A letter from Karl Rove. Mailers from Planned Parenthood. Why Ohio’s Supreme Court race is so heated this year
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COLUMBUS – A letter from Republican political operative Karl Rove. A shoutout at a Trump rally. Glossy mailers sent by Planned Parenthood.
The race for two seats on the Ohio Supreme Court is shaping up to be a heated one – as heated as it can be for what’s supposed to be a nonpartisan race.
That’s because the partisan balance could shift to the Democrats for the first time in 34 years. Republicans have dominated the state’s high court since 1986; the current breakdown is 5-2.
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Democrats see a flip as a way to rein in a Republican-controlled state legislature and ensure the next congressional and legislative district maps aren’t gerrymandered to protect Republicans and incumbents. Republicans say the Democrats would be activist judges.
Two years ago, every seat on the bench was held by a Republican. Democrats lost every state official race except the two seats on the Supreme Court.
Two more are on the ballot this year. Incumbent Justice Judi French, a Republican, is facing a challenge from state appellate court Judge Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat. Incumbent Justice Sharon Kennedy, a Republican, faces Cuyahoga County Judge
Republicans and Democrats are making the races a priority. And outside groups are getting involved. Here’s why the races are so competitive this year.
Outside groups
In Ohio, candidates for the state’s high court run in partisan primaries but their names appear without a party label on the general election ballot. Candidates are also limited in what they can say and do while campaigning. They can only fundraise during an election year and individuals and corporations are limited to contributions of $4,100 and $7,500, respectively.
The candidates have spent more than $882,000 on ads, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which tracks judicial elections across the country.
Outside groups can tell the story the candidates can’t. The Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative started running a negative Brunner TV ad in Columbus late last week.
A Republican-affiliated group Ohioans for Judicial Integrity Inc. has spent $129,685 on Facebook ads in the races this year, including $35,000 last week. The group was incorporated in Ohio in 2019 by a D.C. lawyer, Sloane Carlough, Deputy General Counsel at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Read more about the four candidates for Ohio Supreme Court
Most of the ads are pro-Kennedy and French. Some allege “out-of-state groups funded by George Soros” are “trying to buy a liberal supreme court.”
The Ohio Business Roundtable, led by former Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi, sent emails earlier this month encouraging CEOs to support “conservative” justices in emails to their employees. The emails, Tiberi wrote to CEOs, “underscore the importance to your business and their job security of having a stable Supreme Court.”
On the other side, For Our Future Ohio PAC, a state offshoot off the national For Our Future PAC founded by billionaire and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, has been active in the race. For Our Future Ohio spent more than $25,000 on Facebook ads last week, almost all for Supreme Court races.
Several of the group’s ads feature pictures of Brunner and O’Donnell with photos of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris.
Planned Parenthood Votes Ohio, a super PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood, also sent mailers touting Brunner and O’Donnell: “Ohio’s Supreme Court has the power to expand our reproductive rights.”
Douglas Keith, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said it’s not surprising to see resources spent in states like Ohio and Michigan, where the balance of the court is in play.
“Generally, we’ve seen these courts are going to get more and more attention because as the federal courts are increasingly conservative, state supreme courts where are people are going to turn to seek protection of their rights and liberties,” Keith said.
A Democratic majority
Republicans have held majorities in all three branches of state government since 2010. Democrats picked up two seats on the Ohio Supreme Court in 2018 and, with two more seats this year, would flip it to a 4-3 majority Democrat court.
Democrats attribute their 2018 wins to listing their justice candidates – Melody Stewart and Michael Donnelly – on party slate cards and pushing those more than in previous years to encourage voters to vote all the way down the ballot. Stewart and Donnelly also campaigned at party functions. This year, Republicans are doing the same.
At a Trump rally in Dayton last month, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted called on attendees to vote for French and Kennedy, saying the election of their opponents could “swing the balance of the supreme court in the state of Ohio for a generation if we don’t win them.”
“In the last election cycle, we lost two Ohio Supreme Court justices. We can’t lose two more. We’ve got to get this right,” Husted said in a speech before Trump took the stage. “We’ve got to make sure we have conservative jurists on the bench.”
Republican operative Karl Rove wrote a fundraising letter last month on behalf of French’s campaign.
“With that court’s conservative majority up for grabs in 2020, every conservative voter in Ohio must join the fight,” Rove wrote, describing French as “a hard-working conservative with a heart for service.”
Rove, best known with crafting the strategy behind George W. Bush’s win, cut his teeth turning the Alabama Supreme Court red in the late 1990s. Rove’s letter touched on another topic he’s familiar with: Redistricting.
Redistricting
In 2010, Rove laid out the GOP plan to control process of drawing congressional and Statehouse seats, picking up dozens of House seats and ensuring dominance for a decade. In 2020, he warns against Democrats doing the same.
The Ohio maps drawn in 2011 give Republicans the edge: 12 of Ohio’s 16 congressional seats have been held by Republicans since. The Ohio Statehouse has also remained reliably in Republican hands, despite the total votes being closer to 50-50 divided among both parties.
Ohio will redraw its maps for another 10 years in 2021 and could lose a congressional seat. That process is primarily done by state legislators – Republicans are expected to keep majorities in the Ohio House and Senate. But, under a reform plan passed in 2018, the Ohio Supreme Court can force lawmakers to go back to the drawing board to comply with certain criteria laid out in the reform plan.
Rove wrote that “liberal interest groups from outside Ohio” want the lines drawn to benefit “liberal Democrats.”
“And if they can’t control Ohio’s legislature to do that, then they want to control the Ohio Supreme Court,” Rove said.
The Ohio Democratic Party hasn’t been shy about the importance of the court and has fundraised off the races. Chairman David Pepper said he wants the Democrats to win but regardless hopes the court can come together in a bipartisan fashion if asked to review maps.
“The ads on the Republican side are not coming from some criminal justice group or group dedicated to something the courts are about,” Pepper said. “They’re coming from a group that wants to keep a gerrymandered Republican government in place.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: A letter from Karl Rove. Mailers from Planned Parenthood. Why Ohio’s Supreme Court race is so heated this year