Ambiguously named groups with unlisted donors spent nearly $7 million on 2024 Ohio Supreme Court races, according to Ohio Fair Courts Alliance, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for transparency and accountability of spending on judicial races.
In the run-up to the November election, where Democrats had a chance to win control of the Supreme Court for the first time since 1986, the organization sought to raise voter awareness — while also critiquing ads that, according to its analyses, often sought to deceive the public. The ads painted Republicans as corrupt, anti-abortion shills and Democrats as too weak on crime.
“Unfortunately, it is often difficult to tell who is behind political ads, including those for judges and justices. That is not an accident,” Ohio Fair Courts Alliance wrote in one critique of an ad.
Federal election filings and state business records uncovered about $6.7 million spent on 14 political ads not directly paid for by candidate campaigns.
Republicans benefitted from nearly 70% of the outside spending, or about $4.6 million. Ohioans for a Healthy Economy Action Fund, a super PAC affiliated with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, accounted for about half of that. The organization received $1 million from a nonprofit run by Illinois megadonor Richard Uihlein, as well as contributions from gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Cleveland Browns’ owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, according to the research.
Much of the outside support for Democrats came from Ohioans for Judicial Integrity, an independent expenditure group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, which spent just over $2 million on four ads supporting Democrat candidates.
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.
This article appears in Mar 13-26, 2025.