Johnson wins, Sanders ahead in Supreme Court races

The state's most conservative Supreme Court justice, James Johnson, won re-election to a second term with 63 percent of the vote Tuesday night, despite a heavily financed effort by unions and other progressive groups to defeat him.

His opponent, Tacoma attorney Stan Rumbaugh, who portrayed himself as a more liberal choice and was backed by labor and gay-rights advocates, trailed with 37 percent of the vote.

"I'm delighted with the results," Johnson said from his home in Olympia on Tuesday night. "I think this shows the voters can be trusted to elect judges. They recognized my record and my experience."

In Supreme Court races, a candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary moves on unopposed to the general election.

In the second contested race for the high court, veteran Justice Richard Sanders was leading Bainbridge Island appellate attorney Charlie Wiggins 48 to 39 percent. Pierce County presiding Judge Bryan Chushcoff was third with 13 percent of the vote.

Wiggins noted that there were more votes in total against Sanders than for him. "For an incumbent to be leading by that narrow a margin, that's problematic," he said.

The outspoken and often controversial Sanders said he wasn't worried. "I think I'm going to win this. All the votes against me would have to go to my opponent (Wiggins), and I don't think that's going to happen."

In a third race for the Supreme Court, Justice Barbara Madsen ran unopposed.

In the Johnson-Rumbaugh race, FairPAC, a coalition of union groups that includes the Service Employees International, the State Labor Council and the Washington Education Association as well as trial lawyers, spent almost $256,000 for ads that portrayed Johnson as being in the pocket of big business.

Gay-rights advocates also urged Johnson's defeat because he was part of the 5-4 court majority that refused to legalize gay marriage. The Seattle Stranger featured Rumbaugh on its cover and argued that the Supreme Court race should be a referendum on gay marriage.

Johnson benefited from a significant edge in experience over Rumbaugh. A Harvard-educated Washington native, Johnson worked for 20 years in the State Attorney General's Office. There, he handed appellate cases, including at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rumbaugh, whose legal practice focuses on workers' compensation and plaintiff's cases, has handled only two state Supreme Court cases.

In the other court race, Wiggins' campaign attacked Sanders for siding too often with criminals. Thirty prosecutors in the state endorsed Wiggins. Chushcoff did not solicit endorsements or campaign contributions.

Wiggins accused Sanders of voting in favor of criminal defendants more than 94 percent of the time. Sanders, who's known for his libertarian views, countered that the figures distorted his record and didn't include unanimous decisions or the 90 percent of cases in which the court declines review. Sanders joined the court in 1995.

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com