Incumbent Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson has fended off the challenge of former U.S. Congressman John Barrow, who sought to harness the ferment over abortion rights in Georgia and beyond into a seat on the state’s highest court.
Barrow, a Democrat, reckoned that fear and anger over narrowing access to abortion was so acute and widespread across Georgia following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 that even Republican voters would opt for him over Pinson, former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who was appointed to the court by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022.
The gamble failed.
With 90.45% of the votes counted early Wednesday, Pinson was leading with 54.86% of the vote to Barrow’s 45.14%. The results are unofficial.
The 37-year-old Pinson was the only justice facing an opponent in yesterday’s primary. Three other incumbent justices up for reelection to the nine-member court — John Ellington, Nels Peterson, and Michael Boggs — ran uncontested and like Pinson, won six-year terms to the bench.
‘Abortion election’
The Pinson-Barrow race was viewed as an early test of what Democrats, and some Republicans, have called this year’s “abortion election” — one in which, they argue, voters will give priority to abortion rights over the economy, immigration, and other issues when they go to the polls in November.
If Tuesday’s election was such a test, then the results of the race show just how tumultuous the rest of the election year might yet prove, as the furious backlash against Barrow’s decision to make abortion rights the centerpiece of his campaign showed.
Without singling Barrow out by name, prominent members of Georgia’s legal establishment warned in a letter posted on Pinson’s campaign website that a “partisan judiciary” would mean the “end of the rule of law in Georgia.” It was later learned that more than half of the signatories were individual contributors to Pinson’s campaign committee.
Meanwhile, the state’s judicial watchdog formally accused Barrow of violating the judicial code of conduct and called on him to cease and desist his campaign statements.
Barrow, a former five-term congressman from southeastern Georgia, replied that it was within his rights under Georgia law and the U.S. Constitution to discuss reproductive rights in the campaign.
Judicial races and politics
The campaign also prompted fresh questions about Georgia’s officially nonpartisan judicial elections.
Strictly speaking, judicial races in Georgia are nonpartisan. That means the names of judicial candidates are barred from appearing on the ballot with a party designation.
In recent decades, however, “nonpartisan” has come to mean “apolitical,” with judicial candidates refusing in all but an opaque way to discuss their views.
In this instance, while Barrow’s legislative record was available for any voter to examine, Pinson didn’t fill out standard candidate surveys and refused to participate in a candidate debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club, saying it wasn’t proper to discuss cases and issues that might come before the court.
But politics, even arguably partisan ones, were never far away.
As Barrow appeared to be gaining ground in the final weeks of the campaign, Kemp and Speaker of the House Jon Burns (R-Newington) rushed to endorse Pinson.
Meanwhile, pro-abortion groups Frontline Policy and the Faith & Freedom Coalition mounted campaigns against Barrow, warning that Georgia’s restrictive abortion law, the so-called “heartbeat law,” was at stake in Tuesday’s vote.
Barrow is “pushing Biden’s extreme abortion agenda right here in Georgia,” while Pinson will “protect our values,” said Frontline Policy, which describes itself as “Georgia’s premier force for Life, Faith, Family, and Freedom.”
Second failed bid
For the 68-year-old Barrow, who represented Savannah and Chatham County in the U.S. House of Representatives for five terms until his district was redrawn and he lost to Republican Rick Allen in 2018, Tuesday’s defeat was his second failed bid to win a seat on Georgia’s high court.
In 2020, Barrow, a Harvard Law School graduate, declared his candidacy for the seat vacated by Justice Robert Benham. That bid was cut short when Benham retired before the May 2020 election, allowing Gov. Brian Kemp to appoint his successor.
In 2018, he also lost narrowly to Brad Raffensperger in the 2018 secretary of state’s race.