Bills seek party labels for judicial elections
Feb. 24—COLUMBUS — At odds with the Ohio Supreme Court chief justice of their own party, legislative Republicans want to explicitly note the party affiliations of appellate judicial candidates on general election ballots.
In Ohio, judges are nominated in spring partisan primaries but then run without party labels on the November ballot.
Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor has long sought to remove ballot party labels altogether in judicial races from the high court down to municipal court.
"The problem with putting a party label on a judge is it just reinforces the idea that judges are aligned with a political party as opposed to a judicial philosophy," she said Wednesday. "It is not correct...It is misleading. I don't think it serves the independence of the judiciary."
But her fellow Republicans in the General Assembly want to even things out by adding labels in the general for Supreme Court and District Courts of Appeals only.
"Many rural and urban voters don't have access to computers of the internet," said Sen. Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green), who introduced Senate Bill 80 with Sen. Jerry Cirino (R., Kirkland).
"It's easy to learn about a person's party affiliation if you do an online search," she said. "Many people can't do that. Ohio is the only state in the country that has a partisan primary for judicial candidates but a non-partisan general election. We need to stop this ruse of judicial races being non-partisan because of the time and money spent by both parties to market their candidates."
Many judicial elections are decided now by name recognition, said Rep. D.J. Swearingen (R., Huron), sponsor of House Bill 149 with Rep. Brian Stewart (R., Ashville).
"In my opinion, if you have an R or a D (next to a name), at least you have an idea where they may be in regard to judicial philosophy," Mr. Swearingen said.
While Chief Justice O'Connor has proposed eliminating partisan primaries for judges, there has been no movement in that direction legislatively. She said she suspects current sentiment favors passage of these Republican bills as the public demands easily accessible information they don't have to look for.
After a number of years in which there was one or no Democrat on the seven-member bench, Democrats have won three of the last four Supreme Court seats on the 2018 and 2020 ballots. They are within a single seat of a majority.
But these victories came as Republicans — with the exception of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's re-election in 2018 — otherwise ran the board to support then President Donald Trump, win every statewide executive office, and pad super-majorities in the General Assembly.
Chris Redfern, the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party from Catawba Island, tried without success a decade ago to convince the courts to add, rather than subtract, partisan labels. But he wouldn't pursue that today.
The difference, he said, is the candidates.
"Judicial candidates have, politically speaking, matured," he said. "They are far more accessible than they ever were. Justices (Melody) Stewart and (Michael) Donnelly liked campaigning. They liked time on the trail and associating with other Democratic candidates."
He said these 2018 winners and Justice Jennifer Brunner, who won in 2020, would have won even with "Democrat" next to their names.
"These candidates would have," he said. "I don't think the candidates between 2018 and 2008 would have. Campaigns have changed with social media, interaction with voters, and messaging. It has changed for the better for Democratic candidates."
As for the bills' focus only on appellate races, Mr. Swearingen said, "Local elections, in my opinion, are like township trustees and village council. People are more likely to know about candidates and what they stand for."
That is less true, he said, with statewide races and appellate court districts that can include a dozen or more counties.
First Published February 24, 2021, 3:24pm
