Supreme Court candidate Jay Lucas pops up as issue in SC Attorney General race

Questions about former powerful House Speaker Jay Lucas seeking a seat on the S.C. Supreme Court are now part of the state attorney general’s race.

“Here we go again, cronyism in a judge’s race,” said David Pascoe, a candidate for attorney general who for more than a year has traveled the state speaking out about how South Carolina needs to reform the way it chooses judges.

Now, Pascoe has added Lucas as Exhibit A of a questionable judicial candidate.

“We’ve had judicial candidates where it’s spouses, siblings, first cousins, children of judges running and now — we have a former lawyer-legislator who was speaker of the House,” said Pascoe, who has often criticized the state’s judicial contests as fielding candidates whose personal connections — and not merit alone — make a big difference.

“Everywhere I go, I hear people asking me, ‘What is the deal with the Supreme Court race? What’s the deal with the way we’re picking our judges?’ Everybody is paying attention,” Pascoe said in an interview.

Two other attorney general candidates indicated they have thoughts about Lucas seeking a Supreme Court seat. If Lucas or either of the other two candidates in the race win, it would effectively stop sitting Associate Justice John Few from getting a successive 10-year term. He is wrapping up his current 10-year term, which expires July 31 of next year.

Attorney general candidate David Stumbo, 8th Judicial Circuit solicitor, when asked about Lucas’ candidacy said in a text: “A sitting Supreme Court Justice being challenged for re-election is almost unheard of in our state, so this race would already have a lot of eyes on it. The fact that one of the challengers is the former Speaker of the House raises additional questions and concerns though, particularly in light of our current method of electing judges in South Carolina — a process which is still dominated by the Legislature.”

Stumbo said he prefers the federal method for appointing judges — a nomination by the executive, or governor, with a confirmation by the legislative branch. “That method has been tried and true for over two centuries, and best honors the separation of powers so that our state’s judges can exercise their duties and make decisions with true independence.”

Attorney general candidate state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch Jr. said, “I definitely have opinions on the matter, but I don’t think I better share them. I’m not supposed to give any commitment to any candidate prior to the appropriate time, and indicating to the public that I’m going to vote for him or not vote for him, I think would be a violation of the spirit of that law,” Goldfinch said.

As a member of the state Senate, Goldfinch is one of the 170 state lawmakers who will vote on judge and justice candidates in a joint session of the House and Senate on March 4.

The law says that “no person may seek, directly or indirectly, the pledge of a member of the General Assembly’s vote or, directly or indirectly contact a member of the General Assembly” until the Judicial Merit Selection Commission has formally released its report on the candidates running for the judicial post. The law also says that no lawmaker may give a pledge of support to any candidate until the commission issues its report.

The report will be scheduled to be released at noon Feb 10. At that time, lawmakers will be free to publicly discuss candidates.

As a former House speaker — Lucas retired in 2022 after 24 years in the House — he has numerous personal and political connections to lawmakers who will vote to seat judges and one associate justice in judicial elections next year, and that may give him an edge in his bid to win an associate justice seat on the Supreme Court, Pascoe said.

It’s quite possible that Lucas, who is a lawyer and who is senior vice president for public affairs at the multi-billion dollar hospital and health complex called Prisma Health, has already spoken to numerous lawmakers about his entry into the race, Pascoe said.

“I absolutely believe that happened, but I don’t know that for sure, but I know this, months and months ago, lawmakers told me Jay Lucas was going to run for Supreme Court. And I laughed it off,” said Pascoe.

Lucas has not returned calls about his candidacy from a State newspaper reporter.

Lucas’ advanced age — he just turned 68 — and his almost total lack of judicial qualifications — he had been a small-town magistrate for a year in the 1990s — were factors that caused Pascoe not to believe the rumor that Lucas would try to get on the Supreme Court.

After all, state law requires judges and justices to retire the year they turn 72, so Lucas would only serve three years or so to any judicial post, Pascoe said.

“He had such poor qualifications, and I thought the optics looked really, really bad,” Pascoe said.

Last month, at Lucas’ hearing before the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, Lucas told astonished commission members that the judicial mandatory retirement law didn’t apply to him because the law only applies to judges intending to take their pension. Commission members told Lucas they believed the law that requires judges to retire at 72 applied to all judges.

He doesn’t intend to take a pension while serving as a justice, and he intends to serve until he is 80, Lucas told commission members. Moreover, he told members, the fact that he hasn’t been a judge is a positive. He will bring wisdom, intellect and practical experience as a lawyer to the court, Lucas said.

Pascoe doesn’t buy what Lucas says.

“Let’s be clear: The issue is not Jay Lucas’ age. It is the corrupt system that allows a former speaker, a man who led the very lawmakers who now control the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, to walk into a hearing and declare himself exempt from the law,” Pascoe wrote in a Dec. 2 Fitsnews column.

Putting Lucas on the high court is another step towards turning the judiciary “into a political spoils system, where those with influence get rewarded and those without it get run over,” Pascoe wrote.

Of the 12 members on the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, Pascoe noted in the column, six are lawyer-legislators. The commission screens candidates for judgeships and forwards names to the General Assembly, whose 170 members then vote on the candidates in a special House and Senate joint session.

Sitting Supreme Court justices rarely have opposition.

Besides Lucas, the candidates for the associate justice post are Few, who has served 25 years on the bench, including 10 years as a circuit judge, six years as a Court of Appeals judge and nine years as an associate justice; Administrative Law Court Chief Judge Ralph King Anderson III, who has been on that court 31 years; and Court of Appeals Judge Blake Hewitt, who has been on that court five years.

Supreme Court justices make $233,606 a year.