The Nonpartisan Judge Lie

Thomas Jefferson understood something about human nature that Montana’s judicial establishment and Montana Democratic Party desperately want us to forget: judges are not philosopher-kings floating above the political fray. They are human beings with “the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps.”

In an 1820 letter warning against judicial supremacy, Jefferson called treating judges as “the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions” a “very dangerous doctrine indeed” that would place us “under the despotism of an Oligarchy.” His reasoning was simple and devastating: judges “are as honest as other men, and not more so.”

Now, supporters of Constitutional Initiative 132 want to enshrine the fiction of nonpartisan judicial elections into Montana’s constitution. They’ve formed groups with pristine-sounding names like “Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts” and “Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges” to peddle a myth: that slapping a “nonpartisan” label on a ballot somehow transforms political creatures into neutral arbiters.

It’s a lie. And the proof is in the money.

Consider Montana Supreme Court candidate Amy Eddy, who has positioned herself as the champion of keeping politics out of the courtroom. She wrote in July that she’s “not seeking political endorsements, political party money or political speaking engagements.” She pledges to “keep our courtrooms honest, independent, and free from the corrosive influence of partisanship.”

Yet The Montana Chronicles reviewed her donor list and found exactly what you’d expect to find when you follow the money: Democratic political operatives, progressive consultants, and partisan connections running through her campaign like veins through marble.

Among her donors: Alejandro Verdin, founder of Nineteen Sixty Campaigns, a Chicago political consulting firm that explicitly states it’s “creating a progressive and inclusive future” and “winning Democratic campaigns.” Verdin managed Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023—the one that gave Wisconsin’s Supreme Court its liberal lean.

Then there’s James Messina, who served as Obama’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff and later managed his 2012 presidential campaign. Messina’s consulting group has donated over $436,000 to Democratic candidates between 2014 and 2024, according to OpenSecrets.

Eddy herself has contributed thousands of dollars over the years to Hillary Clinton, Jon Tester, Steve Bullock, the Montana Democratic Party, and the National Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. As political consultant Jake Eaton wrote in the Billings Gazette, “That is not the record of someone who is politically neutral—it is the financial behavior of a committed partisan.”

None of this makes Eddy a bad person. It makes her a political animal—like all of us. But it exposes the fundamental dishonesty of claiming these races are somehow “nonpartisan.”

The supporters of CI-132 act as though partisan labels would corrupt the purity of judicial elections. But Montana’s judicial races are already soaked in partisan politics. More than half of Eddy’s campaign contributions came from attorneys. Nearly 30 percent of her donors maxed out at $790—the legal limit for a state Supreme Court race. This is a political campaign, pure and simple.

The only difference is that current law allows candidates to hide their political affiliations from voters. CI-132 would lock that deception into the Montana Constitution.

Jefferson understood that judges, holding power for life and insulated from electoral accountability, pose a unique threat. Their “maxim is ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem'”—a good judge expands his jurisdiction. They accumulate power naturally, like water flowing downhill.

Montana has watched its Supreme Court strike down multiple bills passed by the Republican legislature over the last five years. Republican lawmakers responded in 2025 with bills proposing partisan judicial elections. The judiciary fought back—and lost in the Legislature. Now they’re taking their case directly to voters through CI-132, hoping to constitutionally cement a system that obscures judicial candidates’ political loyalties.

Chief Justice Cory Swanson, in his dissent to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on CI-132’s ballot language, cut to the heart of the matter. He noted that Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s description of the initiative implied that judicial candidates do have party affiliations that would “remain hidden from the voters.” Swanson acknowledged this is “the working theory of those who advocate for partisan judicial elections—remove the screen which is obscuring the judicial candidate’s loyalties.”

Exactly right. There is a screen. The question is whether Montana voters want to pull it back or nail it permanently into place.

Enshrining a lie in the constitution is dangerous regardless of which direction you think is best.

Whether you’re voting for city council, the legislature, or a judgeship, you deserve to know where candidates’ loyalties lie. Pretending judges exist outside politics doesn’t make Montana’s courts more independent—it just makes voters more ignorant.

Jefferson warned us. The question is whether we’ll listen.