A 104-Year Incumbent Streak in Georgia Continues

In yesterday’s primary elections in Georgia, more voters chose Democratic primary ballots than Republican ones. Yet three incumbent state Supreme Court Justices appointed by Republican governors—all of whom voted to uphold Georgia’s six-week abortion ban in the state—held onto their seats for six more years. Only one of the races was even close, and one justice ran unopposed. Confused why a general election for judges was on a primary ballot in the first place? Or about that dumb “I” throwing you off in the ballot box? Yeah, so apparently were a lot of voters. This is all by design.

Georgia’s Supreme Court elections have been purportedly “nonpartisan” since 1983, but the Republican-controlled legislature moved the date of the judicial elections from the normal November date to the date of the May primary in 2012, at a time when low-turnout elections particularly favored Republicans. Republicans like to talk about the sanctity of nonpartisan races, but in the 13 states where party affiliation isn’t on the ballot, incumbents almost always win. All the state-wide incumbent judges won, including at the Appellate Court level. In fact, no sitting Georgia Supreme Court justice has lost their election since Richard B. Russell Sr. unseated Chief Justice William Fish in 1922, according to AJC analysis. There’s rarely an open-seat as 8 of the 9 justices were first appointed by a Republican Governor. The ninth was elected unopposed.  

Voters who might have spent a few minutes researching who to vote for in the Governor and Senate races might have been surprised by a four-page ballot with dozens of names they weren’t expecting, or to find their Democratic primary ballot had a pair of Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices on it. On top of this, nothing on their ballot would have clued them in. It was just a pair of names, one with “(I)” next to it to show the incumbent, if they didn’t just assume that stood for independent.

Unlike last year’s single Wisconsin Supreme Court race which saw a record $144.5 million spent—including large contributions by Elon Musk for the Republican candidate and by J.D. Pritzker and George Soros for the Democratic candidate—just $4 million was spent on the two contested Georgia Supreme Court races. Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson spent $83 million of his own money during the same primary period, dominating the airwaves. 

And when Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin—who were running against sitting Justices Charlie Bethel and Sarah Hawkins Warren—tried to educate Georgians what was at stake in this election by talking about abortion bans, they faced potential sanctions from a state judicial committee that puts limits on judicial candidate speech. The race also got shockingly little local and national coverage, and was buried on page 3 of the ballot under the small heading of “Nonpartisan General Election.”

One of the three justices up for election yesterday—Justice Benjamin Land, who was appointed by Brian Kemp just last year—didn’t even have an opponent. That’s right: In a year where the President’s approval rating is in the toilet and we’re talking about a Blue Wave, the Democratic party couldn’t even find a third liberal candidate to stand for one of the most important seats of power in the state.

Maybe that’s because the party didn’t have much hope of succeeding. But if Dems can’t raise and spend the money to educate the electorate, they’ll need to pin all their hopes on former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who’ll be the Democratic nominee for Governor and potentially the one in charge of appointing any retiring justices. Because Governor Kemp has called for a special session of the legislature to further gerrymander Georgia’s voting map—which is allowed now, thanks to SCOTUS—making it impossible to flip the state legislature any time soon and changing these arcane voting rules. To make things worse, Kemp also just signed a new bill that will make more local elections in Georgia nonpartisan—but only in the state’s five most populous, Democratic-leaning counties. So we’re stuck with this off-calendar, “nonpartisan” voting madness for the foreseeable future.

There are three more seats in the Supreme Court coming up for election in 2028. It’s time we started paying attention and stop defaulting to the “I.”