karmeier said.
He said several other Supreme Court justices use that system, and it seems to work well and the public approves of it.
"I know it will help me, I think it will help the court," he said.
He added that he was not concerned about appointing Republicans or Democrats to the appellate court.
"I would expect that we would have nominees that are qualified, and I expect people from both sides of the aisle will be making applications," he said.

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