Portside

The 2024 election marked a painful setback for Democratic hopes of rebalancing the federal judiciary: When Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, he will have a pliant Republican Senate majority eager to confirm his hard-right judges. But federal courts don’t tell the whole story: Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives didn’t win a clean sweep, but they emerged with an impressive scorecard, carrying seats in battlegrounds like Michigan and safely red states like Kentucky and Montana. Left-leaning judicial candidates even prevailed in deep-red Arkansas and Mississippi, bucking the national shift rightward. And a progressive jurist is now leading the tally heading into a recount in an extraordinarily close race for the North Carolina Supreme Court, with a victory there promising to end the left’s painful losing streak on that bench and serve as a capstone for the one piece of the 2024 election where progressives actually flourished.

How did these judges pull it off? Abortion surely played a role: State courts have immense leeway to expand or curtail reproductive rights in a post–Roe v. Wade world, and liberal judges have perfected the art of running on abortion. More broadly, these judges—frequently with the help of Democratic strategists and a financial boost from progressive groups—have learned to run more effective campaigns that mobilize voters who don’t pay close attention to the courts. By doing so, they may have gained an edge among the Democratic Party’s current coalition of educated, high-propensity voters, who will take part in down-ballot races that many Trump supporters seem to ignore—apparently even when Trump is on the ticket.

This shifting dynamic is perhaps most evident in North Carolina, a swing state that Trump carried by about 3 points. Despite Trump’s triumph at the top of the ticket, Democrats prevailed in other statewide races, including governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. And the party had another key objective this cycle: Breaking the cycle of losses on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Just four years ago, liberals held a 6–1 majority on this court. In 2020 and 2022, however, Republicans narrowly flipped four seats, establishing a 5–2 conservative majority. This year, Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat, sought to stop the bleeding by holding down her seat against a Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin. Her victory would create a path for progressives to flip back the court in 2028.

On election night, it looked like Riggs might narrowly lose. But as counties tallied provisional ballots, she took the lead and now holds an edge of about 625 votes over Griffin. There will be a recount, but right now, the odds are in Riggs’ favor.

If she does prevail, Riggs’ victory can be attributed to a few important factors. It certainly helped that many North Carolinians cast their vote for Trump but skipped the judicial race. But Riggs also ran a shrewd campaign that focused on substantive issues, first and foremost abortion. In a conversation with Slate before the election, Riggs explained the tension of competing in a partisan election while maintaining impartiality as a judge. While she could not say how she would decide any particular case, she talked openly with voters about her “values,” including reproductive rights. (North Carolina enacted stringent new abortion restrictions last year.) In one ad, she declared: “Our freedom to decide when and how we start our families is at stake in this election. For me, it’s personal. I’m 43 and hope to start my own family. … I’ll always guard your right to start and grow your family in safety and peace.” Her candor on abortion prompted Republican legislators to file a frivolous ethics complaint against the justice, which Griffin weaponized to paint her as corrupt. Their cynical gambit seems to have failed.

Riggs’ strategy followed the playbook perfected in 2023 by Judge Janet Protasiewicz in her race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Protasiewicz won her race and flipped the high court to a liberal majority by running on her “values,” including reproductive autonomy and voting rights. Her campaign repudiated the model once preferred by left-leaning judges—including Lisa Neubauer, who lost a seat for the same court in 2019—which leaned on generic promises of independence and impartiality. While this abstract platform was meant to maintain compliance with judicial ethics, it gave voters the impression that Democratic candidates did not really stand for anything. The Protasiewicz campaign abandoned that model, instead laying out the stakes of the election in concrete, human terms. Protasiewicz easily won her race. Now Riggs is poised to win hers, too.

A similar strategy in another battleground, Michigan, helped progressives grow their majority on the state Supreme Court this year even as Trump carried the state. Liberals currently hold a 4–3 majority on the bench, and Republicans had a chance to flip it in November. One liberal incumbent, Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, faced a Republican challenger, Patrick O’Grady. And the race for an open seat pitted the progressive Kimberly Anne Thomas against Republican state Rep. Andrew Fink.

On Election Day, Bolden and Thomas each won by more than 20 points, with backing from outside groups, including Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. In advertisements, these groups told voters that Bolden and Thomas could be trusted to enforce Michigan’s new constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights—while O’Grady and Fink would “take abortion rights away.” Bolden and Thomas’ blowout victories indicate that the message resonated with Michiganders who care about reproductive freedom. And, as in North Carolina, both nominees may have benefited from the fact that many Trump voters appear to have skipped this race altogether.

Running as a champion of women’s right to bodily autonomy doesn’t only work in purple states: It also paid off in Montana, which Trump carried by about 20 points. Two left-leaning justices are retiring from the Montana Supreme Court, threatening its liberal majority—which has staunchly protected individual rights, including abortion, as the state has swung rightward. Two progressive candidates, Jerry Lynch and Katherine Bidegaray, ran for the open seats against conservatives Cory Swanson and Dan Wilson. Both groups received support from outside groups, but their own campaign tactics differed. Lynch, who’s 73, ran as a moderate eager to “work cooperatively” with the GOP Legislature. Bidegaray ran as a progressive who bemoaned “unprecedented attacks” on individual rights, “particularly women’s rights.” She promised voters she would have “the backbone to stand up to these kinds of assaults.”

Bidegaray won; Lynch lost. Bidegaray’s victory marked a bright spot for Democrats, and preserves a liberal majority on the Montana Supreme Court that will fight legislative assaults on women, LGBTQ+ people, the environment, and other Republican targets. The same voters who elected Bidegaray to office also enshrined an explicit right to abortion in their state constitution. A large number of Trump supporters crossed over to support the pro-choice judicial candidate and ballot measure.

Left-leaning judges pulled off wins in states where Trump won an even bigger margin. Look, for instance, at Arkansas, where two current members of the state Supreme Court, Rhonda Wood and Karen Baker, faced off for the chief justiceship. In August, Wood wrote the majority opinion blocking an abortion rights initiative from the ballot on a dubious technicality; Baker wrote a scorching dissent, asking, pointedly, why the majority was so “determined to keep this particular vote from the people.” Although Baker sits on the left flank of the court, she identified as the true judicial conservative on the campaign trail, promoting restraint and respect for the will of the people. Wood’s anti-abortion ruling, and Baker’s sharp dissent from it, loomed large over the race. In the end, Baker prevailed by more than 5 points.

Or look at Kentucky, where voters elected Pamela Goodwine, the first Black woman to serve on the state Supreme Court. Goodwine ran to replace Justice Laurance VanMeter, a conservative on the brink of retirement. In addition to touting her extraordinary qualifications, she savvily aligned herself with the popular Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who himself won reelection last year by touting support for abortion. Goodwine also outraised her conservative opponent, Erin Izzo, and drew $1 million in spending from progressive groups on her behalf. She prevailed by a startlingly massive margin of more than 50 points, handily flipping the seat.

The most shocking judicial race in the country, though, played out in Mississippi, where attorney David P. Sullivan challenged ultra-conservative state Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam—and won. By his own admission, Sullivan “came out of nowhere” (although his father served as a Mississippi Supreme Court justice). He correctly sensed that Beam was a weak candidate: The justice’s record is extreme even by Mississippi standards; for instance, she notoriously voted to nullify the state’s entire ballot initiative process. Beam also touted her endorsement from the Mississippi Republican Party, a breach of protocol in a formally nonpartisan race. Sullivan, by contrast, served as a public defender, and ran as an outsider and a populist with an interest in criminal justice reform. He won by about 10 points.

There were, of course, also setbacks on Election Day for progressive judicial candidates. Republicans won three races for the Ohio Supreme Court, entrenching a 6–1 conservative majority. Justice Yvonne Kauger, a liberal lion on the Oklahoma Supreme Court, lost a retention vote after conservative groups launched an expensive campaign against her. (Kauger voted to protect women in need of emergency abortions last year.) Progressives, by contrast, failed to knock off conservative justices who faced retention elections in several purple states, including Arizona.

The overall trend, though, is a positive one for Democrats, with plenty of signs that voters on the left and center are paying more attention to these races. Abortion surely helped to activate voters in a post-Roe landscape where state Supreme Courts have the final word on reproductive rights. Progressive groups and the Democratic Party also spent millions of dollars to push candidates over the finish line. And the left probably benefited from “bullet voters”—those who showed up to support Trump then ignored the other races. Candidate quality matters, too: A strong campaigner like Riggs can eke out a victory through moving, personal appeals to voters who are mostly tuned out from politics.

And Democrats have plenty of opportunities to fine-tune their approach: April will bring (another) election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will (again) determine the balance of power on the bench. Trump may entrench a conservative majority in the federal judiciary for generations. But in states around the country, progressives’ fight for control of the courts will grind on.

Mark Joseph Stern is a Slate senior writer.

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