Litigation

Election 2010: More States See Costly Court Races

By Peter Hardin

More states are joining the trend of costly judicial elections, with a state Supreme Court justice in Illinois currently leading the way in TV ad spending, according to data compiled by a reform group.

Democratic Justice Thomas L. Kilbride faces a potentially costly challenge from groups seeking to remove him in an Illinois retention election, and he spent about $393,000 on TV air time through Oct. 6, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Justice at Stake Campaign reported in a news release today.

The two organizations are tracking judicial races in the new jointly run web page, Judicial Election 2010. According to the news release:

Voters are now seeing TV ads in six states holding judicial elections next month, and Minnesota, which has avoided costly Supreme Court elections in the past, saw troubling signs of an uptick in partisan politicking, the groups said.

“The new politics of judicial elections continues to reach states that haven’t experienced it before, and that’s been the story of the 2010 campaign,” said Charles Hall, communications director for Justice at Stake. “Meanwhile, in states like Alabama and Ohio, we’re seeing more of the same interest-group spending that has spun out of control in the last decade.”

In Ohio, a Chamber of Commerce group has launched an ad campaign supporting two Republican candidates for the state Supreme Court.

More than $2 million has been spent on air time in state judicial elections through Oct. 6, including general election and primary ads. That puts the current total for the 2009-2010 election cycle at $6.6 million; the final TV total for the 2007-2008 cycle was $26.6 million, the highest ever for a two-year election cycle.

In TV advertising for the general election so far this year, $662,470 was spent on normally low-cost retention (up-or-down) elections, and only $385,870 on multiple-candidate elections.

“The fact that television spending on retention elections has outpaced spending in multi-candidate races is extraordinary,” said Adam Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center, a partner of Justice at Stake. Yet spending on contested judicial elections will spike during the next three weeks and likely will surpass the total spent in retention elections, he said.

The reform groups noted that in Iowa, churches have joined a battle to oust three state Supreme Court justices over a high court decision in 2009 that allowed same-sex marriage. A fundamentalist Sioux City church has sent a letter to pastors urging them to join the ouster effort, and a second pastor has formed a web site that urges other pastors to lead the congregations in voting to remove “out of control” judges.

Gavel Grab has tracked the hottest judicial election contests. To learn more about Iowa, click here; about Illinois, click here; and about movement toward unusually contentious and big-spending retention elections, click here for a report by Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center.

For a decade overview of judicial elections in these and other states, see “The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2000-2009: Decade of Change.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on October 08, 2010 (boomark / email).