From Spotlight, PA:
Control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is on the ballot this year, with three Democratic justices up for retention elections.
These yes-or-no elections are normally sleepy and almost never result in a justice being forced off the court. But Republican operatives, who have chafed at the Democratic-majority court’s decisions for a decade, say that with a flip within reach, they’re getting ready for an expensive political fight.
Judges on all three of Pennsylvania’s statewide appellate courts — the Supreme, Superior, and Commonwealth Courts — are elected in partisan, statewide elections and serve 10-year terms.
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GOP seeks ‘decade-long impact’
Combined with the increased politicization the judiciary has seen during the Trump era, this handful of usually obscure, low-turnout elections is set to attract major attention and funding from both parties, according to political operatives.
Republicans in particular see it as a huge opportunity.
“This has been circled on my calendar for a long time,” veteran GOP political consultant Christopher Nicholas told Spotlight PA.
Open elections for seats on Pennsylvania appeals courts have increasingly become expensive affairs, attracting millions of dollars from trial lawyers, labor unions, business interests, and megadonors within and outside the state.
Retention elections so far have been unaffected by this trend. But nine months out, that appears to be on track to change.
In a recent memo, the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group that helps finance state races, highlighted Pennsylvania’s retention elections, noting those justices would oversee state and federal electoral maps during the next redistricting cycle.
The high court routinely intervenes to commission a congressional map if Pennsylvania’s legislature and governor deadlock, and it almost invariably steps in to choose a nonelected tiebreaker that draws state legislative maps.
“That’s why the RSLC’s [Judicial Fairness Initiative] is already committed to spending seven-figures in 2025 and raising even more resources is necessary to win and could make a decade-long impact,” the memo said.
One GOP activist, Scott Presler, said that he has already hired 23 staffers in the state and expects to add more to register voters and raise awareness on the retention races. Presler is among Trump’s most vocal supporters in the commonwealth.