Mariyana Spyropoulos defeats incumbent Iris Martinez for Cook County Circuit Court Clerk

Riding a wave of support from the Cook County Democratic Party as well as hundreds of thousands of her own dollars, Mariyana Spyropoulos upended Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez, limiting the clerk’s time in the office to a single term.

With 69% of precincts reporting, the Associated Press declared Spyropoulos the winner. She led Martinez with 65.7% of the vote to Martinez’s 34.3%.

The victory came as 20-year incumbent Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Larry Rogers was besting challenger Larecia Tucker in a high-spending race for a typically low-key seat. Tucker had received more than $750,000 in campaign contributions from Rogers’ rival, Assessor Fritz Kaegi and his family. It was the first major contest Rogers — the county Democratic Party’s pick — had faced since joining the board in 2004.

And in the race to fill Brandon Johnson’s seat on the county board through 2026, his union mentor, Tara Stamps, was the declared the victor by AP with a significant lead over opponent Zerlina Smith Members. Stamps was appointed to the seat last summer.

Martinez’s defeat comes after she took office four years ago as an independent underdog vowing to clean up an office beset by allegations of corruption and poor management under predecessor Dorothy Brown. Back then, she defeated three challengers, including the Cook County Democratic Party’s pick, to become the first Latina elected to the office that oversees filings for the nation’s second largest unified court system.

In campaigning, Martinez argued she deserved a second term because she’s made good on promises to make the office more user-friendly, digitized records, made it easier to expunge records and for victims of domestic violence to receive help. She also gave herself points for exiting costly oversight from a federal monitor assigned to ensure the office was not taking politics into consideration when making its hiring and promotion decisions.

But Spyropoulos garnered the party’s nomination over the summer, in part because of concerns over Martinez’s political associations in recent years. For state Senate, Martinez backed Erin Jones, a Chicago police detective whose credentials were questioned by some progressive party members. Martinez also has associated with the controversial head of the city’s police union, John Catanzara, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Spyropoulos, a former prosecutor and real estate attorney, also pitched party members on an ethics and transparency platform that she took to the campaign trail. She promised to push for more data access and work to change the state law to make the office subject to FOIA — a pledge Martinez made in 2020 but backed off of amid pushback from judges. Spyropoulos said she would push to have the office overseen by the county’s independent inspector general and also release information on the clerk’s spending and case statistics, including how many continuances are taken in cases.

Critics have seized on data issues during Martinez’s tenure, including a WBEZ investigation that found the office had wrongly put felonies on the records of people in some diversion programs for at least three years. The clerk’s office initially took responsibility, then blamed the chief judge’s office for the issue. A separate investigation from the Illinois Answers Project also found juvenile offender data was also exposed — a violation of state law that Martinez’s office said was “brief, non-damaging and limited in nature.”

“It’s the administrative support for our court system,” Spyropoulos said at a Rainbow PUSH Coalition event the weekend before Election Day. “It doesn’t decide cases, but if it’s not managed properly, it can have a huge impact on people. If your documentation is not in the right room, and the right day at the right time, you could have a default judgment against you. You could lose child support. You could be evicted. You can lose your livelihood.”

She also highlighted a Tribune investigation that found dozens of the clerk’s employees were engaged in campaign work or had contributed cash to Martinez. In all, the Tribune found 52 clerk employees had contributed $45,000 to Martinez’s campaign funds since she took office, and that of those 22 received promotions or significant raises in their clerk jobs just months — sometimes days — before or after making those political contributions. The Tribune also found 86 clerk’s office employees circulated petitions to get her on this year’s ballot.

Martinez denied exhibiting any favoritism to employees who helped her on the campaign trail, telling the Tribune Editorial Board, “I am about as ethical as I can possibly be.”

Spyropoulos pledged not to take any campaign donations from employees or contractors who do business with the office. A Tribune analysis of her contributions since 2010, however, showed she received more than $140,000 from companies that have done business with the Water Reclamation board.

Along the way, Spyropoulos and family members have helped supercharge her campaign fund. Spyropoulos loaned herself $1.26 million and her mother, Erika, spent $78,000 on a billboard supporting the campaign, according to campaign records. Spyropoulos’ father is the late businessman and philanthropist, Ted Spyropoulos.

In the Board of Review race, Rogers was overcoming a big money challenge. With 82% of precincts reporting, Rogers lead with 61.5% to Tucker’s 38.5%.

Rogers is one of three members on the quasi-judicial board that hears appeals to assessments that determine property tax bills. The head of the office that sets those values, Assessor Kaegi, singlehandedly funded a Super PAC to oust Rogers, to the tune of $680,000.

Kaegi supported Tucker, a former real estate agent and clerk in the Rich Township assessor’s office who has a Certified Illinois Assessing Officer designation.

A worker holds campaign lawn signs as Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr., right, arrives for a campaign fundraising event in the 100 block of West Hubbard Street on Feb. 15, 2024, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)Rogers decried Kaegi’s involvement as hypocritical. Kaegi previously said it was inappropriate for him to meddle in board races and unethical.

“The Board of Review has been the last resort to save taxpayers from Assessor Kaegi’s unsupported assessments and excessive taxation and now he wants to hand-pick the commissioner that reviews his work,” Rogers previously said.

Kaegi supporters have said his property tax reforms — which Rogers said are inaccurate — cannot take hold without like-minded reformers at the board, and that Rogers is the one who had behaved unethically.

A Tribune review of Rogers’ campaign receipts over the past decade found that $800,000 of his campaign contributions came from property tax interests, including attorneys who represent taxpayers before the board. Rogers said those contributions comported with county ethics rules and that he does not exhibit any favoritism to donors.

Rogers, also a trial lawyer with the firm Power Rogers, has also loaned himself hundreds of thousands to counter the Super PAC’s spending.

Tucker said she would not accept any money from property tax interests and would work to improve transparency at the board.