Big nite

And a heartbreaking one in some ways. This is as the polls closed, at a judge race party. Two good candidates ran, which is a blessing as that sure does not happen that often, but that the opponent was an incumbent was too much for Jim to overcome. It was very disappointing.
This is at the end of the nite---Jenna, me, Mike and Rita. Jenna works for this candidate, so things have been very tense in their world lately.
This is our new State's Attorney accepting congratulations calls last nite. The margin was slim, at only an 80 vote difference, with 126 absentee votes still out, but a win is a win.
I am pretty sure this is not his phone with all the pretty colors on it.
This is how high tech our local politics are--these people are gathered round the hotel alarm clock/radio listening for updates from the court house.
Yeah, I am not cute here. Ignore that. This was a very polarizing race, to replace our long term SA, who is retiring. Both candidates work or had worked for him. State's attorney races are so emotional because so few people truly understand how things should run, and the battle cry in this race was change. Of course that came from people who do not understand that the outgoing SA is one of the best in the business, and I know that because the focus of my job is to criticize the job that prosecutor's do. We have had a good one this whole time, in that he prosecutes the cases he can get convictions on, and pleads the others---because people do not understand how things really work, those pleas have been criticized. If the general public knew what I knew, they would know that the pleas allowed the State to get convictions they would NOT have gotten had they gone to trial, and that convicting a defendant after a trial has the same effect as convicting him after a guilty plea. The added bonus of a plea is that they shut the doors to appeallable issues, so a defendant who pleads guilty is far more likely to STAY convicted than one convicted at a trial.

This is Meagan, who works in the prosecutor's office and has worked tirelessly to get Jeff elected. We are new friends, and will be forming a gang as soon as we can come up with gang names. She is swell.