House Speaker Michael Madigan’s veto-proof super-majority in the Illinois survived the Nov. 4 election by 122 votes, according to the official Illinois election results certified Sunday by the Illinois Board of Elections.
Republican challenger Glenn Nixon of Kankakee lost to incumbent Democrat Rep. Katherine Cloonen in the 79th Illinois House District in a race that remained undecided for two weeks after Election Day. Cloonen led Nixon by 12 votes in Election Day voting at the polls. But absentee and provisional ballot counts in the days after the election gave Cloonen a 122-vote victory, which meant Democrats lost no seats in the Illinois House. In 2012, Nixon lost to Cloonen by 91 votes.
By retaining 71 members, Madigan won super-majority control in his chamber for another two years.
The Board of Elections’ official results contained a few other noteworthy results. State Sen. Michael Frerichs’ margin of victory in the treasurer’s race came in a bit under the 9,600-vote margin Frerichs said he expected when he first was named the winner on Nov. 19. At 9,225 votes — a margin of victory of .26 percent — it was not the record-breaking tiny margin that had been in play for nearly two weeks after the election.
But it’s still the second closest statewide finish in the last 50 years and, according to an Associated Press analysis, the third closest since 1900. Only the 1982 contest between Republican Jim Thompson and Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson — decided by 5,074 votes — and the 1952 secretary of state’s race were closer.
State Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier earned another 10 years on the state’s high court by less than 1 percentage point. Karmeier, a Republican from southern Illinois who was elected in 2004 in a hotly contested race, needed to win 60 percent of the 378,668 votes cast — 227,201 votes — to earn retention. He won 60.77 percent of the vote with a total of 230,122 for retention and 148,546 against.
Bad news for Illinois Libertarians became official as well. Illinois election law says that a third party can earn an automatic spot on the next general election ballot if its candidate for governor wins 5 percent of the vote in a general election. Libertarian candidate Chad Grimm, whose presence on the ballot had been opposed by Illinois Republican Party officials who feared it would take votes from Bruce Rauner, won a mere 3.35 percent.
Here’s a look at the official totals in the six statewide elections and the races mentioned above.
Lisa Madigan won easily over Republican Paul Schimpf.
Secretary of State Jesse White enjoyed the largest margin of victory among all statewide candidates, easily defeating Mike Webster.
Incumbent Republican Judy Baar Topinka won in a contest in which no candidate had an absolute majority.
As mentioned earlier, a very close race for treasurer.
No surprise as Dick Durbin recorded another double-digit victory to win his fourth U.S. Senate term.
Glenn Nixon has lost twice to Katherine Cloonen by a total of 213 votes.
Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier’s 2004 race against Democrat Gordon Maag became the costliest state supreme court race in the country to that point as it became a proxy war between trial lawyers and advocates of medical malpractice limits. Karmeier’s retention vote a decade later was very close.
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