February 5th, 2026 Len’s Political Note #787 Anits Earls North Carolina Supreme Court
2026 General Election
Anita Earls
The North Carolina state legislature changed the state courts’ elections rules. That was in 2004. Elections would be non-partisan, fairer some said. Democrats wanted the change. According to Politifact, North Carolina was going through a change of life – from Democrat to Republican. Democrats did not want a Republican judiciary.
In 2014, the Republican legislature change the rules back. Nevertheless, Democrats more than achieved their goal. Temporarily. After the 2016 election, four of the seven Supreme Court Justices were registered Democrats. In 2018, Anita Earls won her eight year term with 49.56% of the vote. She won that election because two Republicans divided the remaining 50.44% of the vote. Her victory over the Republican incumbent gave the Democrats a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court.
Worse for the Republicans, the Chief Justice resigned in 2019. Governor Roy Cooper appointed Democrat Cheryl Beasley to fill the vacancy. With that appointment, Democrats had a 6-1 majority on the court. Recently appointed to fill a vacancy, Cheryl Beasley was obliged to run for election in 2020. She lost by 401 votes. With that election and others, the court became 4-3 Democratic. In 2022, Republicans carried the two Democratic seats that were up for election and gained a 5-2 margin.
2024 was a master class in Republican refusal to accept election results. Incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs won, but insufficiently for her opponent Jefferson Griffiin. The election was extremely close, 50.01% to 49.99% a margin of 734 votes. In a preview of what elections may look like in 2026, the Republican challenger questioned the eligibility of thousands of voters. Because of the litigation, Riggs was not able to return to her seat on the Court until May. With her return, the Court remained 5-2 Republican.
Anita Earls may find her election effort even more difficult than Allison Riggs’ experience. The North Carolina legislature has put the State Auditor, a Republican, in charge of appointing the Election Board instead of the Democratic Governor. It may be easier for Republicans to challenge the eligibility of voters this time around.
Who controls the court can be hugely important. The eventual consequence of a Democratic majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court was to achieve fairly drawn districts in this evenly divided state – 7 Republican leaning districts, 7 Democratic leaning.
How closely divided is North Carolina? Consider the 401 vote Supreme Republican victory in 2022 and the 734 vote Supreme Court Democratic victory in 2024. The consequence of a Republican majority in the Supreme Court was that it approved redistricting by the Republican majority legislature that led to 10 Republican seats and 4 Democratic seats. That change alone was enough of a difference to decide which party controlled the United States House of Representatives after the 2024 election.
Associate Justice Anita Earls will have, as her opponent, Sarah Stevens, the Speaker Pro Tem of the North Carolina House of Representatives.
The sixty-five year-old Republican state representative was initially elected in 2008. She was born in Mount Airy, graduated from the University of North Carolina, and received her JD from Campbell University. In the legislature, she has been a part of the Republican takeover of the House and the unrelenting partisan character of that takeover. The North Carolina Democratic Party Chair says it this way: “For more than a decade, Stevens has led the charge to take away our reproductive freedoms, defund our public schools, and worked to rig the system in Republicans’ favor by stripping powers away from the governor and allowing extreme partisan gerrymandering. On Justice Newby’s court there are already far too many corrupt partisan extremists – the voters of North Carolina won’t be fooled into electing another lapdog.”
Sarah Stevens would put it differently. Her version is that “the law should be applied as written and judges shouldn’t create laws from the bench. ……[she] will respect our state’s constitution and apply the principles of conserving liberty to every case.” Sarah Stevens’ application of her understanding of what the law says and what it should be has helped to give the North Carolina House of Representatives 71 Republicans and 49 Democrats.
For this judicial campaign, Sarah Stevens touts, as her major accomplishment, a change in the law for foster parents – allowing them to attend school activities and other events on behalf of the children they foster without gaining permission from the state’s social services department. That is certainly a valuable accomplishment in a career devoted to Republican dominance.
Anita Earls’s career was as a civil rights attorney. Now sixty-five years old, she and her brother were adopted into a family with a white mother and a black father. The couple left Missouri where it was illegal for such a mixed marriage to exist and moved to the state of Washington. Anita Earls went away for undergraduate school – to Williams College in Massachusetts where she earned a Watson Fellowship that funded her plan to study in Tanzania. Confounded by bouts of malaria, she went to England where she worked in a solicitor’s office, married for the first time, and subsequently returned to the United States on her own to study law at Yale.
After ten years of private practice in a large firm focused on civil rights litigation, Anita Earls became Deputy Attorney Assistant General of the Civil Right’s Division in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department. From there, she eventually founded the Southern Coalition for Racial Justice housed in Durham, North Carolina. That leadership background plus her experience teaching at Duke and the University of North Carolina law schools led to her appointment by Governor Roy Cooper to North Carolina’s Supreme Court.
Anita Earls’ subsequent election was not welcomed by the Supreme Court’s leadership which was as partisan as the Sarah Stevens’ led House of Representatives. Chief Justice Paul Newby complained, in a campaign speech in 2019 that “the Left …put $1.5 million to get their ‘AOC’ person on the Court.” In 2022, Chief Justice Newby arranged the removal of the Chair of the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission after the Chair reminded judges of the state prohibition against political conduct.
Anita Earls will have to manage her campaign carefully. She will need to keep that “political conduct” injunction in mind while legislator Sarah Stevens has no such limitation. DONATE to Anita Earls campaign. Help her win this campaign. If she wins, we win.
Supreme Court Races in other States
April 7 in Wisconsin.
Here, the Democrats have a former legislator and former policy director for Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood, and appointee Chris Taylor challenged by Maria Lazar. Lazar is an Appeals Court Judge and former state assistant attorney general who led efforts on behalf of the Wisconsin Republican administration on several issues – among them redistricting. DONATE to the Chris Taylor campaign. Help the Wisconsin Court move from 4-3 to a 5-2 relatively progressive majority. See Len’s Political Note #731. This election is two months away.
The Following States have Supreme Court elections in the spring.
Arkansas on March 3
Position 6 No contest. Inc James Cody Hiland is the only candidate
Position 3. Inc Nicholas Bronni v challenger John Adams
John Adams is a registered Democrat. All current members of the Arkansas Supreme Court are Republicans. Let’s help change that. DONATE to John Adams campaign. Check out his campaign website.
Georgia and Idaho have Supreme Court elections scheduled for May 19. Both courts are all Republicans. Georgia has three seats subject to election; Idaho has two. Georgia’s filing deadline in March 6; Idaho’s is February 27. Let’s hope there will be some Democrats to support for each of those courts.
State Supreme Court elections in November 2026. Not including retenton elections, the following will have supreme court elections in November:
Alabama – two seats
Kentucky – one seat
Louisiana – three seats
Michigan – two seats
Minnesota – three seats
Montana – one seat
Nevada – one seat
North Carolina – one seat
North Dakota – two seats
Ohio – two seats
Oregon – one seat
Texas – 7 seats (Texas has two Supreme Courts – one for criminal and one for civil matters)
Washington – 4 seats
West Virginia – 2 seats
Wisconsin – seat
More about some of these races later.
