We don’t usually do this sort of thing on this site, but the matter is too serious to pigeonhole somewhere else.
If you looked at some of our posts during the legislative session and since then, you have seen us trying like hell to raise the alarm about the erosion of rule of law principles that used to be a given in the legislative process. That is no longer the case. We are now fighting for recognition of fundamental, foundational values that go to the heart of a republican form of government: the Bill of Rights, the independence of the judiciary, due process of law, separation of powers, and the absolute right of every party hailed into a Texas courtroom to a full, unfettered defense. Not just a small handful, but numerous legislative proposals would have infringed, if not abolished, one or more of these basic protections. And, as we have reported, a few got through anyway.
That is why we have got to do everything we can to assist our appellate justices who are running for re-election next year. There is simply no excuse for not doing so, and if we fail, we have only ourselves to blame.
Since the mid-1990s, we have had the incredible good fortune of an unbroken line of Texas Supreme Court justices whose sole purpose in their service to the people has been to uphold the principles we state above. We cannot think of a single example in the last 30 years in which we thought that the Court departed from them, even when it divided over a particularly difficult close call. Simply compare the Texas Supreme Court to its counterparts in other states. We rest our case.
It is easy to become complacent and assume that because things have gone so well for so long that they will continue to do so for all time. That tendency has to be resisted to the utmost of our strength. Dial back the clock two years. What happened to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals? Three well-regarded incumbents got beat in their primaries. Now dial back again to 2014. Three well-regarded Texas Supreme Court justices had to fight for their lives to keep their seats because a small group of people willing to spend a lot of money to unseat them tried to do so. And we saw in the 2024 Texas House primaries what havoc a small group of people with an axe to grind and more money than they know what to do with can wreak in legislative elections.
But fighting out policy issues in legislative elections is nonetheless appropriate, whatever we think about those issues or the campaign tactics of those who promote them. If those kinds of tactics cross over into judicial elections, however, they will present a grave threat to the rule of law in this state. As long as we make our judges run in partisan elections, especially in the Citizens United era, we face the increasing risk that single-issue judicial candidates with virtually unlimited funding will upend the entire system in favor of narrow political objectives. In that event, we can kiss the Texas Miracle goodbye forever.
The 2026 judicial campaign season has begun. You know that because we’ve been talking about it since the end of the last election. Let’s take the statewide courts first. Four Texas Supreme Courts seats are on the ballot, Chief Justice Blacklock, Justice Busby, Justice Sullivan, and whomever the Governor appoints to fill retiring Justice Jeff Boyd’s place, plus all three members of the 15th Court, Chief Justice Brister and Justices Field and Farris. We estimate (this our number, not anybody else’s) that to run a statewide judicial race will cost a bare minimum of $3 million. That, of course, won’t buy any TV ads, but it should allow the candidates to leverage social media and other relatively inexpensive ways to contact voters at a reasonable level of penetration. We’re already at $21 million for seven statewide seats. And we still have at least 20 intermediate courts of appeals justices to think about.
So how are we (we mean, the businesses, associations, professionals, and individuals who care deeply about preserving the quality and independence of the judiciary) going to come up with sufficient resources to fund even the minimum level necessary? Obviously, direct contributions to the justices’ campaigns are the first level. If you have a PAC, dedicate whatever you can afford to judicial races. If your PAC doesn’t give to judicial candidates, change the rules so that it can or, at the very least, make a PAC-to-PAC contribution to us. To be blunt, there is almost no amount of money that most of us in the traditional business and trade and professional association community could contribute to another statewide candidate that will even be noticeable. Campaigns at the top of the ticket have long since entered the realm of megadonors and super-PACs. But we can still make a difference—and perhaps a decisive one—in the down-ballot judicial races.
The next level is using our collective networks within our industries, trades, and professions to get the word out about the importance of voting in these races. And it’s not just about doing one’s duty as a citizen. These races are fundamentally important to jobs and the economy. They are also critical if we are to preserve the freedoms and way of life that we have been fortunate to enjoy for so long. For TCJL’s part, that means revving up our judicial education campaign and giving people what they need to know about the experience and background of judicial candidates to make the best votes that they can. We have in the past, with some success, conducted targeted GOTV and voter education campaigns in certain parts of the state heavy with GOP primary voters. If we can get sufficient resources, we can do this again and at a higher and more effective level. But we have to have the resources.
We realize it’s no fun to talk about this kind of thing. We also realize that we are repeating ourselves ad nauseam and probably sound like all the adults in Charlie Brown cartoons (some of us are old enough to remember those). But candidly, there is nothing more important to talk about or to do. In our view, the whole future of the state rides on it. Like it or not, if we don’t do it, nobody else will. And if there is somebody out there who decides they don’t like one or more members of the Court and who can afford to spend whatever it takes to unseat them, we may never be able to restore the level of judicial excellence and integrity that has prevailed at our highest court for more than three decades. And that tragedy will be on all of us.
