Are we really going to let Pa.’s richest man buy a state Supreme Court seat?

It’s that time of year, and you’re probably wondering what we can give to America’s beleaguered billionaire class — starting to get bored, no doubt, with their trips to outer space or their flamethrower toys or their own social media site to destroy in their spare time.

How about their own judge?

You’ve probably been following the recent drama in D.C. over U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his lavish vacations, private jet travel, and even his comfy “man of the people” RV — all funded, it turns out, by fabulously wealthy Americans who want to see ultraconservative jurisprudence, and who befriended Thomas after his elevation to the high court.

But the real high-stakes players — like Jeff Yass from the Philadelphia suburbs, whose bets that started with his college poker game and led to a major investment in TikTok have made him the richest man in the state — know where the real action is: state courts. The power wielded in places like the Pennsylvania Supreme Court — over important things like drawing congressional maps, funding schools, punishing polluters, rewarding tax evasion, or crimping worker power — is enormous. And those justices are elected here, as in other key states.

Yet the average voter pays almost zero attention. You know who does? Billionaires.

This coming Tuesday, the race for an open seat on the seven-member Pennsylvania Supreme Court will be one of the most closely watched in the nation, seen as a bellwether of the electorate’s mood on the eve of a presidential year. Spending on the contest between the Republican candidate, Montgomery County judge Carolyn Carluccio, and Democrat Dan McCaffery, a jurist from Philadelphia, is shattering all records, at $17 million and counting. And no one has more chips down on the table than Yass, leader of the Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna Investment Group.

Carluccio’s largest source of support has been some $4.4 million in ads and mailers, either praising Carluccio or attacking McCaffery, paid for by the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a group that supports conservative positions on school vouchers and charters and which is funded almost exclusively by Yass. About half that money has come in recent weeks. The outside spending by the Yass-supported group is greater than the money raised by Carluccio’s own campaign committee.

And Yass is not the only billionaire wagering on a GOP victory next week.

Another $735,000 in anti-McCaffery attack ads has been paid for by Fair Courts America, a group funded by Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein to elect right-wing judges. ProPublica — the same newsroom that broke the Justice Thomas scandal wide open — has chronicled Uihlein’s support for extremists like failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, and for what it calls “anti-democracy causes.” A memo it obtained from the Uihlein-funded Restoration of America said it “aims to ‘get on God’s side of the issues and stay there’ and ‘punish leftists.’”

Kadida Kenner is chief executive officer of the New Pennsylvania Project, a progressive-minded organization that aims to register new voters and increase turnout. They are working the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race the old-fashioned way, doorbell by doorbell. While the group says it has been remarkably successful in signing up new voters — some 30,000 in just 18 months — Kenner concedes that making those voters aware of the candidates and what’s at stake in the race for the state’s highest court can be an uphill climb.

“They count on the electorate not having the information,” Kenner told me, referring to big-money donors and their last-minute attack ads. The numbers support what the activist is seeing door-to-door. A statewide Franklin and Marshall College poll released last week found a staggering 70% of Pennsylvania voters aren’t aware of who the candidates are. That means that big money — that one ad or mailer that finds an undecided voter on their way to a polling place — can mean more than it does in a presidential election in which the electorate is better informed.

This vacuum, and a keen understanding of what’s actually at stake, has fueled the $17 million spending binge — and, to be fair, it’s not just billionaires. Democrat McCaffery is backed by an array of labor unions, trial lawyers, and abortion-rights groups, while the GOP’s Carluccio is also getting support from business groups and hospital associations. Still, there is something uniquely antithetical to the cherished democratic ideal of “one person, one vote” when controversial court rulings like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have unleashed wealthy individuals like Yass or Uihlein, who lives 1,000 miles away, to invest so much.

» READ MORE: The Supreme Court ethics mess is today’s Watergate. Let’s treat it that way. | Will Bunch

What do these billionaire donors want, anyway?

Ask their people and they’ll insist it’s merely an altruistic desire for good government. Matt Brouillette, the conservative activist who is treasurer of the Yass-supported Commonwealth Leaders Fund, told my colleagues at Spotlight PA that the group is spending on Carluccio because “she is a highly qualified judge who will uphold the Constitution, apply the law as written, and not make decisions based on partisan ideology.”

OK then — but that explanation goes against everything we’ve seen over the last few decades. In reality, a relentless conservative effort to install right-wing judges — especially on the federal level — has undone women’s reproductive rights, curbed voting rights, and strengthened corporations while weakening unions. And Pennsylvania — where the democracy of electing judges created a 5-2 Democratic majority on the Supreme Court, which undid the GOP’s extreme 2010s gerrymandering — is their nightmare that they desperately want to undo.

Does a savvy bettor like Yass really want nonpartisan judges, or does he want a jurist who’s more likely to uphold this libertarian’s pet project, which is vouchers and other programs labeled as “school choice” that actually undermine public education?

I doubt that Yass cares much about the issue making the most noise in this election — abortion rights — but I imagine he cares quite a bit about having a court that won’t rule for organized labor or against Big Oil and Gas. ProPublica recently chronicled how Yass aggressively fought to lower his taxes by an estimated $1 billion, even suing the IRS in federal court. If Yass’ tax strategies are ever litigated in Harrisburg, does he really desire judges “who apply the law as written” — or something else?

In a world that seems to be unraveling before our eyes, the crusade by America’s billionaire oligarchs to gain sway over the judicial branch and lock in four decades of extreme income inequality has been one of the most insidious of the many overlapping threats to our democracy. At the U.S. Supreme Court, mega-rich Americans like Texas developer Harlan Crow have enveloped justices like Thomas — and, to a lesser extent, other conservatives on the high court — in their billionaire bubble of luxury, to surround a jurist with their far-right ideology and keep him “on the reservation.” The payoffs in pro-business rulings have been large, and could get bigger if Thomas joins the conservative majority in gutting federal regulations by overturning a legal doctrine called “Chevron deference.”

The Thomas revelations have angered many, but what’s even more frustrating is the system’s inability to address them. In highly partisan Washington, Republican lawmakers would never vote to impeach, let alone convict, a conservative vote on the U.S. Supreme Court — no matter how foul the stench of corruption gets. The nine justices don’t even have a code of ethics.

But the situation here in Pennsylvania is different. The fact that we, controversially, elect our judges offers an opportunity — yes, for big-spending billionaires, but also for everyday voters to show up on Tuesday to oppose them. Kenner’s door knockers with the New Pennsylvania Project are hoping to tell thousands of voters that this seemingly obscure election could determine their reproductive rights, whether their schools are funded, and their voting rights in future contests, including 2024′s presidential race.

“They have a lot of money,” Kenner said, “but our side has the people.”

That’s it in a nutshell: Everyday folks can’t do much about the selling out of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, but they can stop the richest man in Pennsylvania from buying a seat on the state’s highest court.

But only if they get off the couch Tuesday and vote.

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