Forty-six million dollars.  That's how much campaign cash was steered toward judicial candidates for state Supreme Courts in 2004.  This piece on the USA Today blog argues judicial races have become "big-money brawls among special interests, often with big business and trial lawyers vying for a friendly judge on the court."  It needs a fix - like a full public financing option.

North Carolina has judicial public financing, and Washington is giving it serious thought as special interests assert themselves in the state's judicial contest this year as never before.