Nearly $1.3M already raised by WA Supreme Court candidates. The stakes are high

In past election cycles, most eyes weren’t necessarily trained toward the Temple of Justice in Olympia.

Things are different this year.

Five of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justice seats will appear on the fall ballot, with some politicos underscoring the importance of this set of races.

That the majority of seats on the high-court bench is up for grabs is one reason. The issues that these justices may face — like the fiercely debated income tax on high earners — is another.

Typically, members of the court serve six-year terms, with three seats up every other year, said Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP) Chairman Jim Walsh. It’s highly unusual to have most of the justice positions open in one election cycle.

“The five state Supreme Court positions are the biggest statewide issue that will be on the November ballot,” he said.

Hugh Spitzer, a retired University of Washington law professor, noted that Justice Charles Johnson’s position will be open because he’s aged out. Under the state Constitution, justices must retire at the end of the calendar year in which they turn 75.

Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis announced earlier this year that she would not seek reelection, Spitzer said. Justices Barbara Madsen and Mary Yu have also retired — they were replaced by gubernatorial appointees and current Supreme Court candidates, Justices Theo Angelis and Colleen Melody, respectively. Chief Justice Debra Stephens will seek to retain her seat, though she likely won’t encounter strong opposition, he said.

Usually there’s just one or two Supreme Court races where there’s some action, he said, but this year there are four.

Often when incumbents run, they don’t face any challengers or will be up against an opponent who doesn’t put on a serious race, Spitzer continued. So this year is unique.

Supreme Court justice recommendations

WAGOP has recommended two Supreme Court candidates: Mason County Superior Court Judge David Stevens, who’s running for the open Position 3 seat being vacated by Montoya-Lewis, and retired Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Dave Larson, who’s vying for the Position 5 seat currently held by Angelis.

Walsh said in a mid-April news release that both Stevens and Larson would bring “much needed ‘diversity of thought’” to the high court.

He told McClatchy in a Friday call that the party usually makes recommendations rather than endorsements in nonpartisan statewide races, and that’s especially so in judicial races. WAGOP is likely to make more recommendations soon, he said.

The state needs an independent Supreme Court that acts as a check on both the executive and legislative branches, he added, not just a “rubber stamp” for officials’ “bad ideas.”

Stephen Reed, communications director for the Washington State Democratic Party, said in a text that the party doesn’t make endorsements, but it does urge voters to consult their local Democratic parties to see which candidates they’ve chosen to back.

“We also encourage everyone to not vote for those candidates endorsed by the WAGOP,” Reed added.

Spitzer said political parties have the free-speech right to endorse whomever they like for any elected office, including judges.

What issues will the WA Supreme Court review?

Justices on the court that will be decided in November will likely soon address former Attorney General Rob McKenna’s legal challenge to the new state income tax, Walsh said.

Dubbed the “millionaires tax” by backers, Senate Bill 6346 imposes a 9.9% levy on annual household income above $1 million. It’s also the subject of an ongoing repeal effort by the conservative political group Let’s Go Washington.

Walsh said he believes that another hot-button issue — the “raid” of the LEOFF 1 police and firefighter retirement fund — will probably come before the new court. Majority-party state lawmakers in the 2026 session opted to help fill a budget gap with nearly $4 billion in surplus dollars from that pension fund, prompting a lawsuit from retired firefighters and police officers, including former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, the Washington State Standard reported.

High-court candidates don’t typically indicate how they view specific issues to preserve judicial impartiality, Spitzer said.

“We expect our judges to decide the cases in front of them based on the briefs and the arguments and the law,” he said. “We normally are not voting for state Supreme Court justices because of some position that they take or that they might take on some particular case.”

Supreme Court candidate funding

It remains to be seen just how pricey these races will become, but Walsh thinks it could be quite significant.

“We are in a bit of undiscovered country because we have an unusually large number of them available on one ballot,” he said.

Normally they don’t attract huge dollars and “independent expenditure dark-money interest,” he added. “But I suspect it’ll be different this year.”

As of Monday afternoon, nearly $1.3 million had been raised by state Supreme Court justice candidates in election year 2026, according to the Public Disclosure Commission’s website.

Spitzer said the Supreme Court has usually included members that could be viewed as more progressive or conservative, but today its makeup is “middle-of-the-road to progressive.” He said the last two justices thought of as conservative or libertarian were Jim Johnson and Richard Sanders, neither of whom has served on the bench in more than a decade.

A Ballotpedia analysis of Washington State Supreme Court candidate campaign finance shows that from 2013 to 2022, among donors classified as conservative or progressive, over 99% of significant contributions toward winning high-court campaigns came from progressive sources.

This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Nearly $1.3M already raised by WA Supreme Court candidates. The stakes are high."

Simone Carter

The Olympian

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