This year’s nonpartisan primary race to for justice on North Carolina’s Supreme Court is looking a lot like most high stakes political races with tons of money pouring in and nasty ads on television.
Four of the seven seats on the state’s highest court are up for election this year, but there is a primary in only one race, where an incumbent registered as a Democrat is up against two more conservative challengers, both registered Republicans. The top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary advance to face each other in November.
Already more than $1 million has been spent, the majority of it from outside groups trying to defeat an incumbent, Robin Hudson. A group called Justice For All NC is running a television ad taking a dissent written by Hudson in 2010, saying it shows she “sides with child predators.”
Hudson’s opponents are Jeanette Doran, executive director of the conservative-leaning legal group North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, and Mecklenburg County Superior Court judge Eric Levinson.
The Hudson ad is likely just the first shot of a nasty campaign for seats on the Supreme Court. The court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority, and all three of the seats held by Democrats are up for election this year. The lone Republican seat is open, but that justice, Mark Martin, is seeking the open Chief Justice position.
With a conservative, Republican governor and an even more conservative, GOP-dominated legislature, locking in control of the Supreme Court is especially vital, since chances are the justices will hear a number of cases in the next several years dealing with redistricting, voting laws, environmental policy and other issues that have shifted significantly since Republicans took over the other two branches of government in 2012.
“It’s disturbing what this thing is indicating. People are going to have to be very diligent to look past the trash,” said Bob Hall with the election law reform group Democracy North Carolina, which opposed a law passed since the 2012 election that eliminated public funding of judicial elections.
The ad against Hudson stems from a case where three men convicted of molesting children said they should not be subjected to satellite monitoring under a law passed after they finished their sentences. The Supreme Court sided with the state, saying the requirement was not an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.
Hudson wrote the dissent in the case.
“We may not be fond of this particular class of defendants, but that does not lessen their Fourth Amendment rights nor their expectation of privacy in their own homes,” she wrote.
The ad uses an unflattering picture of Hudson and ends with: “Hudson cited a child molester’s right to privacy and took the side of the convicted molesters. Justice Robin Hudson - not tough on child molesters, not fair to victims.”
Earlier this week, Hudson said the ad was especially unfair because her position was the law did nothing at all to protect children because the satellite monitoring wasn’t always watched and wasn’t all that accurate.
“I don’t think this ad speaks very well at all for what we want out of our judicial system,” Hudson said.
Justice For All NC also spent big money in the 2012 Supreme Court election. Campaign finance records show the group raised $1.7 million and sent it to another super PAC that spent it on ads supporting justice Paul Newby’s re-election campaign.
The group didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
The North Carolina Chamber IE PAC is also spending big on the primary, paying $225,000 for positive ads boosting Hudson’s challengers. Levinson’s campaign has spent about $150,000 so far, while Hudson’s campaign has spent about $90,000, some of it to buy an ad to dispute the negative spot running against her.
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