HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Central Pennsylvania state Sen. Greg Rothman, the newly elected state Republican Party chairman, will face his first big challenge this year with the control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the ballot.
Rothman, who won the party chairmanship with overwhelming support in a 248-120 vote last month, will look to fill three state Supreme Court seats with three Democratic justices up for retention elections.
The judicial elections are for 10-year terms. On the ballot is a yes-or-no for a position that has an oversized impact on the average person. Despite their power, these elections are often decided with very low turnout.
Case in point, the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court stepped over the line in 2018 by redrawing the entire state’s congressional map, putting a finger on the scale in a role it never held.
Just over 16 months after being sworn into the majority, Democrats suddenly redrew the entire congressional map, which had been in place for seven years. This threw the state into mass confusion — people were drawn out of the seats they held, and voters had no idea what congressional districts they were in.
Keystone College political science professor Jeff Brauer told me at the time that he was concerned about how much disruption the ruling has caused. “All of a sudden, current members of Congress have to figure out where they run or if they run, with challengers facing the same issue,” he said. “This could have been held off for a couple of years when the Democrats stood a fairly good chance of drawing a more favorable map without having the courts involved.”
The move was pure politics: costly and heavy-handed. The Democrats in the majority exercised their muscles to help Democrats win seats they normally would not have.
That November, the Pennsylvania congressional delegation went from a solid Republican majority to an even split.
So how did the Democrats get the majority in 2015? Well, Republicans had gotten complacent after five years of dominance. The national party paid little money or attention to the urgency of filling the races for three empty judge seats on the state Supreme Court, despite the implications.
Democrats wisely saw an opportunity to reverse the red tide through the courts. They dumped a ton of money into their three candidates who went on to win the majority on the court.
And it isn’t just politics that the state Supreme Court affected. It also played an oversized role in COVID-19 mediation efforts. The three Democratic state Supreme Court justices on the ballot in November are Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht.
Since those three justices won their races in 2015, the electorate in the state has moved further right in several statewide election cycles. Donald Trump has won the presidency twice by winning this state. Former Democratic Sen. Bob Casey lost his seat to Republican David McCormick. Republicans hold all three statewide elected row offices for the first time in the commonwealth’s history, and the Democrats’ domination in voter registration has shrunk dramatically in the past 10 years.
Republicans also hold the majority in the state Senate, and Democrats are tied with the GOP in the state House.
Democratic strategists here tell me they are nervous that an energized electorate in this new conservative coalition will turn out in November if it starts to gain attention and funding.
Scott Presler, the conservative force of nature who has spent the past four years registering voters in the state for Republicans, told me he has already hired two dozen staffers and plans to leave no stone unturned in getting voters out for this cycle.
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“I remain committed and focused on getting out the vote, not just for the Supreme Court,” Presler said. “There is also one each Superior and Commonwealth court seat open, 18 district attorney races, and 32 sheriff races, and they are all happening in a cycle that is historically low.
“Republicans cannot be complacent this time,” he added.
