The incumbent in the only race for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court won re-election Tuesday, fending off a challenge from a former Democratic lawmaker who has been campaigning on a bipartisan race to protect abortion rights, according to the Associated Press. It is said that it was achieved. .
Georgia Supreme Court elections are typically low-key cases that garner little attention, much less controversy, because the justices rarely face significant opposition. The same goes for the other three justices who were voted on Tuesday, and their elections were uncontested.
But Judge Andrew A. Pinson will have to fight to keep his seat after John Barrow, who represented Georgia in Congress as a Democrat from 2005 to 2015, enters the race. I was placed in an unusual position.
During his campaign, Barrow said Georgia's constitution guarantees the right to abortion, insisting that this is not a political position, but simply an interpretation of the law. Last year, the state Supreme Court upheld Georgia's law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but the legal battle continues.
Barrow's challenge prompted Judge Pinson and his allies to mobilize an expensive and high-profile effort, at least by state Supreme Court standards. Judge Pinson sought to portray Mr. Barrow as a threat to an independent judiciary, arguing that voting against him would be tantamount to supporting “a system of black-robed partisan politicians.”
“I have upheld my oath to uphold the Constitution,” Judge Pinson said at a press conference Monday. “I have approached every case before me without bias, fairly and impartially,” he added. “And I have applied the law as it is written, not as it should be or as we would like it to be.”
Judge Pinson was appointed to the court in 2022 by Governor Brian Kemp to serve out the remainder of his predecessor's term and is currently seeking a six-year term. Judge Pinson served on the state Court of Appeals before joining the state Supreme Court, to which he was appointed by Republican Kemp.
He served as the state's attorney general, working for Republican Attorney General Christopher M. Carr. Early in his career, Judge Pinson clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Barrow took issue with portraying himself as a partisan activist, noting that Judge Pinson had surrounded himself with Republicans like Mr. Kemp and conservative political groups in his bid for re-election.
“This is not a partisan election, so I'm not looking for support from partisan politicians,” Barrow told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But I know that's not the case with my opponent. He's clearly trying to make this a partisan election.”