Lawyer Clint Krislov knocked off state Supreme Court ballot: ‘It’s a miserable process’

Complete coverage of the local and national primary and general election, including results, analysis and voter resources to keep Chicago voters informed.

Wilmette lawyer Clint Krislov’s latest bid for office ended Thursday the same way his past three did.

Unsuccessfully.

Krislov’s name will not appear on the March 17 primary ballot for Illinois Supreme Court, the Cook County Electoral Board ruled Thursday.

The board agreed with the recommendation of a hearing officer who ruled Krislov was 118 signatures short of the required 5,050 needed for his name to appear on the March Democratic Primary ballot.

“You know what this shows is, that the process is set up to make it very difficult for non-organization candidates to get on the ballot, and that’s what’s wrong with the process,” Krislov said.

Krislov filed to run for the Illinois Supreme Court’s First District, the seat vacated after the retirement of Justice Charles E. Freeman in 2018.

P. Scott Neville Jr. was appointed to fill the vacancy left by Freeman.

And now Neville is one of seven candidates running for the seat in 2020, hoping to win a full ten-year term. The others are appellate court justices Jesse Reyes, Nathaniel Howse, Margaret Stanton McBride, Cynthia Cobbs, Sheldon Harris and lawyer Daniel Epstein.

Sun-Times staff

Arguing that he should be allowed to join them, Krislov contended that the system used to verify the signatures candidates submit is unreliable and that the Cook County staff who verify signatures are often not professionally trained to do so.

He argued there should be a “margin of error” threshold, as often people — trained or untrained — make mistakes during the verification process.

“It’s a miserable process, and it’s not the way we should be selecting our judicial candidates,” Krislov said.

Steve Laduzinsky, the attorney representing the three people — Maureen Barry, Frank Hawkins and Mark Thompson — who filed a ballot challenge against Krislov, said Krislov lost because his petition circulators did a poor job gathering enough signatures for his name to appear on the ballot.

“Mr. Krislov’s candidacy is dead at the hands of his own circulators,” Laduzinsky said.

Krislov has made a name for himself as a crusading attorney fighting City Hall on behalf of pensioners and retirees.

He filed one lawsuit that ended in the city being ordered to pay $35 million into city employee pension funds.

His political career has been less successful.

Sun-Times file

Krislov ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, but dropped out before the Democratic primary, after rival candidate Dick Durbin challenged his petitions. A year later, Krislov threw his hat in the ring for Illinois attorney general, but he quickly folded his candidacy after then Mayor Richard M. Daley and party leaders endorsed someone else.

In 2010, Krislov did stay on the ballot in the race for state comptroller. He came in third with 7.6%.

In other petition challenges, the board ruled Thursday that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s name will appear on the ballot.

Foxx, a Democrat running for reelection, had 3,362 more signatures than the minimum of 7,279.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The challenge was orchestrated by the campaign of rival candidate Bob Fioretti, alleging Foxx’s petition sheets showed a pattern of fraud. But a hearing examiner concluded earlier this week that the former 2nd Ward alderman’s team offered “no other evidence of any kind” to support that argument.

Foxx’s campaign welcomed the board’s final decision.

“This was a political distraction aimed at slowing down the campaign’s momentum and it failed,” Chrystian Woods, Foxx’s campaign manager, said in a written statement. “It is unfortunate that taxpayer money was wasted in a political stunt.”