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When I came to Harrisburg as an intern, a statewide judicial race was underway. In those horse-and-buggy days, consultants were not making a living off judicial races, and party help was ministerial.
Judicial races ranked low on the party scorecard, making party dollars scarce. The Republican candidate dutifully brought yard signs and bumper stickers to the state committee for distribution to the counties. The color scheme involved a Hershey chocolate brown background with white, yellow, and orange lettering.
Soon afterwards, the Republican National Committee sent a study ranking the effectiveness of color combinations. This one rated dead last. Republicans were not winning many judicial races, so even an effective color scheme would not have made much difference.
This was my first small insight into the oddity of throwing judicial hopefuls into the partisan political arena, where intellectual capacity and judicial temperament take a far backseat to party and regionalism. Forty years of watching judicial elections has firmed my belief that merit selection is a better way to go. But despite periods of judicial scandal and disrepute and concerted advocacy for change, the emotional attachment to elections has carried more weight with the public than the intellectualism of a nomination and confirmation process. Thus, judicial candidates are forced to forge political ties, and then those ties become hammers to batter their motives when their decisions...