Billionaires Are Gearing Up to Buy Another Judicial Election, But There’s Time to Stop Them

Three Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices will be up for election this November 4th.

“There is no tomorrow,” Mitch Kates, executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party tells me. He’s quoting Rocky III. At first, I’m not sure whether he means that the world is ending, which seems like something a Democratic leader could say in the late summer of 2025, or that there’s no time to hesitate, we have to act now. It turns out that he means the latter.

The reason for urgency: Three Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices will be up for election this November 4th. Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices have 10-year terms, and Democrats currently hold a five to two majority on the court.

These judicial elections will shape Pennsylvania law on numerous issues, determining access to everything from abortion to clean water to the ballot box. And, crucially, the results of these elections could have longterm, national ramifications that are hard to overstate. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court oversees cases about voting, redistricting maps, and, yes, election disputes – in one of the most important swing states in the country.

So, if you were trying to rig the United States’ political system, gaining control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would be on your to-do list. And at least one pro-Trump billionaire seems aware of that.

There’s an odd feature of these judicial elections that obscures their importance. The three Democratic justices up for election aren’t running against anyone. Unlike in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election – the most expensive judicial race in American history because Elon Musk and dark money groups spent millions supporting an anti-labor candidate who lost– these Pennsylvania justices are just running to keep their jobs.

Every 10 years, Pennsylvania voters decide whether Supreme Court justices should be retained, meaning whether they’ll keep their positions on the bench. If these justices aren’t retained, then there will be more elections next year, and that’s when – in all likelihood, given the precedent set in Wisconsin – the billionaires will start dumping obscene sums of money into the races, trying to grab the levers of national structural power by installing state justices of their choosing.

“Historically, these retention races were non-partisan,” Kates says. “They are now hyper-partisan. The Republican Party has been actively pushing and promoting a ‘vote no’ effort. We have to win these races or billionaires are going to buy these seats.”

Because dark money is by definition secretive, the public doesn’t even yet know the extent to which billionaires and other mega-donors are already spending to get rid of the current justices so they’ll have a chance to install their own. The Keystone, a local news outlet, has reported a dark money group with ties to Leonard Leo (the architect of the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary) and Jeffrey Yass (the richest man in Pennsylvania, who owns a sizable stake of ByteDance and whose estimated worth is $65.7 billion) have funded negative ads about the current Democratic justices.

It seems inevitable that Yass will spend huge sums here. Open Secrets ranks him sixth on its list of individuals who have spent the most disclosed money to influence American elections, and he’s already contributed in Pennsylvania races. He’s spent roughly $100 million in disclosed political contributions, and he’s previously donated millions to judicial races. Financial disclosures for this Supreme Court race won’t be made public until September. Even then, current campaign finance law–or lack thereof–largely shields donors who want their influence hidden.

The stakes of state supreme court races are heightened amidst the current race among Republican elected officials to gerrymander Congressional maps. State supreme courts often decide cases related to district maps. “Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court judges, a majority Democratic, did not lean in into any kind of partisan gerrymandering. They worked very hard to come up with as fair and balanced maps as possible,” Kates says.

The 2024 elections proved that “races were not predetermined” by the maps, because Democrats lost seats. In recent years in North Carolina, after Republicans won state supreme court races, the court reversed an earlier decision and approved gerrymandered maps, significantly altering the balance of power in the state (and the country). Something similar could happen in Pennsylvania should Republicans win a majority on the state’s supreme court.

And, it goes without saying, these races are massively important given Trump’s open calls to disrupt free and fair elections. Everywhere, but especially in major swing states, judges should be committed to upholding election results, not appeasing the pro-Trump billionaires who buy them their jobs. Kates tells me that Pennsylvania Democrats need volunteers to get the word out. There’s still time to deprive these billionaires the opportunity to buy hugely consequential judicial elections.