(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/30/2024) Rolling into the Labor Day weekend, the Democratic-nominated Supreme Court candidates and their allies have reserved at least $2.4 million in paid media while the Republican nominees & friends have yet to pull the trigger.
Data from AdImpact shows Justice Kyra Bolden and Supreme Court nominee Kimberly Thomas have spent $1.37 million of their largess on ads. The Super PAC fronted by the Michigan Association of Justice (MAJ), “Justice for All,” has spent more than $1 million with the promise of another $1 million soon.
Roughly 57% of the spending has been in the Detroit media market, with the rest going into the Flint, Grand Rapids and Traverse City markets.
Justice For All’s immediate $2 million spend on network, cable and digital comes as its members look to define their preferred candidates’ background and positions on key issues immediately, according to spokesperson John Keserich,
“There’s more where that came from,” he said. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
Absentee ballots are expected to be available as soon as Sept. 26 and Keserich said the goal is to give voters as much information on these lower ballot races as possible before they cast an early ballot.
Justice for All is keying in on protecting abortion rights in its first 30-second spot that’s airing as part of the TV, cable and digital campaign.
“Kyra Harris Bolden and Kimberly Thomas have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to upholding the values that matter most to Michiganders, including protecting our reproductive freedoms,” said Erica Shekell, communications director of Michigan Planned Parenthood Votes, in support of Justice for All.
Bolden and Thomas’ ad is a positive, 30-second spot that introduces them to viewers.
The two Democratic Supreme Court nominees reported raising around $2 million combined going into the Aug. 24 Democratic Party convention.
Justice for All has been raising money all year, with the Sam Bernstein Law Firm throwing in $150,000 in mid-July and the Michigan Association of Justice contributing $80,000 more back in April.
On top of this spending, the Michigan Democratic Party told Michigan Advance this week it is putting $1 million in digital advertising across multiple streaming platforms, social media platforms, YouTube and Google searches between September and Election Day.
Meanwhile, the Republican nominees – Patrick O’Grady and Andrew Fink – and their allies have yet to make a media buy public, but multiple sources say it’s coming.
The difference, said O’Grady advisor Scott Greenlee, is that Republican delegates selected their nominees this past Saturday after a competitive convention election involving five different candidates.
The Democratic nominees were hand-picked by “party bosses and the trial lawyers.”
“We picked our candidates from the bottom up while the Democrats are standing in line and getting their marching orders from the top-down,” he said.
Greenlee compared the Democratic nominees to that of presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The party bosses told its supporters to back Harris without any challenge from within and the same happened with Bolden and Thomas.
Greenlee said it's only been six days since the Republican convention. He said he's confident the party’s traditional donors who are interested in a conservative, rule-of-law court will be stepping forward with significant funding soon.
A review of campaign finance records shows that some of the Republican Party’s largest funders -- the DeVos family, JC Huizenga and others – didn't play in the competitive convention fight that Fink and O’Grady won.
The Judicial Integrity Project, an outfit run out of attorney Eric Doster’s Okemos office, was noted by one source as an entity that's expected to be advocating for both Republican-nominated Justices in the near future.
For his part, Fink said he is not pushing the panic button.
“I’m confident we’ll have plenty of support. Michigan understands how important the court is,” Fink said. “Radical leftist professors are not acceptable to Michiganders.”
The dig is in direct reference to Thomas, a professor at the University of Michigan law school and director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic.
Another factor is that neither O’Grady nor Fink have a joint consultant helping with their campaigns. In cycles past, the Marketing Resource Group or another vendor would run the show.
This time around, Fink used Bright Spark Strategies, run by Heather Lombardini, who is under a felony indictment for an alleged fundraising violation. The arrangement has raised some eyebrows since Lombardini's case could theoretically come before the Supreme Court at some point.
The Michigan Advance wrote a story on it this week, with Fink saying: “Our justice system affords everyone the right to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. As a judicial candidate, I am prohibited from commenting on the merits of any ongoing case by the Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct."
If Fink were to be elected and the case did make it to the Supreme Court, a recusal would be expected.
O’Grady is using Greenlee as his consultant. Greenlee was also the lead consultant for Appellate Judge Mark Boonstra, who lost to Fink at the convention by a small margin.
While the two are expected to appear together in some materials, it's unknown the extent to which they will run in tandem. They are running for two different seats – O'Grady for Bolden's remaining four-year term and Fink for the full eight-year term.
Historically, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce has been at the front line of Michigan Supreme Court races supporting Republican candidates. Spokesperson Sara Wurfel said the Chamber is working through their process now and to “stay tuned.”
In general, she said the Chamber members believe the Supreme Court races matter and believe having “rule of law justices is important for the state's overall business climate and population growth.”
