Ohio Republicans expanded their slim majority on the state’s Supreme Court in Tuesday’s elections, turning back efforts to flip partisan control of the chamber, according to The Associated Press.
Voters gave Republican candidates two court seats that had been held by Democrats and swept a third open seat, turning a 4-3 Republican edge on the court into a 6-1 majority, after progressives cast Republican candidates as extremists on abortion, and conservatives slammed Democratic candidates as soft on crime.
They were among a number of state supreme court races nationwide that underscored the steady drift of judicial elections toward hardball politics, as federal courts have offloaded control of hot-button issues like redistricting, voting rights and abortion to state judges.
As state courts’ profiles have risen, national donors have become major players in election contests. In Ohio and elsewhere, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, had spent heavily to support progressives for state supreme court seats, while Richard Uihlein, a billionaire producer of cardboard boxes and other shipping supplies, had become perhaps the biggest donor to conservatives.
This year, national groups like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union also spent millions of dollars on state supreme court contests, much of that on messages that centered on reproductive rights.
In Michigan, a Democratic justice appointed to the court in 2022 won a race to complete her full four-year term, while in a second contest, Democrats took control of a seat that was vacated by a Republican justice. The results turned the Democrats’ slim 4-3 edge in court seats into an 5-2 majority. In Michigan, justices are nominated by the two major political parties but run without party labels.
There as elsewhere, progressives backed the Democratic candidates with a blitz of advertisements on television and elsewhere centering on reproductive rights.
And in Kentucky, where court races also are officially nonpartisan, voters overwhelmingly chose a state appeals court judge who had been endorsed by the state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, to fill a vacant State Supreme Court seat.
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