There is an election Tuesday in many states, part of America’s bizarre habit of off-off-year elections, and my home state of Pennsylvania, the largest swing state in the country, is no exception. The main question on the ballot is judicial retention, a simple up-or-down vote on whether or not to keep several justices on the state Supreme Court. Three Democrats—Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht—are up for another ten-year term.
Judicial retention elections are normally pretty sleepy, and they typically result in the judges being retained. But the Pennsylvania Republican Party, led by right-wing megadonor Jeff Yass, who is also the richest person in the state, is conducting an all-out effort to get rid of these three Democrats. Currently, the Court is split 5-2 in favor of Dems. If they are removed, the Supreme Court will be tied 2-2, and new judges will be elected in 2027, which conservatives obviously would hope to win.
What little polling exists in this race shows the Democrats narrowly ahead for retention, but with high levels of undecided voters. Those voters are getting pummeled with mailers and advertisements to kick out the “activist” judges and restore “conservative values” to Pennsylvania.
But the real reason Republicans are doing this is so they can cheat the election process and rig themselves into permanent majority rule at both the state and federal level. That is the only reason. If the state GOP gets its way, how Pennsylvanians vote will have no effect on how their state government functions.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The Pennsylvania Constitution has some rules about state legislative districts, but none about drawing congressional districts. After the 2010 census, Republicans controlled the Pennsylvania state government, and so as part of redistricting they drew up one of the worst gerrymanders in the country. In 2012, the House delegation results were 13-5 in favor of the GOP, despite the fact that President Obama won the state by five points, and Sen. Bob Casey won re-election by nine points. One particularly hideous district, which cut across five counties, was dubbed “Goofy Kicking Donald.”
Democrats fought back in state Supreme Court elections, and flipped partisan control in 2015. Thereafter, the majority threw out the hyper-gerrymandered map in 2018, appointed the deciding vote on the state redistricting committee, and helped stop Donald Trump from stealing the state election in 2020, along with numerous other non-electoral matters.
And that’s why we return to the Republican political motto: If you can’t beat them, cheat. Their campaign is so staggeringly dishonest that it almost surprised me—an impressive feat indeed, after ten years of Trump. The Yass-funded groups are sending out a mailer with the accusation that the “liberal Supreme Court gerrymandered our congressional districts to help Democrats win.” As evidence, the mailer has a picture of the exact hyper-gerrymandered map that Republicans drew up in 2011—the one with Goofy kicking Donald. It’s like Al Capone accusing Eliot Ness of liquor smuggling. I’d have to imagine any future Republican Supreme Court candidates will be seeing a special tailor for their enormous brass balls.
However, not everything would be precisely the same as it was a decade ago. Any Republican majority probably would be a lot more extreme than they were in 2011. That was long before the rise of Trump, January 6th, and the embrace of outright antisemitism and Holocaust denial by wide swaths of the party. In North Carolina, where Republicans have implemented a Victor Orbán–style autocracy (with the help of the national Supreme Court), the party has been much more aggressive about stealing the powers of the governor and stuffing highly inflammatory policy down the throats of a 50-50 state. Similar stories can be found in Texas and Missouri, where mid-cycle redistricting is attempting to squeeze out Democrats and nullify any advantage in next year’s midterms. This is just what Republicans do in every level of government they control.
In particular, I would expect a Pennsylvania Republican court majority to attempt to throw out both federal and state electoral maps, regardless of what the state constitution says. If Chief Justice John Roberts can ignore precedent, law, constitutional text, and plain common sense in his ruling declaring Donald Trump a king, why not the Keystone State’s highest court?
It also bears mentioning that Pennsylvania is in the midst of a prolonged budget crisis because Republicans control the state Senate. Democratic governor Josh Shapiro and the Democratic-controlled House have both released fairly moderate proposals, but Senate Republicans are insisting on a hyper-partisan budget that does not adequately fund low-income schools—the bulk of which are in rural MAGA country—in line with requirements from state regulators and courts. In the meantime, schools, hospitals, and public transit systems are suffering from the lack of state funding. As my colleague Gabrielle Gurley explains, this is leading to savage cuts in service to SEPTA, which serves Philadelphia and its suburbs, and has not recovered its pre-pandemic ridership.
It’s therefore pretty obvious what Republican one-party rule would look like: more for ultra-rich donors like Jeff Yass, and less for everyone else, particularly poor Pennsylvanians. Without the discipline of elections, the party will be free to indulge its sadistic lust for cruelty for its own sake.
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