Amy Eddy’s nonpartisan mask is slipping | Nels Swandal

I have often said that the first casualty in a judicial election is the truth, and we again have another candidate trying to pull the wool over the voters’ eyes in Montana.

Judge Amy Eddy wants Montanans to believe she is above politics. Her campaign for the Montana Supreme Court says she is “not seeking political endorsements, political party money or political speaking engagements,” and wants to keep courtrooms “free from the corrosive influence of partisanship.” It makes a great campaign speech. But the facts tell a completely different story.

Start with how she got the robe. Eddy was appointed to the district court in 2015 by Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock, after a career that included serving as president of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association, one of the most reliable allies of Democratic politics in this state.

And her legal activism didn’t wait for the bench. In 2011, Eddy was one of six Montana lawyers who signed on to Barhaugh v. Montana, a petition organized by the Oregon-based activist group Our Children’s Trust asking the Montana Supreme Court to declare that the state holds the atmosphere “in trust” and then to order sweeping regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. No trial, no Legislature, no vote by the people — just seven justices imposing climate policy by decree. The court refused, ruling the petition didn’t belong there. The Flathead Beacon noted at the time that all six attorneys on the petition had made political contributions to Democrats. That same organization’s legal theory kept marching through the courts until it produced Held v. Montana, the ruling conservatives across this state rightly regard as judicial activism at its worst. Eddy wasn’t just a bystander to that movement. She was an early foot soldier.

Now she wants us to believe she has no ideological strings attached. But follow the money. Eddy’s campaign paid nearly $20,000 to Nineteen Sixty Campaigns, a Chicago firm “committed to creating a progressive and inclusive future” and dedicated to “winning Democratic campaigns.” That is not a characterization by her critics. That is the firm’s own sales pitch. Its founder came up through the Center for American Progress, the war room founded by Democrat John Podesta that managed a famous 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign. The campaign was a textbook case of a “nonpartisan” judicial race being weaponized to flip a court to the left. All told, the Eddy campaign has spent $155,475 on firms tied to Democrats. Even her online donation page runs through NGP VAN, the fundraising platform built for Democrats to raise campaign cash.

Her donor list completes the picture. In the campaign’s opening weeks, Eddy raised more than $105,000 from 236 donors, more than half of it from attorneys, with nearly a third giving the maximum $790. The names include Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager and former White House deputy chief of staff. When the architects of national Democrat campaigns start writing checks to a “nonpartisan” judicial candidate in Montana, they are not confused about what they are buying.

And Eddy’s nonpartisanship turns out to be remarkably selective. She refuses Republican Party events on principle, then appears before the Montana Conservation Voters, the environmental advocacy group that overwhelmingly endorses Democrats. Declining one party’s rooms while working the other party’s network is not a sign of independence. It is strategy.

The playbook is simple. Run as a humble, above-the-fray jurist, let Democrat consultants and donors quietly build the machine, win the seat, and then deliver the rulings the movement paid for. Montanans have watched our Supreme Court legislate from the bench for years. The question in this race is whether we will hire another justice from the same Democrat pipeline, even while she assures us that she is somehow above it all.

Judge Dan Wilson tells voters plainly who he is and how he reads the law. Voters can weigh that honestly. What they should not accept is a candidate whose public claims of no party money and no political support is contradicted by her own campaign ledger.

Montanans are not fools. A judge who spent 2011 trying to get courts to impose climate policy, who was elevated by a Democrat governor, who pays Democrat consultants, banks on Democrat software, and cashes checks from Obama’s inner circle is not above partisanship. She is a partisan running a disciplined but misleading campaign. This November, pull away Eddy’s "nonpartisan" mask and vote accordingly.