Posted on 12/10/2014 4:15:25 AM PST by Petruchio
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka has died, less than 24 hours after having a stroke.
A statement from her office says the 70-year-old Topinka died early Wednesday morning following complications from the stroke.
She'd reported discomfort and was admitted to a hospital in Berwyn. After undergoing testing, she lost consciousness Wednesday and was pronounced dead shortly after 2 a.m.
Topinka, a Republican, won a second term last month in a tough race with Democratic challenger Sheila Simon, the former lieutenant governor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.suntimes.com ...
Sad.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
Met her a few times when I lived in Berwyn. Politics aside she was a very nice, warm and caring person. I believe she did have the taxpayers In mind with everything she did, she seemed to be a person of integrity and I think the Illinois Republican Party lost part of its character with her passing.
Hope she rests in peace.
I got to know her fairly well in the early to mid 2000s. She was a funny, kind, hard-working lady. She will be missed.
Didn’t hear about this till reading it here. It was hard not to like Judy. Didn’t know here personally, but know a number of folks who did. I’m sure they are all really sad today. She was one of the few public people here in Illinois that would be happy to get on Radio or TV and defend conservative ideals.
I always liked her as a character in Illinois politics, but I also can’t forget the gross mishandling by her (and others) of the 2004 U.S. Senate race fiasco.
RIP.
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum”
Ditto.
So, I assume that Governor Quinn can name a replacement that will be in office at least until the rest of the term, which I believe ends on January 12, 2015. January 12, 2015 is the beginning of the next term for the State Treasurer, and at that point there will be a vacancy (since Topinka was reelected in November), which would be filled by the governor—presumably incoming Governor Rauner.
Will Quinn try to name someone as State Treasurer through November 2016 by either (i) naming someone this week and claiming that he should stay in office until a special election is held in November 2016 even though it would cover a term that hasn’t even begun yet (and thus technically isn’t vacant yet) or (ii) naming a State Treasurer for a term that expires on January 12, 2015, and then, right before Rauner takes the oath of office on January 12, naming a State Treasurer (either the same one or a different one) to serve until a special election is held (which the Democrat state legislature certainly wouldn’t agree to be held prior to November 2016)?
In 2002, the Alaska legislature approved a law, passed over Democrat Gov. Knowles’s veto, specifying that a vacancy in a U.S. Senate seat couldn’t be filled until something like 5 days had elapsed since the seat became vacant; the law was necessitated because Sen. Frank Murkowski had been elected governor and would have to resign his Senate seat in order to take the oath of office as governor, and Gov. Knowles was poised to appoint a replacement Senator right before Murkowski took the oath as governor. If an Alaska Democrat was willing to conduct such chicanery to appoint an officer that he had no right to appoint, I can only imagine what a Chicago Democrat is willing to do.
RIP.
The state constitution states that, when a vacancy occurs, in the office of attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, or comptroller, the governor will appoint a replacement who will serve until the next regularly-scheduled election for that office. I wish that Gov. Quinn couldn’t appoint a comptroller for the next four years, but I think he can do that, according to the constitution.
A bit off-topic but very interesting (and I don’t feel like starting a new thread just for it).
Apparently the Illinois state legislature has voted almost entirely along party lines to have a “convention of the states” where the state legislators could make changes to the U.S. Constition. It was the Chicago machine Dems voting WITH the Levin crowd to do this, the Illinois Republican legislators voted NO:
http://lincolnreport.com/archives/387412
So as I noted earlier, it seems Mark Levin and Mike Madigan are on the same side here... they think things would be sooooo much better if America if we just give state legislatures absolute power to do whatever they want and to strike down any federal law they don’t like.
Thing that make you go hmmmm....
Note: Posting off-Topinka messages to deliberately aggravate other members is a form of trolling.
I know that that’s what the state constitution says, but it doesn’t answer the question of *when the vacancy occurs*. Of course, there’s a vacancy in the office of treasurer right now, but that’s a vacancy in the office for the term that expires on January 12, and that’s the only vacancy that I believe that Quinn can fill right now. The office of the treasurer for the term running from January 2015 until January 2019 will not become officially vacant until January 12, 2015, when such term begins, and the person elected to such term (Topinka) can’t take the oath of office due to her having died the prior month; that’s the vacancy that I posit cannot be filled until January 12, 2015, which happens to be the day that Rauner becomes governor.
Look at it this way: Let’s say that Topinka had lost her reelection; her death would allow Quinn to name her replacement to serve only until January 12, 2015, when the new term begins, and the winner of November’s election would be sworn in at that point. Even if the winner of the November election then died on January 1, the person that Quinn named in December as Topinka’s replacement would continue to serve as treasurer until January 12, and on that day, given that the winner of the election could not become treasurer because of his prior death, the governor would have to appoint a new treasurer, to serve until a special election is held (probably November 2016).
Or how about this scenario: Topinka loses the election and remains alive, and it was the winner of the treasurer election that died yesterday. Quinn wouldn’t be able to name the treasurer-elect’s replacement in December, since the office of the treasurer for the term commencing on January 12, 2015 *is not vacant yet*. Not until January 12 could that vacancy be filled.
The fact that Topinka won reelection in November and died yesterday should not change our analysis: the vacancy in the office for the term that commences on January 12, 2015 will not have occurred until January 12, 2015 rolls around.
And how about this: If Topinka’s reelection victory had been very narrow and the Democrat was contesting it, and recounts and lawsuits were going on, no one would dream of suggesting that the replacement that Quinn named for Topinka this week was entitled to remain in office past January 12, because *the vacancy would only be for the term that ends on January 12*. Well, until her death, Topinka was serving a term as treasurer that ends on January 12, 2015, and was merely the treasurer-elect for the term that won’t commence until January 12, 2015. If tomorrow the state election authority discovered a tabulation error proving that the Democrat actually defeated Topinka, then the Democrat would be certified as the winner and he’d be sworn in on January 12, and there would be no vacancy for the office of treasurer for the term commencing on January 12. There is a possibility, however slight, that by the time that January 12 rolls around Topinka wouldn’t be the treasurer-elect, and thus the vacancy in the office for such term cannot “occur” earlier than January 12.
So, in my humble opinion, the Republican Party of Illinois should fight any attempt by Quinn to name a replacement to a term that does not expire on January 12, 2015, and fight for Rauner’s right to name Topinka’s replacement for January 12. Rauner should fight this not only in the courts, but in the media, and offer to hold the special election in November 2015, thus permitting each party to have a primary a few months before and for the people to elect a state treasurer that would serve for 3 years and 2 months of the 4-year term. (Rauner should not, however, brag to the media that a November 2015 general election would have a turnout that would be a lot more favorable to Illinois Republicans than would a November 2016 general election.) And Rauner needs to say these things *now*, not after the Democrats already have acted and courts are less likely to get involved.
Technically, there’s a problem with that. Quinn would be appointing someone to serve for 4 years and 1 month, longer than the term itself. I don’t see how this doesn’t get litigated. I could see Quinn appointing someone to serve for the duration of the CURRENT term, which ends in January, and after that point, Rauner would then appoint the replacement for the next term (with a special election set for 2016).
Rauner’s making an argument now that Quinn should appoint one of Topinka’s deputies as temporary State Comptroller, and the Rauner would then re-appoint that person in January to serve until a special election can be held:
Wasn’t there some situation like that in Florida, where the outgoing lame duck RAT governor and incoming GOP Governor (Jeb Bush at the time) agreed on filling a vacant Supreme Court appointment during the month of December? Here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Quince
RIP, Judy.
I met her a couple of times. She was a typical IL liberal Republican but she was very nice.
L
That’s a good strategy for Rauner: seem eminently reasonable, and go to the media first. But he should follow up with a lawsuit claiming that Quinn can’t name someone to serve past January 12, and that he, not Quinn, is the governor entitled to name the replacement on January 12.
But I think that it would be even better strategy for Rauner to start talking about a fairly quick special election, with the filing deadline in March, the primaries in June, and the general in November. That way, no one can claim that he’s trying to keep Topinka’s deputy in there for years (and it would imply without having to say it that Quinn and the Democrats would try to name a partisan Democrat to serve for years).
I’ll be pleasantly surprised if Rauner didn’t name someone like Tom Cross (the recently defeated RINO combiner who narrowly lost his race for State Treasurer in 2014). TheRightGuy suggested Rauner would probably give it to Cross as a consolation prize (either way, Cross will get some cushy state government appointed job in a Rauner administration), and I’m inclined to agree that The Powers That Be would most likely reward Cross with Topinka’s job, now that there’s an opening.
One ideal scenario floated by a conservative friend of mine is to appoint Chris Lauzen (currently Kane Co. Board president) as Comptroller in Jan., and then Lauzen could run in November as an incumbent and most likely win. (Lauzen was previously the GOP nominee for Comptroller in 1998, when he lost to pampered politician’s kid Dan Hynes). If Rauner did that, I’d have to stop calling him George Ryan 2.0. That being said, I think it would happen when hell freezes oer.
No, Senate term limits are the only solution.
We need to convince Senators to pass a bill that fires themselves.
If they refuse we can threaten to fire them.
What can go wrong?
AuH2ORepublican, I agree with you that Rauner should be able to appoint the new comptroller, but I don’t think he can, according to the constitution. Article V, Section 7 states, “If the attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller, or treasurer fails to qualify or if his office becomes vacant, the governor shall fill the office by appointment. The appointee shall hold office until the elected officer qualifies or until a successor is elected and qualified as may be provided by law and shall not be subject to removal by the governor.”
I hope the legislature will propose, for the Nov. 2016 ballot, an amendment to the constitution that will state that a governor may not appoint anyone to an elected office for a term in which that governor won’t serve.
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