McLean County Circuit Clerk Don Everhart easily fought off a GOP primary challenge Tuesday from one of his former employees, Jason Dazey, setting Everhart up for another term come November.
Everhart was leading with 74% of the vote late Tuesday, with only a handful of precincts still to report.
Everhart, 71, was running for a fifth term, after being first elected circuit clerk in 2008. He carried a long list of endorsements into the primary, including fellow countywide officeholders Sheriff Matt Lane, Coroner Kathy Yoder, and Treasurer Rebecca McNeil. With no Democrat in the race, Everhart is now likely to advance to an unopposed election win in November.
“I’m grateful to the voters, my campaign team, my family, my friends, and all those who supported me. I’m very thankful,” Everhart told WGLT.
Dazey, 50, worked in the circuit clerk’s office from 1998 until 2013, when he became the county’s jury coordinator. He said the circuit clerk’s role is where he wanted to finish his career and that his decision to run was not necessarily about Everhart’s performance.
“I knew it would be an uphill battle,” Dazey told WGLT. “It was a great experience.”
The circuit clerk is the official record-keeper for McLean County’s court system, as well as the collector and distributor of fines, fees, and costs the court imposes. It’s one of the lower-profile countywide elected positions, though the office interacts with many members of the public on a daily basis. The circuit clerk oversees a budget of around $2.9 million, currently with 60 employees.
One of the biggest challenges facing the circuit clerk during the next four-year term will be implementation of the county’s new case-management system, called eCourt, alongside vendor Journal Technologies. The costly project has been years in the works and is expected to go live in the first quarter of 2025.
The county’s current system — which at one time was a point of pride as the first fully integrated case-management system in Illinois — has become antiquated and difficult to use, especially as electronic filings of civil cases became legally required in 2018.
“It’s been in development for a couple years," Everhart said on Tuesday. "There’s a lot of labor gone into this. I think it’s very important to have that continuity to bring it into fruition. I’ve got all the background into this, so I understand what we need.”
Everhart said, for now, he does not foresee running for a sixth term in 2028.
