Tuesday was the deadline in Pennsylvania for candidates to file for this year’s crucial race for a seat on the seven-member state Supreme Court, and we learned this week that each party will have a contested primary on May 16. The Democratic contest is a duel between two members of the Superior Court from opposite sides of the state: Philadelphia's Daniel McCaffery, who earned the state party endorsement last month, and Beaver County's Deborah Kunselman. (The Superior Court is one of two intermediate appellate courts in the state and hears most appeals.)
The Republican primary, meanwhile, pits the party-backed candidate, Montgomery County President Judge Carolyn Carluccio, against Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough of Allegheny County. McCullough, who doesn’t appear to have confirmed she was running before now, sought the GOP nomination in 2021 for a different Supreme Court seat by pitching herself as "the ONLY Judge in America to order the 2020 Presidential Election results not be certified." However, she went on to lose the primary 52-33 to the eventual winner, Kevin Brobson.
The post everyone wants to win on Nov. 7 became vacant last September when Chief Justice Max Baer died at the age of 74, just months before the Democrat was to retire because of mandatory age limits: Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has not yet nominated a successor, and it's unclear if the GOP-led state Senate would confirm anyone he picked. The body retains a 4-2 Democratic majority, but Baer’s party badly felt his absence last year in an important pre-election case.
That autumn one Democratic justice, Kevin Dougherty, sided with his two Republican colleagues against the remaining three Democratic members in a high-profile case over whether to count mail-in ballots that arrived on time but had missing or incorrect dates. This deadlock meant that election authorities were required to "segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes," a decision that Democrats feared could cost them crucial contests.
The party, after scrambling to encourage any impacted voters to cast new votes (one woman even immediately flew home from Colorado at her own expense to make sure she would "not be silenced by voter suppression"), got something of a reprieve when Senate nominee John Fetterman and other Democrats pulled off decisive wins. Still, the ruling was a troubling reminder that, even with a 4-2 Democratic edge on the state's highest court, Republicans could still have their way on major cases. However, while a win this fall would be a boon to Republicans, the soonest they could actually retake the majority (barring more unexpected vacancies) would be 2025.