The seven seats and court of the Montana Supreme Court (Photo by Eric Seidle/ For the Daily Montanan).
The Montana Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidates in the two Montana Supreme Court races on Thursday on the same day that the American Civil Liberties Union announced it was putting $1.3 million into an educational campaign that highlights differences between the candidates in each race.
The Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses and business interests across Montana and said having a “balanced” judicial system is essential to a “strong business climate” in Montana, endorsed Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson for chief justice and Judge Dan Wilson for associate justice of the Supreme Court.
The chamber said it chose to endorse candidates this year because finding information about which candidates have certain stances is difficult because the races are nonpartisan.
“Wilson and Swanson will bring grit and integrity to the Montana Supreme Court,” Chamber President and CEO Todd O’Hair said in a statement. “Both candidates understand that ability in our court system and predictability in the way decisions are made are essential to the operations and success of Montana businesses.”
The chamber said its review committee interviewed all four candidates in the race individually, with some of the committee members split “to avoid potential conflicts of interest.” Committee members then met as a group to pass their endorsement on to the chamber board for approval.
The ACLU and ACLU of Montana also announced they were putting more than a million dollars toward mailers and advertisements highlighting the differences between the candidates in both races when it comes to issues like abortion, marriage equality, supporting Indigenous communities and birth control.
The initial mailer, sent to mailboxes this week, describes the experience of Swanson, his opponent Judge Jeremiah Lynch, Wilson, and his opponent Judge Katherine Bidegaray. It asks voters which candidate they trust “to protect abortion access.”
At the bottom of one side of the advertisement, it includes check boxes saying Lynch and Bidegaray support abortion access, and that Swanson and Wilson “accepted campaign donations from anti-abortion donors.”
The first digital advertisement released highlights similar differences between them on abortion rights.
The ACLU makes clear it is not endorsing any candidate in the nonpartisan races despite highlighting issues that are more likely to be supported by Democrats than Republicans. The organization also said it was focused on abortion rights education; Montanans will vote in November on CI-128, which if passed would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.
“From abortion to marriage equality and Indigenous voting rights, the people we entrust with seats on the Supreme Court of Montana will play a critical role in determining whether we keep the rights Montanans value or whether politicians will be allowed to take away our freedom,” ACLU of Montana Executive Director Akilah Deernose said in a statement. “That ACLU and ACLU of Montana are fighting to ensure voters know where supreme court candidates stand on these issues so that they can cast an informed ballot this November.”
In the chief justice race, Swanson had more than double the cash of Lynch as of the last campaign finance filing deadline on Aug. 15. He ended the period with $141,000 in cash on hand, compared to Lynch’s $66,000. Lynch spent about $100,000 over the two-month period compared to Swanson’s $23,000 in expenditures.
In the associate justice race, Bidegaray ended the period with $192,000 in cash on hand, compared to Wilson’s $126,000. Both raised around $61,000 from mid-June to mid-August.
Supreme Court races in recent years have increasingly drawn in larger fundraising and spending despite them being nonpartisan races because often the candidates have previously expressed political leanings or made rulings that side with certain party persuasions.
The Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform, formed by the Republican Senate president in the wake of court decisions that often struck down Republican-supported laws as unconstitutional over the past two years, in recent weeks has discussed running another bill next session to allow judicial candidates to declare a party in their race, which they say would help clarify to voters which candidates support different types of policies. A similar proposal last year failed.