MONEY & POLITICS
Expectedly low turnout as Democrats sweep judicial races
|
About 27 percent of Pennsylvania’s registered voters went to the polls on Tuesday as the Democrats swept all three of the state’s top judicial races.
PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/series/in-the-balance-pa-supreme-court-2015/)
PublicSource will be covering this historic Pennsylvania Supreme Court race for three open seats on the seven-member court. We’ll be tracking campaign contributions and television ads, explaining who is trying to tip the balance of the court and how the candidates are spending their money.
If you normally don’t follow politics or don’t have a law degree, that’s OK. We want you to be armed with more knowledge to cast an informed vote on Election Day.
Please come back to PublicSource to read more of our coverage and to use our Supreme Court voters’ guide that will come out right before the Nov. 3 election.
About 27 percent of Pennsylvania’s registered voters went to the polls on Tuesday as the Democrats swept all three of the state’s top judicial races.
Nearly four out of every 10 dollars contributed to Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidates have been given by a lawyer, law firm, or a lawyer’s political action committee.
Gov. Tom Wolf and former Gov. Tom Corbett only raised about 6 percent of their money from the legal world in last year’s gubernatorial election, according to a PublicSource analysis.
Use this PublicSource voters’ guide to make an informed vote for this historic state Supreme Court election.
So far, four Pennsylvania newspapers have announced their endorsements, and there’s a fair amount of consensus.
Many familiar organizations gave to Pennsylvanians for Judicial Reform so it could run attack ads against the three Republican candidates for Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In the past month, the group raised more than $2.2 million from affinity groups representing Philadelphia trial lawyers, teachers’ unions, labor unions and others.
Pennsylvanians for Judicial Reform is an independent expenditure group, meaning they can buy political ads but they cannot coordinate with the candidates or advocate for the election or defeat of a specific candidate.
Three of the seven candidates for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeared “in the light,” as one candidate put it this week in Pittsburgh, to be transparent and to answer questions from voters.
And they received a mountain of questions (more than 40) from a packed auditorium at the Homewood branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Tuesday night.
The Republican State Leadership Committee announced today that it plans to spend more than $1 million in television and digital advertising over the final two weeks of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race.
The congenial Pennsylvania Supreme Court race turned negative over the weekend as the first television ads from an independent group aired.
Judicial campaigns are fraught with potential conflicts of interest that include taking campaign contributions from people who could appear in the judge’s court, seeking endorsements or airing television ads.
One of the three vacancies on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that will be filled in next month’s election was created by the pressures of campaigning.
Four Pennsylvania environmental groups have decided to do something they’ve never done before … they’re endorsing candidates for the state Supreme Court.