Some 22 candidates are seeking a spot on the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, and eight will be chosen to take seats on the bench at the end of this year. And while voters make the final choice in November, the primary election Tuesday will go a long way toward shaping the future of the county bench.
The eight candidates endorsed by the Allegheny County Democratic Committee appear to have edged out other competitors for the Democratic primary: Amanda Green-Hawkins, Dan Miller, Quita Bridges, Julie Capone, Anthony DeLuca, Heather Schmidt Bresnahan, Jaime Marie Hickton and Matthew V. Rudzki.
In heavily Democratic Allegheny County, they go into November with a strong advantage.
Judicial candidates are permitted to seek the nomination of both parties, and four candidates won the nod from GOP voters without securing a spot on the Democratic ticket.
Those candidates who did not top the Democratic ticket — Michele Santicola, Jackie Obara, Sarra Terry and Alyssa Cowan — will still appear on the ballot in November as Republicans. And they may be joined by at least one more Republican. An unusually large number of write-in votes — more than 28,000 — were cast on the Republican side, a spike that often reflects a concerted effort to place a candidate on the fall ballot.
The fact that the GOP ticket contains only six named candidates, leaving two vacant, means that Republicans could place up to two new names on the November ballot using the write-in option. But it generally takes county officials a few weeks to tabulate write-ins, so it was not immediately apparent what impact such a gambit would have.
But according to a Republican source, the surge in write-in ballots reflects a conservative grassroots effort to displace some of the more liberal cross-filed Democrats on the ballot by putting forward more conservative alternatives.
Those seats amount to nearly one-fifth of the Common Pleas Court’s 43 judgeships — and combined with a similar number of vacancies filled in 2021, this year’s election will mark an ongoing generational shift on the bench. Among those hoping to be part of it are public defenders, county prosecutors, a state lawmaker and several magisterial district court judges.
Still, local voters could be forgiven if they didn’t recognize all of the names on the ballot before them Tuesday.
“There’s no doubt that judicial races perhaps fly a little bit under the radar for people’s attention,” said state Rep. Dan Miller, a Mt. Lebanon Democrat who is running for the seat. “It does take a level of analysis that for some people [who say], ‘It’s a judge spot. I may never be in court.’ [They’re] not feeling as connected to the question as they would for a legislative one perhaps.”
Still, he said, the posts are “arguably more important than ever right now.”
Common Pleas Court handles cases ranging from criminal charges to child custody disputes, addressing civil disputes and the disposition of wills. They are assigned into one of four divisions — criminal, civil, family and orphans’ court — by the court’s president judge. They are elected to 10-year terms, after which they face an up-or-down vote to serve another 10 years. They earn an annual salary of $227,411.
Quita Bridges, a top vote-getter in the Democratic primary, and Alyssa Cowan, who will appear on the GOP ballot in November, are already Common Pleas judges, having been nominated earlier this year by Gov. Josh Shapiro (and later confirmed by the state Senate) to fill vacant seats. Both ran by asking voters to keep them on the bench, a request that suggests a judge is a familiar face even if voters can’t place their name.
Judges are supposed to be above politics, and in Pennsylvania, candidates are permitted to file on both the Republican and Democratic ballots, as a half-dozen candidates did this spring. (The others ran solely as Democrats: No candidates ran on only the Republican ticket.)
But the sheer volume of candidates, and the generally low profile of judicial contests, means that the endorsements of outside groups like the region’s labor council or the Allegheny County Democratic Committee loom large. And as happened in 2021, a coalition of progressive organizations assembled a “slate of eight” to press the cause of justice reform.
All of that is in addition to the Allegheny County Bar Association’s recommendations, which are based on area lawyers’ estimations of each candidate’s experience, ability, and temperament.
Six of the top eight finishers in the Democratic primary were endorsed by the region’s labor council, with four also endorsed by the progressive “slate of eight.” Perhaps most instructive to voters was the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, which backed all eight top-place finishers.
Miller, who has served for a dozen years in the legislature and is no stranger to election contests, says judicial races have a different feel. For one thing, he said, “the numbers and scale are different” in a race that stretches across a county of 1.2 million people rather than a state House district.
“The scope of the conversations are greater and you’re trying to connect with as many people as possible,” he said.
What’s more, he said, although there are more candidates than positions open, “You’re really not running against anyone.”
In most races, he said, “The decision tends to be binary: Who’s a Democrat, who is a Republican? In this type of race, there tends to be many more factors on the line.”
Chris Potter contributed to this report.
