About Us
In 1995 the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that Minnesotans should pay for abortions when they ruled in Doe v Gomez that Minnesota Medicaid expenditures may include abortions.
Attorney Greg Wersal was incensed. He knew that this decision was not based on a reasonable reading of the Minnesota or US Constitutions.
So, he filed as a candidate for Minnesota Supreme Court in 1996. He was able to do this because Minnesota’s Constitution calls for the election of judges.
He soon learned, though, that the long list of campaign rules for all judicial races in Minnesota made it almost impossible for a person challenging an incumbent to win.
The Minnesota Supreme Court established these rules to circumvent the Constitutional provision for the free election of judges, which was incorporated into Minnesota’s original Constitution in 1857.
Free elections are also circumvented in Minnesota judicial races by the fact that when judges decide to retire almost all of them resign in the middle of their term, creating a vacancy. Then the Governor appoints someone to fill their vacancy and thereby avoid an election between two non-incumbents. This “cozy arrangement” between Governors of both parties and judges has been going on for almost 100 years.
Bill Cooper, the Chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota, was interested in Greg’s efforts to bring elections back to Minnesota’s judiciary and decided that something needed to be done. Cooper recommended and the Republican State Central Committee approved unanimously an expenditure of $200,000 to hire attorneys to challenge the judicial campaign rules of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
In 2002 the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the claims of Greg Wersal and the Republican Party of Minnesota. In Minnesota v White Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, concluded that the campaign rules for judicial candidates in Minnesota violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
About this same time the Constitution Committee of the Republican Party of Minnesota suggested amendments to the RPM Constitution to provide for judicial district organizations and judicial endorsements at every level part of the RPM Constitution. These provisions were all approved by the State Convention.
Currently every one of the ten judicial districts in Minnesota has an active Republican Committee.
It is still quite difficult for challengers to get elected to judicial office in Minnesota. There are three significant reasons for this:
- In spite of Minnesota v White there still many egregious rules hampering challengers, such as the rule that a candidate may not ask for a contribution to his campaign unless there are at least 20 people in the room;
- We have not been able elect a Governor who will agree to stop the game of midterm vacancies and appointments, which has been violating our Minnesota Constitutional provision for judicial elections; and
- District Court Judges have the word “Incumbent” after their names on the ballot, which gives them a huge advantage, especially since Judicial Districts are mostly comprised of many counties and the only significant information the voter has about either candidate is the “Incumbent” label.
Nevertheless, the Judicial District Chairs meet monthly to discuss which incumbents should be targeted, to search for candidates to challenge certain incumbents, to call endorsing conventions and to work to elect the endorsed judicial candidates.
These continuing efforts will eventually result in judges being elected again in Minnesota.