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West Virginia Senate makes judicial races partisan again

State Senate Judiciary Committee Vice Chairman Tom Willis was the lead sponsor of a bill Wednesday to make judicial races partisan again. (Photo courtesy of WV Legislative Photography)

CHARLESTON — In 2015, the new Republican majority in the West Virginia Legislature made judicial elections non-partisan. But a decade later, the Republican supermajority in the state Senate wants to return judicial elections to partisan matches.

The Senate passed Senate Bill 521, requiring party affiliations be listed for all candidates, in a 22-12 vote Wednesday afternoon. The bill now heads to the House of Delegates.

SB 521 aims to revert West Virginia judicial elections from a nonpartisan to a partisan system. Candidates for judicial positions — Supreme Court of Appeals, Intermediate Court of Appeals, circuit courts, family courts, and magistrate courts — would run in primary and general elections with party affiliations clearly indicated. The bill also eliminates the Supreme Court of Appeals Public Campaign Financing Program, redirecting those funds to the general revenue fund.

“This is not a bill to politicize judicial elections,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Stuart. “This is a bill because it’s so difficult for voters today. It’s so difficult for voters to know who to vote for. That identifier, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, in many people’s view will tell them something…Partisan politics? That’s the least of our concerns on this issue. It’s to try to help voters understand who they’re voting for.”

After the 2014 general election, Republicans took a majority in the House of Delegates. And after a party switch, the Senate went from a 17-17 tie between Republican and Democrats to a 18-16 majority for Republicans going into 2015 – the first time Republicans had held majorities in the Legislature for more than 80 years.

One of the first bills passed by the new Republican legislative majority in 2015 was HB 2010, requiring the elections of justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, circuit court judges, family court judges and magistrates be nonpartisan and by division. That bill passed the House 90-9 and the Senate 33-1.

Some of the senators who voted for ending partisan judicial races in 2015 and voted Wednesday to restore partisan judicial races include state Sen. Donna Boley, R-Pleasants, and state Senate Mark Maynard, R-Wayne. State Sen. Rupie Phillips, R-Logan, voted yes on the 2015 bill when he was a member of the House of Delegates, as did Senate President Randy Smith, R-Tucker, but both Phillips and Smith voted yes on Wednesday’s bill.

One of the Democratic senators who supported ending partisan judicial races in 2015 was Senate Minority Leader Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, who was a freshman lawmaker then.

“A couple of days ago we moved our clocks forward. Now we’re moving our clocks back 10 years, which makes no sense to me,” Woelfel said. “People know who their judges are. I don’t buy that for a minute that our voters are ignorant and ill-informed. They know who they vote for. I mean, look at the judges we have now. They’ve all been elected for 10 years based on nonpartisan.”

State Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, also voted for the 2015 bill to make judicial elections nonpartisan. But he voted against SB 521, questioning why his colleagues would want to reverse the progress made at taking partisan politics out of judicial elections.

“(Judges) have to look at every case and decide it based upon the facts and the law,” Weld said. “They can’t say ‘any case that comes into my courtroom that’s a breach of contract case, I’m deciding for the plaintiff no matter what.’ They can’t do that. That shows an impartiality and would completely destroy and erode the public’s confidence in the judicial system across the state. That’s why it’s different. That’s why it’s nonpartisan. That’s why we did it back in 2015.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Vice Chairman Tom Willis, R-Berkeley, was the lead sponsor of SB 521. He said the idea was brought to him by constituents complaining about the lack of information during elections about judicial candidates.

“Typically, all we know about some of these candidates is they went to this school, they worked for this firm, now they’re running. And that really doesn’t tell you anything,” Willis said. “To maintain the integrity of our court system, we need to make sure that we’re electing judges that are going to respect the Constitution, that are going to respect the rule of law, and the voters have an idea who those judges are going to be.”

State Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, said lawmakers should have more faith in the voters to be able to weigh a judge’s qualifications and not rely on party affiliations.

“It’s amazing to hear from some of the debate how little we think of our voters, how little we think that they can educate themselves, that they can talk to people in the community about the things that really matter about being a judge,” Garcia said.

In closing, Stuart said he supported nonpartisan election of judges 15 years ago prior to becoming chairman of the state Republican Party. But he now considers the move in 2015 by the new Republican-led Legislature for nonpartisan elections a mistake.

“This is a bill in favor of voters. This is a bill in favor of the public,” Stuart said. “This bill’s an important bill. It restores West Virginia to the mistake that we made a few years back and helps voters get their arms around the idea, or at least some idea, of who they’re voting for.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com

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