Of course, there is a certain level of disappointment in seeing that Robert Adrian was ultimately retained. It’s frustrating to know out of 91,610 registered voters in the 8th circuit court counties, approx. 51,950 (57%) cast ballots. And while that isn’t the message we’d ideally wanted to report, that’s what happened.

There’s a level of deflation there, but we want to point out a few silver linings.

First and foremost, Robert Adrian is still facing prosecution regarding multiple complaints filed by the Illinois Courts Commission. If he hadn’t been retained, that prosecution may not have moved forward, but now, move forward it shall.

Secondly, I’d like to compare and contrast the election results concerning Judge Adrian with the results concerning Judge Larson. Had the public’s trust in Adrian not been as absolutely shook as it visibly has been, one might expect that voters would have cast their ballots very similarly for both judges. But it wasn’t even close. Larson was retained with an 82% approval, but Adrian was retained with just 62% approval. 8,553 people voted no to Larson; 18,483 people voted no to Adrian. 

And yes. That means he did hang on by his robetails, but it certainly wasn’t the landslide victory we saw with Larson. Larson was 10,970 votes away from non-retention. Adrian was 1,264 votes away. 

Personally, we feel this demonstrates quite clearly that Adrian’s actions in the Drew Clinton case have resulted in an incredible hit to the public’s trust in his judicial capabilities. We think it’s more than fair to conclude the disparity between the public’s confidence in Larson and the public’s confidence in Adrian is the direct result of his actions in the Clinton case - because the last time he was up for retention, he won with almost the same percentages as Larson did here (~83% of voters cast ballots in his favor at that time, if we’re not mistaken).

So while the outcome wasn’t closer to what we may have wanted to see happen, that doesn’t mean what happened was terrible. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Just because Adrian’s time wasn’t yesterday, that doesn’t mean his time isn’t coming.

Be proud of how noticeable we did make our presence,

And please stay tuned.

Thank you,

#StandWithCammy