Why Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court election has national implications

Geoff Bennett:

Election Day is just one week away. And while there are some governor's races getting national attention, some downballot races could have a big impact.

As Lisa Desjardins reports, there's a race for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that continues a recent trend of big spending in judicial elections.

Lisa Desjardins:

Pennsylvania is a large swing state where the state's Supreme Court could decide the fate of election laws, redistricting and abortion limits. The court is now 5-2 Democratic, but with three of those Democratic justices on the ballot next week, so is the majority of the court.

Groups on both sides have poured millions of dollars into the race.

Christine Donohue, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice:

We don't make lies.

David Wecht, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice:

But we make sure the most powerful people follow them.

Kevin Dougherty, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice:

We held big corporations accountable when they hurt working people.

Christine Donohue:

We protected access to abortion.

David Wecht:

And your right to vote.

Christine Donohue:

Even when the powerful came after it.

Narrator:

This fall, you can defend democracy and force an election for a new Supreme Court. On your ballot, vote no on retaining the three Supreme Court justices that have not protected our rights. It's time to term limit the court. Vote no, no, no.

Lisa Desjardins:

For a closer look at this battle for the court and the potential impact of it, I'm joined by Katie Meyer, government editor for Spotlight PA.

Katie, as we heard in those ads, this is not a typical election where it's one candidate versus another. This is a yes or no vote. Can you help explain exactly what's on the ballot here?

Katie Meyer, Spotlight Pennsylvania:

Sure thing. So, in Pennsylvania, Supreme Court justices and justices on all of our appellate courts, they are elected to 10-year terms. In the first election, they go up in a partisan race. They run pretty much a normal political election with an opponent.

After that, they get what's called retention elections. So it's a yes or no, as you said, question for voters. They decide whether they want the justice to stay on the bench for another 10 years or if they want to create a vacancy, essentially. If they create a vacancy, the election will happen again in two years, the next municipal election.

So we will have somebody who's appointed in the meantime, but then there's a chance to potentially change the makeup of the court for a long time going forward in two years. So it's a little complicated. But, basically, the question is, do we want to keep this same balance of power on the ballot this year?

Lisa Desjardins:

You know, court elections really used to not get this amount of attention. And yet here we are with these becoming some of the most expensive races in the country. For example, in Wisconsin, we covered that race earlier this year. Elon Musk got involved, poured money into it. His candidate ultimately lost.

But how much money is involved there in Pennsylvania and how unusual is that for the state?

Katie Meyer:

Yes, so far it is a lot of money. You said millions. We are probably at tens of millions at least right now. But I will say it's kind of hard to get a full accounting. A lot of the money that we see in this election is what we call independent expenditures. And a lot of those aren't reported right away.

So I think we're going to know closer to the election or after the election how much has actually been spent. Some of it also is dark money. So it's nonprofits that are spending money where they don't have to disclose who their donors are. So a lot we don't know about who's spending in this race.

What we do know is that there are national groups that have been pouring money in, especially on the Democratic side. We have seen a lot of action from them. We have seen a lot of action from Republicans as well. Pennsylvania has a really major Republican donor named Jeff Yass. He's the wealthiest person in the state and he's a prodigious Republican donor.

We believe he's putting some money in, although, again, it's kind of hard to track. So we're just — we're seeing a ton of spending. And if you're a Pennsylvania right now, you can tell you're seeing a lot of ads on TV, online. They're kind of everywhere.

Lisa Desjardins:

We know justices don't declare how they're going to vote, especially when they're up for election. But what could be the potential impact here of policy looking ahead?

Katie Meyer:

Yes, I mean, these justices have made some really big decisions over the last 10 years. One of the big ones was, in 2018, they threw out Pennsylvania's congressional map. It had been a map that was drawn by Republicans and had yielded delegations that were very Republican.

And so, since then, they have been more evenly split down the middle. We saw this court defend Pennsylvania's election administration in 2020. We saw them back up the then-governor during COVID, during the pandemic, and sort of uphold his restrictions that he had imposed. That was a Democratic governor.

So things like that are really a top of mind for Republicans in this election and also for Democrats as well. So there's definitely some partisan interest in this race for reasons of how they have ruled in the past.

Lisa Desjardins:

In our last few seconds, what's the expectation on turnout? It's an off-year.

Katie Meyer:

Yes, I mean, it's always lower than in the presidential election, for instance. However, we have seen really strong mail ballot returns so far. So it looks like it'll be a pretty high turnout for a retention election.

Lisa Desjardins:

Katie Meyer from Spotlight PA, check out her reporting online.

Thank you for joining us.

Katie Meyer:

Thanks for having me.