Politics & Government

Report: Justices Spent $300K on TV Ads in Retention Elections

Watchdog group says more high-stakes judicial elections are a trend.

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

Two Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices won more time on the bench last week, thanks in part to more than $300,000 in TV ads during the final weeks of the campaign.

In doing so, Pennsylvania joined a national trend of more political and high-stakes judicial elections, according to a watchdog group that focuses on judicial issues.

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Chief Justice Ron Castille and Justice Max Baer shelled out an estimated $317,500 on TV advertisements in support of their campaigns, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, a group that tracks advertising costs. Both were facing anti-retention efforts led by grassroots activists and tea party groups that wanted to unseat the two justices.

Now, some lawmakers say the process for deciding who gets to be a judge on the state’s high courts should change, to keep money and politics from playing such a major role in the judicial selection process.

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Both Castille and Baer won retention with relative ease. Castille collected 68 percent of the statewide vote on Election Day while Baer won with 71 percent of the vote. But the amount of money spent on the race is something of a surprise, considering how low-key most judicial retention elections usually are.

That’s a growing national trend, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a legal policy center based at New York University.

“The American people need to know that judges are deciding cases based on the law, not on who spent the most money to support their campaign,” said Alicia Bannon, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and lead author of a report last month that examined spending in judicial races.

But the Pennsylvania retention elections did not attract the same level of spending as recent judicial retention races in Florida, Michigan and Iowa, where outside groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support or oppose certain judges. Still, the races were more politicized than the typically low-interest retention elections of previous years.

Reform groups targeted Castille, arguing he was involved in a recent string of judicial scandals in Pennsylvania, and a prominent tea party group in Philadelphia called for both judges to be ousted because they blocked the state’s controversial voter ID law last year.

According to Kantar Media/CMAG, Baer spent more than $270,000 on ads urging voters to retain him, while Castille spent $79,000.

About a month before the election, an internal poll by Baer’s campaign found the judge had only 55 percent support for retention, which may have prompted his decision to spend so heavily on the race. He spent more than $200,000 to air one ad in the Pittsburgh market in the weeks leading up to the election, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The ad called attention to Baer’s work on behalf of foster children when he was a deputy attorney general and implored voters to retain him “for our children’s sake,” even though Baer is not allowed to lobby or advocate on behalf of any particular group while serving as a judge.

Those totals do not reflect outside spending on the recent retention races — another aspect of the judicial election process that has been growing in recent years, according to the Brennan Center.

Though Castille was originally elected as a Republican and Baer was originally elected as a Democrat, both judges had the support of both parties, along with prominent labor unions and the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO ran ads online and on TV supporting the justices’ retention, and the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association, which represents many of the attorneys who appear before the court, donated to both judges’ campaigns.

Former governors Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and Tom Ridge, a Republican, endorsed Castille during the recent retention campaign. Interestingly, both have also backed the proposal to change to a hybrid merit-selection model for picking the state’s most important judges.

That model may get some more support after the contentious retention elections this year.

Lynn Marks, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, which supports merit selection for judges followed by retention elections every 10 years, said the real problem is the partisan elections for vacant seats on the bench.

“Although increased spending in retention elections is troubling, the justices’ ads this year could be viewed as a good-faith attempt to educate the public about why they should stay on the bench,” Marks said.

A legislative effort based on Marks’ group’s suggestions was put forth by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Harrisburg this week.

Under that plan, a 15-member nominating commission of lawyers and non-lawyers selected by elected officials would review applicants’ qualifications and recommend a short list to the governor for nomination. After Senate confirmation, a judge would serve on the bench for four years before standing for a nonpartisan retention election.

State Rep. Brian Sims, D-Philadelphia, who co-sponsored the bill with state Rep. Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, pointed out that [the Nov. 6] elections had a statewide turnout of less than 20 percent, with some counties reporting turnout of less than 10 percent.

“I believe we should be looking for the members of the bar with the highest qualifications, not just the best political skills,” Sims said in a statement.

Boehm is a reporter for PA Independent and can be reached at Eric@PAIndependent.com. Follow @PAIndependent on Twitter for more.


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