Three Florida Supreme Court justices facing an organized drive to remove them in November spent much of the year raising money and fighting in court to keep their names on the ballot. In Florida’s merit retention elections, the justices ran unopposed and needed the approval of a majority of voters to stay on the court.

A political group called Restore Justice 2012 set out to defeat all three. Jesse Phillips, a Winter Park computer programmer who served as the group’s public face, told The Washington Post in March that the effort would need to raise “easily over $1 million.” The justices had seen two colleagues targeted in 2010, after the court kept off the ballot a measure opposing a key provision of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The justices started raising money early. The invitation to one fundraiser, described by the Post in March, asked for a “suggested contribution” of $500 for each justice. “It is almost embarrassing to be doing it,” Justice R. Fred Lewis told the Post, and Justice Barbara Pariente agreed: “It’s an awkward thing.” The justices collected large sums in the first half of 2012, and their fundraising slowed in July, according to campaign reports.

In June, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, sued in Leon County Circuit Court on behalf of two voters to keep the justices off the ballot, arguing that the justices broke state law in qualifying to run by having court employees notarize election documents. The justices’ lawyers, who included former Florida Bar presidents John DeVault and Henry Coxe, moved to dismiss the suit and to halt 22 depositions. A state investigation into the notarizations ended in July after State Attorney Willie Meggs wrote that “the law does not concern itself with trifles.”

At the fundraiser, Justice Peggy Quince, the third justice on the ballot, told the crowd, “We want our system to continue without the politics.” The Florida Bar announced in July that results of a poll of in-state Bar members on the 15 appellate judges and three justices on the Nov. 6 ballot would be published in September.

Gavel Grab first reported this story on Sept. 18, 2012, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. This account of the same events was written from the public record.

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