Raquel Montoya-Lewis and G. Helen Whitener ahead for Supreme Court; most voters unsure

The Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States may be the nation’s high­est pro­file and best known court of law (and it’s been in the news a lot late­ly!), but it’s hard­ly the only Supreme Court in the land. That’s because most states have opt­ed to estab­lish their own Supreme Courts, fol­low­ing the judi­cial struc­ture set forth in the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States back in the 1790s.

Wash­ing­ton is one of those states. Its Supreme Court even has an iden­ti­cal num­ber of jus­tices as that of the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States (SCOTUS): nine. How­ev­er, unlike SCOTUS, jus­tices on the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court are pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed for six year terms and must retire at the age of seventy-five.

If a jus­tice dies or retires before com­plet­ing a term, the vacan­cy is filled by guber­na­to­r­i­al appoint­ment. Because jus­tices at the state lev­el are pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed (a jus­tice must face the vot­ers at the next gen­er­al elec­tion to retain their seat), the State Sen­ate has no role in con­firm­ing justices.

This year, two appoint­ed jus­tices are seek­ing to be retained by the vot­ers, while anoth­er two are seek­ing reelec­tion (and have already achieved reelec­tion due to being unop­posed). The appoint­ed jus­tices are Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis, Wash­ing­ton’s first Native Amer­i­can jus­tice, and G. Helen Whiten­er, Wash­ing­ton’s first black woman and refugee jus­tice. Both are con­sid­ered excep­tion­al­ly well qual­i­fied by the legal com­mu­ni­ty, but are unknown to most Washingtonians.

Last May, in our post Fil­ing Week statewide sur­vey, we asked vot­ers about their Supreme Court pref­er­ences. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, vast major­i­ty of vot­ers that our poll­ster con­nect­ed with had no opin­ion with respect to either race, though Mon­toya-Lewis and Whiten­er did each receive plu­ral­i­ty sup­port.

Our lat­est poll, which was in the field last week for two days, finds that more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have decid­ed who they’re vot­ing for… and Mon­toya-Lewis and Whiten­er remain ahead of their more con­ser­v­a­tive opponents.

21% of sur­vey par­tic­i­pants said Mon­toya-Lewis was their choice for Posi­tion #3, while 17% of par­tic­i­pants said chal­lenger David Lar­son was their choice.

A large major­i­ty of 62% said they were not sure.

For Posi­tion #6, 22% of sur­vey par­tic­i­pants said G. Helen Whiten­er was their choice, while 12% said Richard S. Serns was their choice.

66% said they were not sure.

Those may sound like very high “not sure” num­bers. And they are.

But they’re not as big as what we saw ear­li­er this year.

In the spring, none of the can­di­dates reg­is­tered above 15% in our polling, with about eight in ten respon­dents say­ing they were not sure in each race.

Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis has gone from 14% to 21%, a sev­en point jump, while G. Helen Whiten­er has gone from 13% to 22%, a nine point jump. David Lar­son and Richard S. Serns have dou­bled their sup­port from the sin­gle dig­its to the teens, with Lar­son going from 8% to 17% and Serns from 6% to 12%.

Here are the num­bers again and the exact ques­tions we asked:

QUESTION: The 2020 can­di­dates for the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Posi­tion #3 are David Lar­son and Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis. Who are you vot­ing for?

ANSWERS:

• David Lar­son: 17%
• Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis: 21%
• Not sure: 62%

And for Posi­tion #6:

QUESTION: The 2020 can­di­dates for the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Posi­tion #6 are G. Helen Whiten­er and Richard S. Serns. Who are you vot­ing for?

ANSWERS:

• G. Helen Whiten­er: 22%
• Richard S. Serns: 12%
• Not sure: 66%

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and ten like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Octo­ber 14th through Thurs­day, Octo­ber 15th.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respondents.

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

Due to being incum­bents, Mon­toya-Lewis and Whiten­er ought to ben­e­fit more from word-of-mouth adver­tis­ing and news­pa­per endorse­ments than their oppo­nents, just like Jus­tice Steven Gon­za­lez did two years ago.

Whiten­er has been rat­ed excep­tion­al­ly well qual­i­fied by nine bar asso­ci­a­tions to date. Serns has been rat­ed as not qual­i­fied by the King Coun­ty Bar Asso­ci­a­tion; he has no oth­er rat­ings. Mon­toya-Lewis is rat­ed excep­tion­al­ly well qual­i­fied by eight bar asso­ci­a­tions and well qual­i­fied by a ninth. Lar­son is rat­ed qual­i­fied by the King Coun­ty Bar Asso­ci­a­tion; we are unaware of any oth­er ratings.

Both Whiten­er and Mon­toya-Lewis have swept the endorse­ments of the major news­pa­pers that have endorsed for the Supreme Court.

“The appoint­ments of Whiten­er and Mon­toya-Lewis arguably have afford­ed the state the most diverse state supreme court in the nation, one that bet­ter rep­re­sents the cul­tur­al make­up of the state, itself. Vot­ers should retain Whiten­er [and Mon­toya-Lewis] on the court and secure that lega­cy for the state,” The Her­ald of Everett opined on Octo­ber 21st.

“[Gov­er­nor Inslee] made his­to­ry when he appoint­ed the first Native Amer­i­can, and then the first Black woman, to the state’s high­est court. Now that these incred­i­ble jus­tices are there, we rec­om­mend they stay. That’s why Raquel Mon­toya-Lewis and Helen Whiten­er are our choic­es for the state Supreme Court,” the Yaki­ma Her­ald-Repub­lic edi­to­ri­al­ized on Octo­ber 16th.

For many vot­ers, a tried and true method of dis­cern­ing who to vote for in low-pro­file judi­cial races is to ask some­one who has been admit­ted to the bar, or has a con­nec­tion to the legal com­mu­ni­ty. With their endorse­ments, excel­lent bar rat­ings, cam­paign invest­ments, and slight polling leads. Mon­toya-Lewis and Whiten­er have to be con­sid­ered the favorites in their respec­tive races.

But with so many vot­ers not sure, those out­comes are not a given.

You can do your part to ensure that peo­ple you know cast an informed vote in judi­cial races by read­ing up on the can­di­dates and shar­ing what you learn with your fam­i­ly and friends so they can ben­e­fit from your research.

Vot­ing in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is cur­rent­ly in progress and is set to con­clude on Novem­ber 3rd, 2020 at 8 PM Pacif­ic in Wash­ing­ton State.