By Ed White
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Republicans regained control of the Michigan Supreme Court by capturing two seats this week, riding the same electoral wave that made the GOP victorious in all major statewide races.
Wayne County Judge Mary Beth Kelly and incumbent Justice Robert Young Jr. beat the three other candidates.
The result means conservatives will form a 4-3 majority on the court beginning in January, after two years in which Democrats largely had control.
Kelly was first with 30 percent, followed by Young at 28 percent, Justice Alton Davis at 19 percent and Oakland County Judge Denise Langford Morris at 17 percent, with 88 percent of precincts reporting.
The fifth candidate on the ballot, Libertarian Bob Roddis, got less than 10 percent of the vote.
“I was just looking not to finish third,” said Kelly, who is no relation to Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly.
Davis was appointed to the court in August by Gov. Jennifer Granholm after the resignation of Justice Elizabeth Weaver.
His arrival gave Democrats a 4-3 edge, although they already had a working majority with Weaver, a moderate Republican, joining them in many cases.
Backed by business groups, Young and Kelly promoted themselves as conservatives who wouldn’t second-guess the Legislature and make their own law.
Davis and Morris, Democrats who were the favorites of unions and trial lawyers, promised to cool the rancor between warring justices.
The candidates were nominated by political parties, but there was no party designation next to their names.
“They threw everything at us but I am still standing,” Young said, referring to a barrage of negative ads by the state Democratic Party.
TV ads tried to portray Young as a judge who favored big polluters, especially the company responsible for a major oil spill last summer in the Kalamazoo River.
In the campaign’s home stretch, Weaver stepped forward and accused him of using the N-word during private conferences with other justices in 2006.
Young, who is black, acknowledged using the word but said he was quoting a disgraced former judge who had lost her job because of it.
Kelly, too, was hit with a TV ad accusing her of failing to lock up an illegal immigrant who was subsequently convicted of kidnapping and killing a Detroit-area man.
“I never imagined such a hellish set of attacks,” said Young, who added, “I think it backfired.”
Mark Brewer, chairman of the Democratic Party, said he had no regrets over the campaign.
“What you saw here was a national wave in terms of people voting Republican,” Brewer said in explaining why Davis and Morris lost. “That just overwhelmed everything else.”
Besides the Supreme Court, Republicans won races for Michigan governor, secretary of state and attorney general.
Davis declined to comment. It’s possible that Granholm could send him back to the state appeals court where he was serving before his appointment to the Supreme Court last summer.
His seat remains vacant.
Since 2009, the Democratic-controlled court has reversed some key decisions of its former conservative majority, especially in auto-injury law.
Young and Kelly, however, suggested they wouldn’t be eager to revisit the cases.
“I’m not going to prejudge any of them,” Young said.
Kelly said overturning legal precedent has to “be looked at very cautiously.”
“I’m not one who promotes looking at legal issues again just because they may have been wrongly decided on that issue alone,” she said.
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