Forty-six million dollars.  That's how much campaign cash was steered toward judicial candidates for state Supreme Courts in 2004.  This piece [1] 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 [2] as special interests assert themselves in the state's judicial contest this year as never before.