Conservative judicial group is top donor to GOP state elections arm

Judicial Crisis Network previously spent millions to support Trump’s Supreme Court nominees

The dark money group that spent millions on ads supporting Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court was the biggest contributor to Republicans’ state legislative campaign arm in the first half of 2019, in what may be an effort to affect judicial races.

The Judicial Crisis Network, a group dedicated to elevating conservative judges, spent a combined $22 million to promote the confirmations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and contributed $1 million of the roughly $8.2 million the Republican State Leadership Committee raised through June 30 of this year, according to a report the RSLC filed last week. The RSLC then transferred about $1.2 million to its Judicial Fairness Initiative — nearly all of what the state judicial campaign group raised all year.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the equivalent to the RSLC, raised a similar amount from unions.

View the complete August 6 article by Jacob Fischler and Ilana Marcus on The Roll Call website here.