A Last-Minute $250,000 Union Check Couldn’t Buy Washington’s Closest Supreme Court Seat

Washington’s closest statewide race this month wasn’t for governor or the Senate. It was for a seat on the state Supreme Court. On Wednesday, King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell said the voters had settled it.

“With nearly all votes now counted statewide, it is safe to say that the voters of Washington State have spoken. I am thrilled to be elected to the Washington State Supreme Court,” O’Donnell said in a statement.

He leads Court of Appeals Judge Ian Birk by about 39,000 votes, or 1.4 percentage points, the Washington State Standard reported, after a week of counting. The Secretary of State’s office estimated about 75,000 ballots were still left at 5 p.m. Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported. If those ballots split the way the counted ones have, Birk would still fall short by about 40,000 votes.

Birk has not conceded and has not spoken publicly. The result is unofficial until the state certifies it. O’Donnell declared victory anyway, and the leftover ballots are not a large enough pile to hide a 39,000-vote hole if they keep splitting the same way.

A $250,000 check after the cap came off

This race was officially nonpartisan. The money and the mailers were not.

On Oct. 22, Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission stopped enforcing the cap that limited what a donor could give a political committee in the final three weeks before an election. For most races, that cap was $7,500. The commission, in Interpretation 26-01, said court rulings had raised “significant concerns” about whether the limit could still be enforced, and it suspended the rule “to maintain fairness to all campaigns.”

On Oct. 27, the SEIU 775 Quality Care Committee wrote a $250,000 check to Beware the Attack on Our Courts, a union- and trial-lawyer-backed committee spending against O’Donnell and for Birk. Charlie Harger of KIRO Newsradio, citing commission records, noted that under the old rule the check would have been capped at $7,500. O’Donnell’s consultant, Stephen Paolini, told KUOW the $250,000 “would have been illegal had the PDC not changed the rules in the final hour.”

That was not the only money in the race. The two campaigns each raised more than $500,000, and more than $1 million more poured in from outside groups. O’Donnell told KOMO he figured he was outspent three or four to one. “This is sort of the wisdom of the voters,” he said.

The union-backed committee also bought Google and Meta ads that Washington’s disclosure rules make hard to run in the first place. Some of the ads claimed, “Radical right-wing orgs and MAGA Republicans want to roll back our rights.” Google pulled them after O’Donnell’s campaign flagged the buys. Meta later rejected them. The committee’s spokesman, Jack Sorensen, said there was nothing illegal about the ads and that the group reported the spending, including $58,000 on Google, to the commission.

The attacks got uglier in the mailbox. Harger reported that SEIU-funded mailers pinned a MAGA label on O’Donnell and went out in about 300,000 pieces. Birk’s campaign called O’Donnell a closet Republican with a “partisan agenda.” Dozens of current and former judges came to O’Donnell’s defense, calling those charges false partisan attacks, the Washington State Standard reported. Harger noted that the Seattle Times editorial board told voters not to reward Birk for it.

O’Donnell kept pointing to the other names on his list. Former Democratic Govs. Christine Gregoire and Gary Locke endorsed him, as did Democratic U.S. Reps. Adam Smith and Marilyn Strickland. The state Republican Party recommended him. “I’m really proud of the fact that people on both sides of the aisle supported me in this race,” he told KOMO on Wednesday, standing outside the King County Courthouse. “I have no agenda in this job other than to do justice,” he told the Seattle Times.

The tax fight this court still has to hear

The seat matters for a reason that lands in ordinary people’s wallets.

Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a 9.9 percent tax on household income above $1 million. Gov. Bob Ferguson signed it in March. Conservative groups put Initiative 645 on the November ballot to repeal it and ban future income taxes. Voters said no. About 58 percent opposed the repeal, and the campaign conceded on Nov. 5. The tax is set to start in 2028, with the first collections due in 2029.

The fight is not over. Business owners have a lawsuit pending in Klickitat County Superior Court, and the issue is expected to reach the state Supreme Court. Justices would have to decide whether to stand by a 1933 ruling that has long treated a state income tax as off limits, or to set it aside. O’Donnell, like most judicial candidates, did not tip his hand on how he would rule.

He will replace Justice Charles Johnson, who has been on the court since 1991 and had to step down under the state’s age-75 retirement rule. The term is six years. O’Donnell has been a King County judge since 2013, served as a substitute justice on the Supreme Court, and led the Superior Court Judges’ Association. Before the bench, he was a senior deputy prosecutor and worked on the team that investigated and prosecuted Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer.

Asked by KOMO what he wants the court to take up first, he pointed to how judges use SI. “Are we going to have a bright-line rule for judges that says this is how you can and cannot use artificial intelligence?” he said. “I really believe that judges should not use it to reach a decision.” The decision, he said, has to stay human.

He thanked “the more than 1.4 million Washington voters” who trusted him with the job, and he wished Birk well.

Birk carried King County, O’Donnell’s home turf, by 18 percentage points, and he had organized labor and Gov. Ferguson in his corner. He still came up short statewide. A last-minute six-figure union check, a pile of MAGA mailers, and a week of extra counting were not enough to close a 39,000-vote gap.

Washington’s judicial races are supposed to be about the law, not about who can write the biggest check once the referees put the cap away. On Wednesday, the candidate who got hit with that money was the one telling the state the race was over.