The Blue Tsunami Made Waves in Ways I Didn’t Expect, but I’m More Than Glad to See It

5 min readThis Week in the Laboratories of Democracy(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' goes on, and where guns and clubs followed him down, all because his face was brown, better get away from Oxford town.I've been busy. Did anything happen out in the states?Heh, heh, heh.Anyway, the good folks at Bolts tracked an interesting rivulet of the blue wave that touches upon the second-worst idea in American politics: an elected judiciary. It seems that the momentum last week swept into state supreme court chambers.Twenty-three states were voting on supreme court seats last week, on top of the eight that already held court elections earlier this year. Some held retention elections, in which justices faced simple yes-or-no votes to keep their seats, while others held more conventional, competitive contests. Democrats or Democratic-backed candidates defended three supreme court seats in Michigan and North Carolina that Republican challengers hoped to take over, and flipped five seats across the supreme courts of Ohio and Texas—adding to their gains on Wisconsin’s supreme court in April. In Texas, Democrats also flipped three seats on the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s high court for criminal cases. In Montana, the main state where ideological control was at stake last week, the more liberal candidate prevailed by roughly 20 percentage points over a GOP-backed candidate. Montana observers told Bolts that the result solidifies the court’s standing as a “backstop” against conservative legislation in the state.Montana politics never cease to amaze me. The state voted for Bill Clinton twice but has gone red ever since. It had a long and proud tradition of campaign finance legislation until Citizens United turned the table. Like all timber and mining states, Montana has a long—and fairly unique—history of labor activity. Butte became known as the “Gibraltar of Unionism.” In 1914, two factions of the powerful Western Federation of Miners went to war with each other. (The dissidents blew up the union hall in Butte.) The recent election shifted things around within that state tradition.“We had some pause: Is this the election that flips the Supreme Court in the other direction?” said Keaton Sunchild of the Billings-based Native American advocacy group Western Native Voice, which has sued the state over restrictions to ballot access. “When it became apparent it was not, it was a sigh of relief for our organization and many other organizations around the state.”Similar relief spread all over the Mountain West.In Utah, a justice survived a retention vote despite opposition from the GOP, which earlier this year expanded the court by two seats to make it more conservative. Justices who have drawn Republican anger in recent years also survived retention in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.And it seems possible that there's more to come.Democratic gains in Ohio and Texas have put them in the unexpected position to gain control of these state’s supreme courts in two years. (Ed. Note: Glorioski!) Plus, North Carolina Justice Anita Earls’ reelection makes for an easier road for Democrats looking to flip that court in 2028. Meanwhile, Republican losses in Michigan mean the party can no longer flip that state’s supreme court in two years, barring an unforeseen retirement.Meanwhile, Kansans continued to bedevil conservatives.Kansans voted last week to retain Justices Eric Rosen and Larkin Walsh. Rosen has been on the court since 2005 and he joined the majority in upholding abortion access in 2019. He beat back an intense effort to oust him over his votes to overturn two death sentences in 2014, but conservatives did not mount such an organized campaign this year. Earlier this decade, the Kansas Supreme Court sided with Republicans in two 4-3 decisions that upheld a GOP gerrymander and rejected protections for a fundamental right to vote. Rosen dissented from both rulings. “It staggers my imagination to conclude Kansas citizens have no fundamental right to vote under their state constitution,” he wrote, and it’s possible that Rosen now has enough allies to find himself in the majority on this issue should the court revisit it.Speaking of Ohio, Justice Jennifer Brunner is the only Democrat on the court right now. And she has been on the right side of some very bad decisions.Justice Jennifer Brunner, currently the lone Democrat on the court, has been left writing lonely dissents in high-profile decisions, such as a case last year that held that the family of a security guard who suffocated from nitrogen gas at his workplace could not sue for damages. Just last month, Brunner was the only justice to say that a woman who resisted an involuntary mental health commitment cannot be charged with obstructing police business. The ruling “turns having a mental illness into a crime,” Brunner wrote.As a karmic reward, Brunner will be joined by fellow Democrat Marilyn Zayas, who beat an incumbent Republican.We have seen the importance of state supreme courts in this dismal time. Many of them threw sand in the gears of Republican gerrymandering schemes. The effect of the Democratic gains in the states is going to be deep and vast. And Deb Haaland, one of the blog's favorite people is the new governor of New Mexico.And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Escapee Friedman of the Algarve brings us a tale we can all cheer, given the events in Mississippi and elsewhere last Tuesday. From the Oklahoma Eagle:Dozens of friends and family gathered Friday night at All Souls Unitarian Church to celebrate the 112th birthday of Lessie Benningfield Randle, the last known survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The night was part celebration, part commemoration for Randle’s century-long fight for justice. In 1921 she witnessed a white mob descend upon Black Wall Street and destroy 35 blocks while killing an unknown number of people. She was just 6 years old. As Randle entered the room, a few stood in respect as she took her place opposite her granddaughter, LaDonna Penny. Randle wore her signature wide-brimmed fedora and covered herself with a blanket.She lived long enough to see it all. God save the good work.This really is your democracy, America. Cherish it.