A partisan change of venue

Don’t forget that the primary ballot contains the question of whether to move the Arkansas Supreme Court a few blocks east to state Republican Party headquarters.

That’s in a metaphorically profound way of speaking.

We laughably call races for state Supreme Court seats nonpartisan. Justice is blind, so we pretend.

But justice sees very well in Washington, where a system of partisan nomination and confirmation has been used in service to Republican obsessions, mainly the one to demote women to birthing vessels even if impregnated by rape or incest or if carrying medically doomed fetuses.

And it sees just as well in Little Rock, where justices are chosen by popular election without party labels. But the smokescreen is transparent.

Hyperpartisan Republicans coming out of the state Legislature or state GOP headquarters have availed themselves of the wholesale reddening of the state to take three of the seven seats without actually saying “vote Republican for me,” because that would be … you know … wrong by virtue of truth and accuracy.

Now Republicans contend next week to oust two of the non-GOP four, which would give them a commanding lead of five-to-two, not that the two would be much to write home about.

Chief Justice Dan Kemp got the Pulaski County GOP’s endorsement when he ran. Courtney Hudson — formerly Henry, formerly Goodson — is whom he defeated for chief justice, at which point she went back to her regular associate judge’s job. Her partisan affiliation is unclear, except that, over the years, she’s been seen in a campaign context as both Democratic and Republican owing to personal versatility.

That qualifies as the nonpartisan ideal when grading on the curve of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Anyway, here’s the partisan breakdown currently: Associate Justices Rhonda Wood, Shawn Womack and Barbara Webb are all-in Republicans. Wood emerged as an acolyte of now-indicted former state GOP chairman Gilbert Baker of Conway.

Womack was in the state Legislature from Mountain Home in the late 1990s and early 2000s, distinguishing himself among the more stridently partisan among the badly outnumbered Republicans at the time. He was GOP minority leader of the Senate.

And Webb … well, not to define her by her husband, because it might be the other way around, but you can’t really get out of your head that she is married to Doyle Webb, long the chairman of the state Republican Party, now running not particularly well according to the polls for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

Those three and the aforementioned Kemp and Henry provide five of the justices, leaving two — Associate Justices Robin Wynne and Karen Baker — who happen to be on the ballot this time to face as the usual opponents from transparent Republicanism.

(Some will point out that Wynne is a transparent Democrat, having served from 1985 to 1988 as a Democratic state representative from Fordyce. Fair enough. I’d simply make two points. One is that, in those days, partisanship was hazy because nearly everyone was a nominal Democrat in a one-party state that was, in rural Arkansas, essentially a no-party state. The other point is that Wynne gives you a grand total of one D-affiliated justice as we face the prospect of five who are R-affiliated. Let me put it this way: I’d much rather be a Republican than Democrat if hauled before the state Supreme Court. Let me put it another way: Pulaski Judge Wendell Griffen’s rulings are wagering longshots if taken to the state Supreme Court.)

Wynne has two Republican opponents. One, Chris Carnahan, is an Asa Hutchinson district judgeship appointee (subsequently elected) and former executive secretary of the state Republican Party, from 1999 to 2001. The other, David Sterling, was … get this … the conservative alternative — I kid you not — to Leslie Rutledge in the GOP primary for attorney general eight years ago.

Baker is opposed by Gunner DeLay, an affable hyperpartisan Republican from his backbench flame-throwing days as a GOP state legislator in the 1990s and 2000s. He was a back-bench flame-thrower before back-bench flame-throwing became cool — so cool that the state Legislature’s back bench now holds about 100 flamethrowers among the 135 members.

Like Carnahan, DeLay got rewarded for years of GOP service with appointment by Hutchinson to a Sebastian County judgeship vacancy, then subsequently elected.

All of that is to say that, if you prefer a modicum of seeming apolitical balance in your state’s highest court, you’d want to consider a vote for incumbent Justices Baker and Wynne, but that, if you want raging Republicanism to define Arkansas justice, you’d want to pick from the former Republican executive director, the former flame-throwing Republican legislative back-bencher and a guy who made Rutledge a leftward choice.