Judicial Races Now Rife With Politics

Thomas R. Phillips, a retired chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, said canons of conduct outside the courtroom make judges "uniquely unable to defend themselves from attacks" from groups angry about unpopular decisions that judges have made.

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That issue has particular resonance in Pennsylvania, where a 2005 middle-of-the-night decision by the legislature to grant pay raises for all three branches of government continues to roil state politics.

The state Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers could rescind their own pay raises but not those for judges. The state constitution did not allow judicial salaries to be reduced, the court said, a prohibition meant to insulate judges from political retaliation. Electoral retaliation was another matter: One justice lost his seat when he faced voters later that year.

Now, a group called PACleanSweep is urging voters to reject 66 of the 67 sitting judges on the ballot for retention this year -- the only exception being one judge who returned her raise to the state treasury.

Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake campaign, a nonpartisan effort that has highlighted the explosive growth of fundraising and changing nature of judicial elections, said there is an inherent conflict in treating judges the same as politicians.

The "new politics" of judicial elections, Brandenburg said, "demands that judges be Huey Long on the campaign trail and Solomon in the courtroom and not miss a beat in between."

Some judicial candidates have been even more outspoken than in the past since a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said some state restrictions on the speech of judicial candidates were unconstitutional.

Former Alabama chief justice Drayton Nabors, unseated in the 2006 election, said in one of his television commercials: "I'm pro-life. Abortion on demand is a tragedy. And the liberal judicial decisions that support it are wrong."

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Max Baer declared in his 2003 campaign, "I am pro-choice and proud of it."

The Pennsylvania candidates this time have been more circumspect. "People know that I'm bound by a code of judicial conduct," said Republican Maureen Lally-Green, who like McCaffery is a judge on the state's Superior Court. "If I'm going to rule on any case, I can't promise what I'm going to do."

But the candidates can give hints. Republican Mike Krancer's television commercials declare him a conservative who doesn't believe in legislating from the bench, while the screen flashes his endorsement from the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.

Although the candidates have largely avoided personal attacks, there are signs the race could change in the closing days. The Pennsylvania Republican Party last week called Democratic candidate Debra Todd, also a Superior Court judge, "the drug dealer's choice for Supreme Court" based on a ruling she issued dismissing charges against a suspect.