Since 2011, partisan special interest groups have significantly increased their targeting of judicial campaigns in the United States. Groups such as the Americans for Prosperity and the Center for Individual Rights — which are funded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and exist largely to “keep dark money in the dark” — have committed unprecedented sums of money to influence state judicial elections, including a number of key state supreme court retention races.
While overall spending declined from the last election — in part due to the absence of contested races in the high-dollar states of Pennsylvania and Alabama — the 2014 electoral cycle broke several state spending records, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In Tennessee, a record $2.4 million, mostly in TV advertising, was funneled into three supreme court retention races. Similarly, outside groups helped push fundraising for judicial candidates in North Carolina to $5.2 million — more than double the previous record. This comes barely a year after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature defeated a public financing program designed to limit the influence of special interests on judicial elections.
Nearly all of the outside spending was contributed free of disclosure requirements, and a large percentage came from Washington, D.C.-based conservative groups. Indeed, not a single outside group targeting state judicial elections this year was aligned with the Democratic Party, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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