West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin may ask the Legislature next year to end West Virginia’s practice of electing its judiciary along partisan political lines, at least for the state’s circuit court judges.
Manchin has approached the state’s Judicial Association seeking its backing for his proposal.
The group represents more than 90 active and retired circuit judges and Supreme Court justices. Its executive committee has already unanimously endorsed a resolution in support of Manchin’s nonpartisan election plan. That committee has agreed to present the topic at the association’s winter meeting, which begins today.
“I have no idea what the full association will do,” said Putnam County Circuit Judge O.C. Spaulding, the group’s incoming president. “I assure you, the membership will have a diverse array of opinions.
“Some vehemently believe that you ought to have a party label. Others see advantages to electing judges on a nonpartisan basis.”
The push has already drawn harsh words from a legislative leader of Manchin’s own party.
Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin has called on West Virginia’s Democratic Party county chairmen to oppose such a plan. The Mingo County Democrat is president of their organization.
In a Nov. 13 letter to the county chairs, Chafin wrote the proposal was “a backdoor approach to let Republican candidates hide behind the label of ‘non partisan’ because they’re ashamed to let the voters know that they stand for all the GOP principles that Bush and Cheney and their ilk have pushed for decades.”
Democrats outnumber Republican voters by nearly 2-to-1 in West Virginia. That dominance is frequently reflected by the outcome of the state’s partisan judicial elections. Sitting Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin’s election in 2004 made him the first non-incumbent Republican to win a seat on the high court since the 1920s.
“In ‘nonpartisan’ elections good Democratic Judges will lose across the state because the ballot will not let the voters know what the candidate stands for,” Chafin wrote. “More importantly, it will be easier for the out-of-state special interests to pump big money into these races to defeat any targeted judge and make elections even more contentious.”
The nonpartisan election issue could make for a bruising legislative session.
Bills proposing nonpartisan elections have been introduced before, without success but often to sharp debate. Critics of the state’s current method include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has financed a multiyear campaign targeting West Virginia’s civil justice system as unfair to business.
The West Virginia State Bar studied the election question in 2005, at the behest of two successive Bar presidents opposed to partisan balloting. But the Board of Governors for the state’s body of lawyers instead voted that year in favor of partisan elections for both circuit judges and the Supreme Court.
Figures compiled by the American Judicature Society indicate that a dozen states elect their trial court judges along party lines. Nine have some form of partisan elections for their highest appeals court. At least 21 hold nonpartisan votes in trial court races.
The balance appoint their judiciary, with some holding elections over whether to retain those picked.
West Virginia holds party primaries for all its judicial officers — magistrates, family and circuit court judges and justices — before general elections.
Two spots on the five-member Supreme Court were on the ballot this year along with all 66 circuit court and 45 family court seats.
The governor has sought to enlist judicial backing as the state’s circuit judges prepare to ask him and lawmakers for pay raises. Their salaries last increased in 2005, the year Manchin began his first term, from $90,000 to $116,000. Supreme Court justices also received a pay hike that year, from $95,000 to $121,000 annually.
But the judges face a state budget threatened by the global financial crisis and an imminent economic recession. They also suffered a public image setback when two of their colleagues resigned just before November’s general election and triggered their pension benefits. Unopposed on the ballot, each was then re-elected.
Kanawha Circuit Judge Charles King was the first to make that move, followed by Cabell County Circuit Judge Alfred Ferguson. But the incoming president of the judicial association notes that both jurists belong to the Public Employees Retirement System, not the one created separately for the judiciary. Judges can choose to join either plan.
“This is a PERS problem,” Spaulding said. “It affects all public employees. It’s not going to affect all judges.”
But Spaulding’s association plans to vote on a resolution calling for legislation to require a one-year wait between receiving retirement benefits and seeking elected office.
“They would have to start drawing their retirement for at least a year, and then if they wanted to run they could, and the public could decide,” Spaulding said. “I see it as a transparency issue. They had every right to collect that pension. What people have a problem with is, they should have disclosed it earlier.”
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Lawrence Messina covers the statehouse for The Associated Press.
Topics Legislation Virginia West Virginia
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