Justice Christine Donohue looked out over the crowd of roughly 60 people gathered in a Philadelphia high school theater on a recent Monday night, and paid them a compliment.
“You are among maybe 5 percent of the population in Pennsylvania that knows we have a retention election on Nov. 4 of this year,” said Justice Donohue, who serves on the State Supreme Court. “So I congratulate you for that.”
High-profile elections this fall — including a contentious ballot measure in California over redistricting and governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia — have captured significant attention as barometers of the national mood and President Trump’s performance in the White House ahead of pivotal midterms next year. But the outcome of three quirky, under-the-radar contests for State Supreme Court judges in Pennsylvania will have implications well beyond the Keystone State.
The elections, called retention elections, will decide whether three justices who were elected as Democrats keep their seats, which will determine the tilt of the seven-member Pennsylvania State Supreme Court through the next presidential election. What’s at stake is nothing less than control of the highest court in the most important swing state in the country.
In recent years, the court has played a significant role in national politics because it hears cases involving challenges to election law as well as partisan redistricting. In 2018, all three Democratic justices up for retention voted to knock down the state’s congressional map as an unconstitutional gerrymander. In 2020, the Democratic justices ruled that ballot dropboxes were permitted in the state. And in 2022, the justices upheld the state’s mail-in voting law.
Along with Justice Donohue, both Justice David N. Wecht and Justice Kevin M. Dougherty are up for retention election.
Retention races are wonky affairs. There is no opposition candidate, little outright partisan politics and rarely much of a campaign trail presence by the sitting justices. The justices are also limited in how they can campaign; while they can expound on their judicial philosophy, they cannot divulge specific feelings on a case or issue that could come before the court.
Historically, sitting justices are often successful: Only once this century has a supreme court justice not been retained.
But in a hypercharged political environment, where spending on judicial elections has reached into nine figures nationally, these normally sleepy elections are seeing a surge of money and attention. In April, a race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court drew more than $100 million in spending, with both Republicans and Democrats acknowledging that flipping the court in the critical swing state could sway congressional and state legislative maps, as well as abortion access.
Already, groups aligned with Democrats have booked more than $3 million in broadcast television ads through the end of Pennsylvania’s election, with outside groups pledging to spend more, according to data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. The Republican State Leadership Committee, an arm of the Republican National Committee focused on state-level races, has been running digital ads since early August, and has pledged to spend “seven figures” on judicial elections across the country this year.
And the national parties are paying attention.
On a call with reporters this month laying out their 2025 election strategy, the Democratic National Committee gave the Pennsylvania retention elections equal billing with the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races. In a statement, Ken Martin, the chairman of the D.N.C., said the committee was “all hands on deck” to retain the justices.
On Monday, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced a “six-figure” investment in the race, pouring resources into a local group that focuses on voter education and turnout. In an interview, Heather Williams, the group’s president, said Democrats were finally catching up to Republicans in recognizing the need to focus on judicial races.
“Republicans had really prioritized judicial races up and down the judiciary, if you will, and learning some lessons of the past at this organization, we were not going to let them own that strategy alone,” Ms. Williams said.
Mason DiPalma, the communications director of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in a statement that upending the Democratic lean of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court would benefit Republicans.
“These three liberal justices have spent years advancing the left’s agenda from the bench, and their defeat would spur a seismic momentum shift in Pennsylvania that would create an opening for more conservative policy victories in the state,” Mr. DiPalma said.
Yet while Pennsylvania’s retention races are clearly on the radar of national political operatives, they are not receiving the flood of money and attention of the recent State Supreme Court races in Wisconsin.
That is in large part because of the difficulty in unseating a judge in a retention race. Conservative networks like the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, which traditionally are involved in Pennsylvania politics, have yet to get involved. A spokesman for that group, which has ties to the Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass, did not respond to requests for comment.
Many on the right were also expecting a significant role from the billionaire Elon Musk, who spent $25 million in the Wisconsin race. But since his fallout with President Trump and his yet-to-materialize vision of starting a third political party, Mr. Musk has sharply slowed his political spending.
Scott Pressler, a right-wing activist who barnstormed the state for the Trump campaign last year, has been active, posting multiple social media updates daily on his efforts to register as many Republican voters as possible in Pennsylvania with an eye toward the judicial elections in November.
But despite the partisan interest and influence, the justices themselves must still walk an effectively apolitical line, which was on clear display at the event on Monday night last week in Philadelphia.
Vismita Holavanahalli, an 18-year-old student at Temple University, asked the three judges during the event about what protections they might consider for young people when it comes to voting laws.
The moderator interjected: “I know there are some limitations in your ability to make promises on future opinions.” Justice Wecht agreed, citing a current case before a lower state court.
“I can’t comment on the merits of it, but the point is that we do exist to vindicate constitutional rights,” he said.
The justices were, however, allowed to reiterate their positions on past cases, opening the door for Justice Wecht to explain his position on a previous ruling regarding redistricting.
“The court hit a nerve because we took away a prized possession of some highly partisan actors in our system who had created a flamboyantly gerrymandered map,” Justice Wecht said. “It was an insult to democracy and was Exhibit A nationwide for the most obscene U.S. House map of any state in our nation. I noticed that we really hit a nerve when we struck down that map, because, again, that was a cherished plaything of some highly partisan actors.”
But the justices also lamented the politicization of their roles.
“No matter how much you try to convince people otherwise," Justice Dougherty said at the event, “they’re always going to assume you are political.”
Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting from Washington.