Conservative Loses Bid to Oust Arkansas Supreme Court Justice

[Celerity]

Justice Karen Baker prevailed against challenger Gunner DeLay, who sought to push the state’s highest court further to the right with his stances on the death penalty and abortion. But the right forced a second justice into a runoff.

https://boltsmag.org/conservative-loses-bid-to-oust-arkansas-supreme-court-justice/



Shortly after news broke earlier this month that the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Gunner DeLay took to Facebook to post a brief video. After introducing himself as the “conservative choice” for Arkansas Supreme Court, he implored voters to appreciate the heightened stakes of his upcoming election. “We learned as a nation that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned…, which means that issue will go back to the states,” he said. “In my opinion, that makes the race for the Arkansas supreme court the most important race on your ballot because the next round of legal battles will be fought before the supreme court of our state.”

DeLay lost handily on Tuesday. Justice Karen Baker, an incumbent who has been on the court since 2011 prevailed 64 percent to 36 percent against DeLay, who is a lower-court judge. In the state’s other contested supreme court election, though, Justice Robin Wynne fell just short of the 50 percent threshold that would have won him an additional term outright and avoided a runoff election. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, he received 49.6 percent, with Chris Carnahan, the former longtime chair of the Republican Party, at 29 percent, and David Sterling, another right-wing candidate, at 22 percent.

Wynne, a former Democratic lawmaker, and Carnahan will now move to a June 21 runoff, giving conservatives another shot at picking-up a seat. Judicial races are technically nonpartisan in Arkansas. But conservatives pushed to oust Baker and Wynne this year and lock in right-wing dominance on the court with challengers who have close GOP ties. Many supreme courts are seeing similar tussles for power this year.

The Arkansas supreme court is already no refuge for civil rights. In April, it dismissed a lower-court ruling that had stayed a series of new Republican restrictions on voting rights. Weeks later, in a 4-3 ruling, the court’s most conservative justices eroded the rights of plaintiffs to seek tort remedies. But the court occasionally issues opinions that anger state conservatives, who have come to dominate all other state institutions. In April, the court enabled a school district to impose a mask requirement, reversing a lower court’s restraining order that had blocked it. DeLay used the ruling as part of his arsenal of attacks against Baker.

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