A few weeks ago I thought out loud about changing my name to Rory Bruce Fitzpatrick so people in Chicago would march like lemmings to the Commentary page on Fridays.
The idea came from the lawyers who adopt phony Irish names and run for judge in Cook County. Change your name, they figure, and you won’t have to convince voters that you’re honest or smart as long as you hoodwink them into thinking you’re Irish.
The Irish have had an uncanny knack for winning elections around these parts. The faux Irish figure they can cut in on the act.
Well, forget it. No name change here. It looks like people might be wising up.
Four people who ran for judge in the March primary created Irish names for themselves to fool voters. Here’s what happened to them.
Edward K. Flanagan, who used to be Edwin Korb, finished a middling fourth out of seven candidates in his Democratic primary. True, an O’Connor and a Quinn finished ahead of him, but those were their real names, and the winner was the decidedly un-Irish Arnette Hubbard.
Richard O’Connell Owens, who in a less politically ambitious life was known as Richard Joseph Owens, finished fourth in a five-way race even though he had the only Irish name. The winner was Nathaniel Roosevelt Howse Jr., a well-qualified gentleman who, to his credit, realized he wouldn’t fool anybody by changing his name to Nathaniel Roosevelt O’Howse.
Terrie Fitzgerald Rymer, also known as Terrie Adrienne Rymer, never made it to Election Day as a candidate. Someone cried foul at her use of the name “Fitzgerald.” The Cook County Election Board agreed, and tossed her off the ballot. The board might have tossed the others off the ballot, too, but Rymer was the only name-switcher who was challenged.
Then there is Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath, the former Bonnie Carol McGrath, who reasoned that her married name, McGrath, wasn’t enough, so she added Fitzgerald because it was her dearest friend’s mother’s maiden name and her lawyer told her to do it.
She won.
Did she win because she took an Irish name? Probably. There’s not much else to explain it. Neither she nor her opponent was recommended by the Chicago Bar Association or the other big bar groups. She probably won because she was Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath and her opponent was Thomas J. Kolodz. He has been Thomas J. Kolodz for 57 years and certainly did not adopt the name Thomas J. Kolodz because he thought it would sound Irish.
So she won. Sort of. She won a Republican primary for judge, which in Cook County is akin to having the winning numbers in the lottery for the first cell on Death Row.
In November, Republican Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath will run against Democrat James Patrick McCarthy, who is already a circuit judge, who all the bar groups say is qualified to be a judge, and who on his birthday, July 25, will have been James Patrick McCarthy for half a century.
The only way he could lose in November is if his opponent were John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Whether it was by luck or diligence, Cook County voters didn’t do a half-bad job of picking candidates for judge in the March primary. They sure did better this time than they did in 1996, when they picked one lawyer who was just two years out of law school and five more candidates who were panned by every bar group.
This time, every Democrat who won a countywide race for judge has at least minimal qualifications for the job. But not half-bad isn’t good enough, especially when you are selecting the people who run your courtrooms.
In the local subcircuits, voters still made some terrible picks. Some were stealth candidates who refused to let the Chicago Bar Association or any other legal experts review their credentials. Instead, they went pleading to the ward bosses. Those are fine instincts for a judge: Thumb your nose at the people who have some idea of what it takes to be a judge, and beg and plead to get on somebody’s palm card.
Some candidates who have no business being a judge skated through the primary without an opponent. So there is every reason to think that in November voters will saddle the circuit court with a few more clunkers.
There are enough clunkers already in the court system. The people who run the courts are running out of places to hide them.
There is a way to say enough with all this nonsense of phony Irish names and stealth candidates and judges holding fundraisers so lawyers will give them money. That’s a constitutional amendment to change the way judges are picked.
It’s called merit selection. Lawyers and regular citizens nominate candidates for judge after looking very carefully at their credentials. The governor or the Illinois Supreme Court makes the final choices.
The Illinois House and Senate have until early May to pass a constitutional amendment and put it on the November ballot.
The best lawyers and judges in the state support merit selection, but their pleas haven’t gotten the legislature to approve it. The regular reports of lawyers getting elected and making fools of themselves on the bench hasn’t shamed the legislature into doing it. That’s because politicians still have some control over who gets on the bench, and they like it that way.
So, maybe we have to appeal to their practical side. Switch the judges to merit selection. You’ll get some extra room on your palm cards.
