Griffin-Backed Judicial PAC is Back on TV
The Illinois Supreme Court building in Springfield.
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The Independent Expenditure PAC largely responsible for booting Democratic Justice Thomas Kilbride from the Illinois Supreme Court is jumping back in the game.
Citizens for Judicial Fairness, which has been sitting on a $6.25 million contribution from billionaire Ken Griffin, began airing television ads Wednesday in the two contested Supreme Court races in the November election.
Griffin made the contribution before he fled to Miami on his G6 following an embarrassing primary loss in the race for Governor, where he spent $50 million propping up Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin. He also largely funded the PAC’s 2020 efforts to stop then-Justice Thomas Kilbride’s attempt for retention to the court.
The ads target both the 2nd District race between Republican Mark Curran and Democrat Elizabeth Rochford and the 3rd District race between incumbent Republican Michael Burke and Democrat Mary K. O’Brien. The buy is both on cable and broadcast, and includes cable zones in each district.
The ad attacks both O’Brien and Rochford.
The buy runs for two weeks and spends a little over a million dollars. That puts both GOP candidates in a comparable position to ads being run by O’Brien, Rochford, and the Democrat-backed All for Justice PAC.
It’s likely there will be potentially tens of millions spent on TV over the final five weeks before Election Day. We’ll keep an eye out for the spots and share them with you when we have them.