Billionaires pour money into state Supreme Court election

The race for Supreme Court Justice between incumbent Charlie Wiggins and his opponent, Dave Larson, has become a big-money affair in recent weeks, complete with controversial negative advertising and the full attention of several Washington billionaires.

In October alone, political action committees favoring Larson, a Federal Way Municipal Court judge, reported receiving $900,000 in donations, according to the Public Disclosure Commission, which tracks election spending.

It’s the most independent political expenditures on a judicial race since 2006.

One pro-Larson political action committee, Citizens for Working Courts, got $300,000 from Vulcan Inc., an investment company founded by former Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. His fellow founder, Bill Gates, pitched in another $200,000, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie, gave a combined $25,000.

The PAC is run by the pro-business group Enterprise Washington, which often works in legislative races but is making its first foray into state Supreme Court races.

Michael Davis, president of the group, said many members of the organization and leaders in the business community have been dissatisfied with decisions from the high court, but before now hadn’t had a good “pro job growth” candidate to back.

“Some have finally said ‘now we have a really strong candidate in Judge Larson,’ ” he said.

Another PAC fighting Wiggins, Judicial Integrity Washington, is funded mostly by $350,000 from Camas billionaire Ken Fisher and $50,000 apiece from Seattle Mariners owner John Stanton and Bellevue’s Kemper Freeman, the owner of Kemper Holdings, which includes Bellevue Square.

The committee is run by former state Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, who is critical of Wiggins for voting with the majority in the state Supreme Court’s 2012 McCleary education-funding decision and the court’s 2015 decision to strike down charter schools as unconstitutional. He’s disagreed with Wiggins on plenty of other cases, too, he said.

Allen and Gates were some of the biggest backers of the citizen initiative that created the charter system in 2012. State lawmakers altered the charter system after the court ruling to keep it running.

Citizens for Working Courts has bought advertising that praises Larson. Judicial Integrity Washington has gone negative, releasing a TV advertisement that has drawn the ire of former Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and others in Washington’s legal community, who criticized it for painting Wiggins as enabling a child predator by penning a majority opinion in a recent case.

In May, the high court affirmed an appellate decision that law enforcement seized child pornography found on Michael Allen Budd’s computer without adequately advising him of his rights.

Budd’s conviction was overturned. Last month, he was arrested in Yakima on suspicion of attempting to solicit sex with a 14-year-old online, the Yakima Herald reported.