Inside the Clunky Elections to Control Pennsylvania's Supreme Court

Staffing the GOP’s booth at the fair, Janice Brenaman, a committee member for her local party, said she cared very much about the supreme court elections. “We don’t want to have Democrats making choices we don’t agree with,” she said. “Their values are different from ours.”

But the Republican booth contained no signage or campaign materials mentioning this election. Brenaman herself said she didn’t know much about it beyond the topline. She said she’d like to talk more with voters about the court, but that the state party hadn’t done much to prime local volunteers to do so.

A hundred or so feet up the block, Brenaman’s counterpart in the Democratic tent, local party committee member Pam Way, pointed to a stack of flyers produced by the state party, urging voters to support Democratic judges: “We’ve been told to stress this, that this is important,” she said. She confessed she wasn’t sure how to speak to voters about it.

Voters seldom ask about court elections, said Way, who has worked this fair for years. That’s held true so far this cycle.







https://boltsmag.org/pennsylvania-supreme-court-elections-2025/