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HARRISBURG — Special interests, organizations connected to Pennsylvania’s richest man, and groups with mysterious donors broke spending records to influence the outcome of this year’s critical state Supreme Court elections.

In all, they spent cash and provided other support worth at least $18.7 million, a Spotlight PA review found.

Pennsylvania’s 2025 retention races are likely among the five most expensive elections of their kind in American history, according to Douglas Keith, a deputy director of the New York-based Brennan Center who tracks judicial elections.

“A lot of the changes that we’re seeing around retention elections right now, they reflect a changing understanding of how important these courts are,” Keith told Spotlight PA. “But they also reflect some enormous changes in just how our campaigns operate in this country.”

Almost three-fourths of the spending and support — more than $13 million — favored retention for three justices elected as Democrats: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. It came from the candidates’ campaigns as well as a plethora of Democratic-aligned interest groups funded by plaintiffs’ lawyers who argue for big money verdicts, organized labor, and liberal-leaning mega donors from across the country.

The spending opposing retention came predominantly from nonprofits tied to a network of political groups historically funded by billionaire Jeff Yass. This type of spending is often known as “dark money” because of the difficulty of tracing the money’s origins, and was enabled by the federal Citizens United ruling in 2010.

In total, spending on these races was much higher than in 2005, the last time this kind of election was seriously contested. The two candidates reported spending under $1 million combined that year.

Despite a determined effort to oust them through a campaign of, at times, misleading ads, all three justices were comfortably retained. In each race, roughly 800,000 more voters supported keeping them on the bench rather than kicking them off. Turnout was high for an off-year election, particularly in Philadelphia and its suburbs — areas favorable to Democrats.

Historically, the goal and intention of the retention elections are for voters to base their decision on a judge’s performance, Deborah Gross, chief executive of advocacy group Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, told Spotlight PA. But looking at 2025, “money has now reared its ugly head.”

Judges, she added, are “not accountable to the public. They’re accountable to the Constitution and the rule of law, and the public shouldn’t really be influencing that. They really need to be independent.” This level of spending — and fundraising it entails — could threaten that independence, she argued.

Added Jim McErlane, a lawyer and 2016 Republican National Convention delegate, to Spotlight PA: “Judges should not have to worry about their popularity with anybody.”

It’s still unknown if 2025 was an aberration or a sign of things to come.

McErlane thought it was a one-off driven by a unique opportunity for Republicans to open a path to flip the court from a majority of justices elected as Democrats. Had voters rejected any of the candidates, that seat would have been vacated and up for grabs in the next odd-year election (Donohue’s seat will be on the 2027 ballot because she is approaching the mandatory retirement age).

While the court had delivered rulings on issues like gerrymandering and voting by mail that aligned with Democrats’ positions, that didn’t mean the justices deserved to be kicked off the bench, McErlane argued.

“Sometimes your side’s going to win, sometimes your side’s going to lose,” he said. “I think you sort of roll with it.”

But writing in a November op-ed, Matt Brouillette, who leads the network of Yass-funded groups, struck a defiant note, calling for GOP-aligned investment to match Democrats’ spending.

“It’s time for the Right to recognize what’s at stake — and send in its own cavalry to win Pennsylvania,” he wrote.

A likely incomplete total

As money flooded into this year’s judicial races, many of the spending details weren’t clear to voters ahead of Election Day.

Spotlight PA reported in October that the state’s process for political groups to report independent spending is full of loopholes, has minimal penalties, and is mostly self-enforced.

To gain a better understanding of the donors and power players who shaped this year’s retention elections, Spotlight PA in mid-December analyzed three big buckets of spending. The news organization examined spending as reported by the candidates’ own committees, independent expenditures reported by outside groups, and “in-kind” contributions accepted by the candidates. Those in-kind contributions can be anything of value under state law, but typically include TV ads, mailers, and fundraiser expenses like food and drink.

Since money sometimes moves between different groups, Spotlight PA took steps to avoid double-counting dollars. The analysis also included totals for some disclosures that appeared to lump spending on the state Supreme Court retention election with other races.

The total could still rise. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State told Spotlight PA in mid-December that agency officials were “still receiving some Independent Expenditure reports and are working to enter them,” with new entries entered by hand in real time.

Brouillette’s groups, the established Commonwealth Partners and the brand new Citizens for Term Limits, paid for nearly all of the advertising opposing retention, totaling about $4.8 million, Spotlight PA’s analysis found. As both groups are nonprofits, the source of these dollars is unknown. However, Brouillette’s groups have historically been funded by Yass.

A spokesperson for Commonwealth Partners did not respond to requests for comment.

On the pro-retention side, Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht — plus groups coordinating with them — spent or made “in-kind” contributions of more than $9 million.

All three candidates also contributed to a political action committee called Vote Yes for Fair and Independent Courts, which paid for the production and placement of TV ads. Vote Yes received the majority of its funding from trial lawyers, who often argue big money personal injury, medical malpractice, and other civil suits before judges.

At least $4 million in pro-retention spending was done independently by groups that did not coordinate with the candidates, including Planned Parenthood’s advocacy arm. A wide range of other organizations also paid for student engagement, fliers, text messages, canvassing, and other support.

The ACLU reported spending about $914,000 to the Department of State, and online records describe the expenditures as supporting the candidates. The state and national chapters described the campaign as educational in public statements, while a spokesperson told Spotlight PA its independent expenditure report included the disclaimer that the organization “does not endorse or oppose candidates.”

“The expenditures being reported in this filing were in support of one or more of the positions of the candidates identified on critical civil liberties issues,” the spokesperson continued.

Other pro-retention spending was done by Pennsylvanians for Judicial Fairness, a state-level super PAC. It has poured money from unions, trial lawyers, billionaires, national super PACs, and dark money nonprofits into the commonwealth’s statewide judicial races since 2023.

This year, more than a third of its funding came from nonprofits such as PA Alliance Action, a state-level dark money group, according to Spotlight PA’s analysis of PJF’s fundraising. Such organizations’ funding is harder to trace than that of a typical PAC, as they do not have to disclose their donors.

PJF’s spending also shows some of the limits in how the commonwealth tracks political spending, particularly in the age of dark money.

As of Dec. 22, it reported spending more than $780,000 on digital ads, mail, “production,” and a phone program to the Department of State as independent expenditures.

However, the super PAC also funded at least one pro-retention TV ad, Spotlight PA previously found. The group had not reported that spending as an independent expenditure as of mid-December, though it did disclose spending about $3 million on TV buys through separate reports — campaign finance filings to the state.

PJF did not respond to a request for comment to explain what the about $3 million was spent on — the reports describe the expenditures as TV buys and TV ad buys — and why it wasn’t reported as an independent expenditure.

These discrepancies are “another indication of maybe some gaps in Pennsylvania’s reporting system, or at very least the way it’s presenting the data,” said Keith, of the Brennan Center.

Whether the tsunami of money actually changed voters’ minds is hard to say.

Sue Grice, a 41-year-old mother of four and registered independent from Montgomery County, told Spotlight PA on Election Day that she supports abortion access, but was also still frustrated by the closure of schools and churches during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weighing the two stances, she decided the latter was her priority and voted against retaining all three justices.

Finding trusted, nonpartisan information on the races was a frustrating endeavor, she said, compared to the barrage of advertising.

“I got a stupid amount of text messages,” she said, “and sent them all to spam.”

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